Oct 27 2008
Shakespeare Links, Mad Science, and Why
We have had two good schooling days in a row:) When I say good I mean.. just feeling like everything fell into place and we were not running around like crazy:) Its so nice to just be at home. After a week of Science Fair, Field Trips, Track and other runnin around I am happy to just be at home. Thats exactly what happened on Friday AND today. We just stayed home .. (well this morning we went to track but that was it)
I thought I would share some things we did today AND some links I found. The wealth of information on the internet never ceases to amaze me! Sure there is horible things on the internet but there are jewels too! Its amazing what you can find once you start looking. I have a system of sorts when trying to locate information for our learning.
- Do a Google Search on the subject
- Do an image search (careful on this one you never know what will pop up..)
- Do a video search on the subject (ditto above)
- If these fail and I find no information, I rephrase the subject and try again. (If I am looking for Apples, I might narrow the search to just Granny Smith etc).. Or I might put search words in a different order..
- Here is a bit of a hint when your children are viewing a video. First ALWAYS preview. Second, make the screen large if you can so no other videos show on the side, and Third if the large screen is not an option because of poor quality use the smaller mode but make your viewing window smaller as to hide the other videos. (I do not trust most sites and doing this takes away the distraction as well as the potential for my kids viewing images I would prefer them not see)
Ok. So here some things we have been doing:
Friday we continued out Study of Botany and went on a search for the following in our neighborhood. Vascular Plants, Nonvascular plants, Angiosperms (container seeds:pecan etc), Gymnosperms (uncovered seeds:pinecones etc), Anthrophyta (flowering plant), Pterophyta (ferns), sporangia (spore containers), Bryophyta (moss plants). The kids collected some samples for our Botany notebooks 
We had two mornings filled with math. Friday I worked with Cat a bit to fine tune somethings, Jo began work on ‘the area of a trapazoid’ and had fun with THIS website I found. After he did his bookwork he checked his work with this site. Its interactive and WAY cool! He loved it. Nate took an oral math test, most of which was done either on his head or while trying to walk on his hands! I advanced him a lesson or two as he flew through the test. He astounds me with his mathness and will soon be in the 4th grade book! (def took after his daddy in this area)
Today we had fun with spelling. I called out the words and then tried to use them in a sentence that would relate to Star Trek. The kids thought it was funny and made usually boring spelling a lot more fun! here are a few of the words from today: splattered, emitted, moulded and molded, shouldered, committed, and glittered. Star Trek Spelling.. taking spelling where its never gone before ! hehe
Friday we Covered Elizabeth the first. I found THIS site that has some great images (paintings) and poems by Elizabeth.
Our history today led us to Shakespeare and had a shortened version of Macbeth. This led me to search for short clips of the play and I found this!
The kids watched part one and will finish the rest tomorrow. Its amazing how they were glued to the screen!
Cat and I watched this one too:
Both sites have other animated stories, the first is completely Shakespeare the second has different videos which I have yet to look over but plan to do so.
And Last but not least, Nate and Jo got into a discussion as to where fire was on the “state of matter” topic. Where did it belong? So I found THIS to answer the question and that led me to this.
Heres a few more things we did today (education wise)
- Watched on DVD
Clips from a website talking about Egyptian history and artifacts.
Cat worked on her writing assignment for tomorrow
and
Jo drew an amazing picture of a cow! among other things.
