the dot project

The Dot Project is based on the book by Peter H. Reynolds. In the book there's a girl named vashti  and she says she cant draw so she sat in her art class chair and she wasn't going to move. so then her art teacher came over and said that her blank paper was a polar bear in a snow storm but she just laughed and said I just can not draw. Then her art teacher smiled and said just make a mark so vashti did she gave that paper a big jab and said ''There!''. Her teacher studied that jab and then she said ''Now sigh it'' so vashti did she sighed V.A.S.H.T.I. The next day she was so surprised to see what was hanging above her art teachers desk. It was vashti's very own dot that she jabed on to that paper it was framed in swirly gold. Then she said that she can make a better dot then that so she opened her watercolor set that was brand new and set to work. Vashti painted and painted she painted a yellow dot and a green dot a red dot and a blue dot she even mixed blue and yellow and found out that she can make a green dot she made lot of dots little  dot and  big dots and even  giant she made dots by not painting dots. Then the school art show was a few weeks later and all of vashti dots where there and she was a big success. That's the story of vashti and her dot so we were just like vashti and we made tons of dot big and little dots and then we ar going to do a family giant dot and hangup on our wall in are class room. Its going to be really fun  

                                                                                  Emma 

The Great St. Lawrence Seaway

Who knew that this was such an engineering marvel?   In studying the search for the NorthWest Passage, we explored one of the by-products of that search... The St. Lawrence Seaway.  So Cool.

A Nice addition to our studies.

Also a few videos on YouTube were helpful.

The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway ~ A Vital Waterway

This one show a time lapse of ships moving through the locks.

A recreational boat moving through a lock

Taking it to the street.

Emma has been struggling to memorize her multiplication facts.  She can work them out in her head, but has not been able to recall them from memory.
So we took our math to the street yesterday.  It was a beautiful morning, and the kids had a blast playing multiplication hopscotch, and other variety of games and memory work.

Jack was able to work on skip counting and jumping, while the girls worked on the 3's.

I think that this worked.  Before bed I reviewed the facts with Emma, and she knew them all without hesitation.  

We have tried all kinds of rote memory work for Emma and it just hasn't stuck.  My theory is that when she is asked to do something physically challenging (jumping from square to square- don't land on the lines, etc) it frees up the portion of her brain that was anxious about the math.  She was so worried about trying to remember that it blocked it.  Being physically active distracted her and allowed it to really sink in. 

I'm going to look and see if I can find any literature to confirm this. :)

one article, and another

Moving on to the 4's today!

sound project- string telephones by, Abby & Emma

                               SOUND EXPERIMENT 

When you make string telephones you tie a string to two plastic cups and add paper clips, then you talk to the person on the other side and you can have a conversation. A three way call is possible you just add a third cup, more string and a third paper clip. To hear the people talking you half to pull the string tight to here the sound, If you don't the vibration will stop and the sound won't make it through. ~ Emma

     Today we did a sound experiment.  We made a phone out of string and plastic cups. It worked really well!  The way the phone works is when the string vibrates, the sound waves move across the string from one cup to another.  We also made a three way call by adding one string and cup to the middle.  That also worked very well.  We had a lot of fun doing this! ~ Abby

The "3 Way" call.

Mom's Note:  This experiment was really cool, I had no idea that it would work as well as it did. 

We used just a regular plastic cup, some twine, and paperclips.  

Matchbox Ordinals ~ Math Exploration

Jack's cars raced and we used the finish line results to discuss ordinals!

More math with toys!

Week of 4/28 ~ Photo of the Day

Which one is your favorite?

"Transformer" Math ~ Graphing Exploration

Jack's first "work' of the day was to bring down ALL of his transformers.  Pretty cool way to start the school day :).  Then he sorted them into different categories,

1.Autobots

2.Deceptacons

3. Bot-shots

4. Launchers

5. Easy to transform

6.  Hard to transform

7.  Weapons

\

Then he graphed the results... with some playing and sound effects along the way.

He choose a different color for each bar to depict what he was representing in the graph.

His conclusions when all were graphed was, "Wow, I have a lot more Autobots than anything else!"

Mission Accomplished.

I have found that is it very easy to engage Jack in his work, when we incorporate the things that he loves or is currently interested in.  Making him move around the house, gets the "ants" out of his pants, so he will actually be able to focus on his "work".

Additional Reading

Boys Need To Move

The Netherlands Project ~ By Emma

           We made the Netherlands  so we would know what it was like for the people that lived there when the dikes broke. We used air-dry-clay to build the dikes ,people and land . We also used blue water to put in the bin on the other side of the dike to see if the water would hold on the side the water is suposed to be on. 

          I think this was a fun project in history, It was fun to play in the clay and watch the water brake into the the Netherlands, Then we broke the dikes.
        This is just like what happened to New Orleans in hurricane Katrina.


