Hot Air Balloons, Taketombo, Sharks, and some other School Stuff

Whew, I feel like I’ve been a little behind on posting about school stuff. We’re still doing school, I promise. It just hasn’t been on my top priority to post about list. I’ve been really enjoying the Energy Profiling stuff, and feel like I’ve used most of my blogging time to write about it. But school is still happening. And here’s some of what we’ve been up to for the last little while…

Hot Air Balloons.

We did a section on Hot Air Balloons in our History of Flight Unit. These ones that we made, were a lot easier than the trash bag version Aaron made with the kids last July. Basically, you take a cellophane bag, some string and cupcake liner, tape them all together, and get the blow dryer out to make it go up. We talked about warm air, and how when air is warm the molecules spread out to make it lighter than cold air, and that’s why warm air rises and makes the balloon go up. My blow dryer’s low setting is still quite powerful, so our balloons went up probably a little faster than they should have. But we still got the point. Lincoln spent all of quiet time with this project. Winner.

 

Taketombo.

We started another unit out of History of Flight about the Wright brothers, and gliders. We learned that a glider is anything with wings that is not powered by an engine. We made a Taketombo, or a Bamboo Dragonfly, which is similar to a toy the Wright brothers would have played with as children. It’s pretty cool. You spin it between your hands and let it go, and then it helicopters down to the ground. Another successful activity that kept Lincoln occupied for a solid hour. I’m really liking our book!

Sharks.

And we’ve still been having Science Club. We had an awesome field trip to Cabella’s to look at the fish in their aquarium. And last week Wynter taught the funnest lesson about sharks. Lots of cool things to glue in our notebooks. I am still loving our notebooks, btw. So great for keeping track of everything!

 

 

Preschool Co-op.

Preschool is still going well. I had my turn to teach a couple weeks ago. I had President’s Day and Letter R. For Presidents Day, we read a couple stories about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Then we made a handprint cherry tree painting, and talked about the story of George cutting down his father’s cherry tree and how he could not tell a lie. Then we made log cabins out of pretzel sticks and glued a penny inside to show that Abraham Lincoln lived in a log cabin. We learned a fun song about how the two presidents dressed. And we played the game This is the Way The Ladies Ride, because Washington liked to ride horses.

For Letter R, we talked about red things, and painted a red R. We also talked about roads, and drove cars on our road rug. Then we did a road cutting sheet. And read a couple of books about things that started with R.

 

Math.

We’ve done some fun Math things last little while. Money being the main one. Lincoln really likes money, and was excited that he got to work with real money to do his problems. He’s also learned how to borrow in subtraction, which he doesn’t think is as fun as money, but I think it’s cool that he’s learning it. :) We’ve finished Singapore level 1B and have moved on to Singapore level 2A. So far the fast moving pace has been good for Linc. He’s still catching onto things quickly, showing me that he can do then, and ready to move on, at the pace the book is going. At some point, when he gets stuck, we’ll have to shift to a different curriculum that offers more review at a slower pace. But for now this is working nicely for us.