This Week's Wrap Up

We've had a busy week. (As usual, right?)


On Monday, we watched the baby of one of our neighbor's. We babysat for 6 hours to a 9 month old boy. Alexandra was SO helpful and I got to brush up on some baby skill as we await our new baby cousin in a few months. Alexandra even fed him his bottle and rocked him to sleep!

On Tuesday, we stated a kit about electricity. We used static electricity to pick up small pieces of paper with a comb and also to bend a stream of water - VERY cool!!!



On Wednesday, we went to our small co-op and the mom & girls taught us how to loom knit! We are working on purses using wool yarn that we will then felt. I'll tell you more when we get to that step! We also had some fun with fractions at Mathwire.

We also played a new math fraction game, Closest to 1, which I found online but can't find right now. Each person is dealt 3 cards (take out J's, Q's, & K's). Then, make as many fractions as you can (you should make 6) and record each of them on a slip of paper. Then, calculate the decimal equivalent to the nearest 100th and write it down on the slip of paper. For example, 4/5 would be 0.80. I like going to the nearest 100th because then you can compare it to money! For difficult numbers, use a calculator. This is a good time to reinforce that the line in a fraction, like 1/2, means "divided by." After each person has their 6 answers, they should put them in order from smallest to largest and then determine which of their cards is closest to 1.00. (Again, use the concept of money, even draw a dollar sign, if this helps.) Then, compare your "closest" card with your opponents and whoever's is closest, wins! We played this several times and Alexandra really enjoyed it. She even wanted to play it at night!

On Thursday, we prepared for our Friday's book club by making a model of the Empire State Building with a "giant" peach on top. Then, Alexandra wrote a newspaper article about the amazing event from the book, James and the Giant Peach.




And, on Friday, we went to the book club and the girls made peach cobbler as their group acitivity. It was really good! They also shared their projects and had a group discussion.

Afterwards, Alexandra and I went clothes shopping and then she went to a Friday night out event at her gym while my husband and I went out to eat and then I went to Barnes & Noble. I got a book for me, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and a book for Alexandra that she really enjoyed from the library last week, The Matchlock Gun.