Plans

I've got so many plans going right now, I'm not sure what I'm doing! :-)

We are continuing are study of the Pilgrims and the Colonists. We've been reading a few books and doing the Colonial American History Pockets which we will hopefully complete after a few more days. Then, I'm not sure if we'll move on or cover The Great Colonial America Projects book.

We've also been studying Thomas Edison and electricity. This hasn't been part of our school day - we started by watching a movie and then we've read several books at night. I'd like to get into this, as I mentioned, and actually study electricity and use Alexandra's new Snap Circuit kit.

We also did some dentistry experiments this week using martinzoo's ideas. Alexandra loved Dr. Rabbit and the Legend of the Tooth Kingdom and has watched it several times. We also enjoyed the experiments at martinzoo.

We're also studying Mozart in preparation for going to see a kid's version of The Magic Flute next week. This has been a really neat study, but we haven't really done any projects so I don't have any photos to share. I'll share all of my ideas and resources after the opera!

Lastly, today I met with my friend that I did a co-op with last year. She was on the road most of the fall, so we haven't really had time to get together. Well, we've decided to start up our co-op again! We're going to be studying for exhibits coming to our local museums. Our first study is genetics for the upcoming "Genome: The Secret of How Life Works." Does anyone have any ideas (or links) for hands-on genetics studies for younger children? Or a book recommendation? I've requested Gregor Mendel: the Friar Who Grew Peas from the library, but that's it.

We're just running all over the place, aren't we? But, we're having lots of fun!

I'll leave you with a video of one of our favorite songs from The Magic Flute. It is called Papageno and it is very lively and fun. You might want to fastforward to about 5:30 to get to the "best part", though it's all good. (The first part of this clip might not be suitable for all children. You might want to check it out first, though Alexandra really enjoyed it.)

In this scene, Papageno, the bird-catcher, is very sad because he can't find a wife. He has decided to kill himself. Three gentle spirits stopped him and told him to ring the magical bells. Papagena comes and they sing "pa...pa...pa..." back and forth and hop like chickens. And, at the end, we thought it was funny that Papageno carried Papagena away. When it was over, I thought Papagena should have sat on Papageno's hand like a bird. (by Alexandra)