While we’ve been hard at work this week, and working on getting back into a routing after our week off, I’ve also been keeping my eye on Hurricane Irma. Man, that is a nasty looking storm. At one point, the forecast had it tracking directly over us. [Yikes!] For the moment, it’s tracking more westward and we should just see some wind and rain. [Whew!]
So let’s take a look back at our week.
This week we tried starting our day with a morning circle time and using a morning basket. The new routine has gone fairly well. Little Man sits with us in the beginning while we use our circle time board and sing our songs. (His favorite seems to be Dinosaur, Dinosaur.) Then he wants someone to play with him…so he’s been spending a little time with our tablet while we read through our books and magazines. Then we all come back together for the art portion of our morning. This has been Rosie’s favorite part I think.
The girls were excited to receive mail from their penpals in England this week! Their new friends sent some activity books from a park area near where they live that they like to spend time in. The girls had fun looking through all of it, as well as reading their long letter. (Long letters are seriously the best!) And they will get their letter started to send back. 🙂
We took a little field trip with our homeschool group to go rock climbing! This is our second time going and next time, I’m getting someone to hang out with Little Man so I can climb too because it really looks like a lot of fun.
Also this week, we started studying Ancient Greece. This included making our version of a lapbook, which the girls call our suitcase. We began with the geography of the region, answering ‘What is latitude and longitude’ and going over some vocabulary. All of these have fun cut-outs to glue into our suitcases. We ended the week’s studies looking at the Greek’s architecture. We looked at how they used the post and lintel system with their buildings for the gods and goddesses. We talked about how all of the columns (the posts) were able to support such large, heavy roofs (the lintels) even though individual columns couldn’t support such weight alone. To illustrate this concept, we did a STEM challenge!
The girls were confused when I asked them to build a 2-story tower that could support their weight using only paper cups and cookie baking sheets.
They figured it out but were still doubtful that their building would hold their weight. 😉
They both stood on their tower and it held their weight! After seeing how multiple “columns” with the baking sheets held their weight, we talked about how this was possible by way of pressure distribution. To further illustrate this point, we tried standing on one cup and then having 2 under our feet. Guess what? It didn’t work. [All the squished cups on the floor.]
After trying this out one or two, or five, times, the girls decided to see if a bigger tower would hold them. They were able to add 2 more stories before I ran out of baking sheets. 🙂
For good measure, I stepped up on the tower to show them how strong the building system is. (Side note: I was terrified I was going to crash to floor! We could hear the cups being squished!)
Want to try this challenge out at your house? All you’ll need are paper cups (we used the small bathroom ones) and cookie sheets.
Growing Roots & Building Wings 