Walks, Talks and Sidewalk Chalk

Brownies and Beading

We crafted and baked with Jonna again this week. She and Esperanza made Mexican brownies and then she got started on teaching us how to do some bead work!

Bloody Science Lesson

Today's science lesson was inspired by a 'don't-try'this-at-home' accidental science experiment that happened yesterday. Ezra cut his finger pretty badly - no urgent care or stitches involved thanks to the very clever butterfly bandage some genius invented. There was, however, a lot of blood, tears and a broken piggy bank. Today, we used that experience to discuss The Circulatory System! The kids were pretty bummed when I told them that we would be sitting down reading some books for science today, but they quickly became interested once they realized it related to the blood that was everywhere yesterday. Learning that the blood came as a result of a blood vessel being cut, then how with the combined help from the platelets and red blood cells a clot was formed to stop the bleeding was pretty fascinating. And then there was more reading about the heart, veins, arteries, capillaries and other bloody stuff. Then we drew some art on the chalk wall! This is how we do school in our house. We learn by living. This is also why I have 150+ checked out library books at any given time...ya never know what we might want to look u and learn about. 

Babies and Lego Catapults

We went to a friends house for another science lesson gathering with our homeschool STEM group. This time we built catapults out of Legos! It was so much fun to do this! While there, we got to snuggle with a baby pug puppy and the cutest baby human.

Chess, Geodesic Domes, Science and Such

After a long and dark winter, our days are beginning to get longer and a bit warmer. As the earth warms and wakens, we are spending more time outside, also awakening. The chickens are laying eggs. We have a duck couple and a geese couple that visit our side of the pond daily while the frogs and crickets fill the evenings with their songs. We are still getting many, many rainy days. It's been a very wet winter, which continues into spring. We spend some days waiting out the rain by playing chess, exploring the microscopic world with our microscope, playing with our growing pup Isis, reading Harry Potter and The Land of Stories series, obsessing over Pokemon, crafting, cooking and we sometimes pretend to 'do school'. Our friend Jonna is teaching Esperanza and I macrame and Esperanza and Ezra recently constructed geodesic domes with her. An online science program we follow is teaching us about selection of traits in plants and animals. Armando has been busy all winter with new houses and is finishing up 2 in Washougal and 4 in Camas. They should all be sold this Spring (1 is a presale and 1 other the sale is pending). We have lots of plans and goals set for this year and look forward to all the fun and adventures that await us!

Pi, Science and more Pie

It was not only a good day for pie, but it was also our first day meeting with our homeschooling STEM (science-technology-engineering-math) group. I explained, in limited detail, what pi was to my kids and that it was fun to make March 14 a day to talk about it. I had fun writing down the number and symbol on the chalk board, and Esperanza enjoyed saying the numbers.

A few of our homeschool friends came over and we did a small floating ping pong ball activity and discussed what is called the Coanda Effect. We watched a couple of videos then got to work experimenting on making our own contraption to float a ping pong ball by blowing through a straw. It took awhile to get the ping pong balls to float, some of us figured it out, others never did. We also brought out a hair dryer and used that for the same effect. It was fun!

And then, we had pie.