                    

          

Queen Beatrix gives her thrown to her son Willem-Alexander. ~ Abby

    Philip    William

©Jeroen Van Der Meyde/Dutch Royal House               

Today we got some news, the queen of the Netherlands,  stepped down from her thrown! Queen Beatrix gave her thrown to her son Willem-Alexander.  

                   I'll tell you a little about the history of the Netherlands.  Philip inherited Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands.  Philip was a catholic.  William was a nobleman in the Netherlands.  He was a protestant.  William didn't like the way Philip ruled the Netherlands, because he made laws without asking the people.  Philip wanted William killed.  So William went back to Germany, he made an army and knocked down the dikes that were holding the water back turning the land war into a sea war.  William won the war and his Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Granddaughter, Beatrix ruled for 33 years.

Mom's Note: This was of interest to us, since we have been studying the history of how "William The Silent" came to rule the Netherlands.  Love it, when we can apply what we have learned to real life current events :)

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I started making my own version of laundry detergent, tweeked from a recipe from this link that I had found.  We do SO much laundry here, that I felt like I was constantly running to the store to buy more.  And,  we STILL don't have city sewers, so the laundry water becomes part of the "run off", and therefore, part of my garden, and part of the bay!


Here is the SUPER SIMPLE recipe that I use...



3 Gallons of hot water (I let the container fill with the hottest water from the tap)

I Cup each/ 3 Gallon Container

then i add

1 Cup of Washing Soda
1 Cup of Borax
1 Cup of Dawn dish soap

mix it all together, and you are ready to go.

...even I can remember that without having to look it up :)

I use about  1 1/2 cups per load, it is pretty thin, and doesn't produce many bubbles, but the laundry comes clean!

Super Cheap, Super Easy!

Fill with the hottest water possible from the tap. 

The next time I make my homemade Spot Cleaner, or Fabric Softener, I will post the recipe!

This Weeks "Photo of the Day"

The kids and I are enjoying our new "schoolroom".  The dinning room is well underway of becoming a more useful space.   I love the light and brightness that the room now has. 

Jack started working on his thank you cards from his birthday, I love his writing at the top!

Vocab words on Rocks!

Math Exploration

A just before bed, quick snap shot of  Emma taken from the iphone. she is not very amused by me.

Since I have committed to this Photo of the Day Project, sometimes you just have to get something in, this one was taken late last night.... probably early this morning, so it might not even count for the 27th. So, just before climbing into bed, i snapped this one of matt... he wasn't amused either.. :)

Math Exploration ~ Skip counting by 2's & 5's

Jack worked on "skip counting" this week.  To represent pairs he ran around the house trying to find anything that came in two's and lined them up in the kitchen.  (he even had his sisters in line for a while).  Then we counted out loud 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, unless he started to recognize the pattern.

Later in the week, we started our counting by 5's exploration.  He used handprints to visual 5's.  He was a little hesitant at first to "smooch" his hands in the paint, but after a first attempt by Abby, he got right into it!

                            

A brand new hot dog ~ by Emma

Today's Journal Prompt:

April 24th is “Pigs-in-a-Blanket” day.  Create a new dish using hot dogs as the main ingredient.  Or describe your favorite hot dog dish.

Here is Emma's entry:

My hotdog is inside the bun. On the hotdog I put steak, steak juice, mashed potatoes, and haricot verts (green beans) cut into tiny bits. Yummy, yummy!  Sounds delicious to me, I can't wait to try it someday. 

CUPCAKES BY ABBY

I really like baking cupcakes so I thought that making my own recipe would be a good way to challenge myself. I thought that adding this little twist would make the cupcake a little sweeter, and switching the bleached flour for the unbleached flour would make this recipe a little healthier.

Recipe :

  1  1/2 sticks of butter

1   1/2 cups brown sugar

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cups egg whites about 6 eggs

3 teaspoons of vanilla extract 

3/4  cup of milk

1 banana

1. Set a rack in the middle level of your oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar for about 5  mins until light and fluffy.

3. In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

4. In a third bowl combine the egg whites, milk and vanilla extract. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, and then half of the milk mixture. Continue to alternate the  ingredients.  Scrape the bowl and beater often. 

5. Pour the batter into the prepared cupcake pan, bake the cupcakes for 25-30 mins or until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.

6. Cool the pan on a rack for about 5 mins, then take the cupcakes out of the pan and let cool completely.

7. Once the cupcakes are frosted you can add a slice of banana and a sprinkle of cinnamon!

I thought the cupcakes were delicious!  My brother and sister did too, my mom thought they were a little sweet with the cream cheese frosting I used. I brought some to my nana and papa's house, they said that they were delicious and really moist. 

New graffiti wall,

Emma trying out the graffiti wall in the new school room.

Showing some progress...

The dinning room / school room is coming together this week, after a trip to ikea, and many hrs still to go...it is starting to shape up..


I love my new Dewalt impact driver!!!