8

My boy is eight now.

Looking back it’s easy to see how fast time flies by.

From an innocent sleepy baby, to a curious and clumsy toddler, to an inquisitive preschooler, and now nearly a 3rd grader…eight years seems really short.



We started his day with a birthday song, his choice of bacon and pancakes for breakfast, and our traditional story telling.

“Tell me again about the day I was born, mom.  I love the way you tell it.  Don’t forget the part about how blue I was.  I like that part.”





We spend nearly an hour at the table, each of us reminisce, laugh, smile.

He helps me with his cake.

 A layered chocolate with white frosting and sugary sprinkles.









He impatiently waits to open his gifts: 

A magic kit, a lefty glove, a Lego creation book, and his first AirHog.  Then a final reveal of a brand new bike from his Aunt and Uncle.











Off we go to dinner, a buffet he’s chosen and anxiously waited for 3 months to return to.  And we all watch as this big boy makes 5 trips to the food line.

I was told later that he (bravely) whispered to my brothers girlfriend, that he was secretly in love with her…

I’m not sure that I’m ready for him to grow up that much.

Happy Birthday Isaac!

The Solar System {Saturn & Uranus}

 

The kids have been really excited to start learning about Saturn.

I agree that it is the most intriguing and beautiful planet (besides Earth!)
.


Before we even started our lesson this week, we did our craft. We made our own Ringed Planets by painting Styrofoam balls (cut in half) and gluing a CD in-between the layers.



We used tempera paints, a multi-pack of Styrofoam balls, and blank CD’s.  I think it would be fine to color the balls with markers too.









Each of the kids painted their planet however they chose.  Once they were dry, I laced a string through one half so that we could hang the planets up in our school room.  Then I glued the two halves together with the disc in-between, using a hot glue gun.







We made a KWL chart for Saturn before starting our lesson.  What we Know, what we Want to know, and what we Learned.



This had become a really powerful tool for our homeschool, and we plan to continue using this technique to teach other subjects as well.



We did a very similar lesson plan with Uranus, using a KWL chart, our homemade workbook, and investigative reading skills to discover more about the planet Uranus.  One interesting fact that Isaac discovered was that it would take 50 Earths to fill the planet Uranus.  So we did a little experiment to see how that would look…



Isaac counted out 50 marbles to represent the 50 Earths…



Then he used a pipe cleaner to create Uranus just the size to fit all of the marbles into it.



We finished off with some review of the Planet Song, our File Folder Game, and played Planet Quest again!

Next:  Neptune, Pluto, and Constellations!

To see the rest of the Solar System posts, click here!

The Solar System {Mars & Jupiter}

 

So we’ve reached the halfway point with our Solar System unit! 

This week we’ve focused on Mars and Jupiter.

We started off with our lesson on Mars, reading the article and answering the questions in the workbook.  The boys were assigned to look through the books for an interesting fact to share with the group.  They are loving this part to each lesson, and are starting to consider themselves “reporters” now!

Since Mars is well known for all of the Rovers that have been sent there, we decided to build our own Mars Rovers!  We used a combination of Trios and Magnetics to build them.  This was an open-ended project that the kids were free to design however they wanted.  So much fun!
















We played this game Destination Mars by The Discovery Chanel.


Next we were on to Jupiter!



We followed our routine with our workbook, and investigational reading. 



The boys did a little bit of Outer-Space math:  Grouping stars into tens and ones, and some alien story problems.





They also built some more sentences with these Space Vocabulary Cards.



We’ve been working through this fun game Planet Quest.  It is a great tool for review and also lots of fun.  Each astronaut visits each planet and answers a question about that planet. 



I’d planned a craft for this week: Paper Mache Planets, but we just ran out of time!  I guess I will try to squeeze it in next week…

Next:  Saturn and Uranus

Have you missed any of the other Solar System posts?  Click here to see the blogroll of all of them!