In Full Swing

We started back to school this week after a nice long break. The kids were practically begging me to get back. The last few days of our time off I would find them researching climates all over the world and comparing them(they even made a chart), writing and journaling, making their own science experiments, practicing handwriting(silly guy-he just loves writing in cursive), looking through their curriculum and quizzing each other on math facts while playing at the playground. I said to my husband we have definitely have had enough time off!

Sweet girl started studying an Astronomy unit. This week she learned about the Sun's family; the inner and outer planets, comets and asteroids. One of her projects was to make a scale model of the solar system. As she learned about the planets, she kept a data chart with the information she obtained through the reading. Once her chart was complete she was ready to construct her model. She used the equation: scaled diameter= D/10,000 scale=(10,000 km =1 cm). The curriculum(AOP Lifepac)gave her the the average distances (in cm)from the sun. This was a BIG project. The problem we had was finding a wall in the house that was 589.0 cm long(distance from Sun to Pluto). We improvised and used two walls in our school room. We have a hallway upstairs that would have workedbut she wanted to be able to gaze upon her hard work, :).

Here are pictures of the Solar System. It was really neat to see how small the planets are in comparison to the sun and also how close we actually are to it.

Sweet girl constructing the Sun.

It took 35 pieces of construction paper.

This is the first half of the Solar System. The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars

Jupiter, and Saturn

Little lonely Pluto. Two wall lengths away from the Sun.

Here is the second half of the Solar System. (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)

A close up of the first five planets.

In Bible, she had to develop a plan to study the Bible over the next six months. We found a Bible reading schedule over at The Teaching Home website . We decided we would do this as a family so we could discuss and reflect about the scripture we will be reading.

On to Silly guy. He started his new unit in geography/history this week: The Grasslands. I made him a lap book to change things up a bit and he is having a great time assembling and learning. He looks forward to history so he can add something to his lap book. I am loving his enthusiasm.

Before our break he started a unit about machines in science so we got back to that. He made this chart for an I Spy game throughout the unit. This unit will give him many experiments which he will enjoy. In language arts he started to learn about taking notes properly. What a great tool!

His I Spy Chart!

All in all it was a great start to the new year and the second half of our school year.