Turtle Bread

Today we were going to study reptiles and then make some Turtle Bread. Well, we had a great day of school, but we never got around to studying reptiles. We did make some bread, though! This was a different recipe than the frog bread and we didn't like it as much. Although it was pretty good with lots of better while it was hot. Alexandra added green food dye to the egg we spread on it before baking. (Found at www.familyfun.com)

Now, I'm determined to make a good loaf of bread with yeast. Anyone have a good, easy recipe?

Free Month of ALEKS

I contacted ALEKS to make sure it was OK to share how I got a free month of ALEKS on-line math tutor. They said they'd be happy for me to share it, but to make sure people understood it was for first-time users only.

Anyway, here's the site: www.aleks.com/webform/c12

Karate

Alexandra took up a new sport a few weeks ago... karate! She earned her white belt last Monday. (I'll try to get a better photo)

SOTW Ch. 18 - Life in Early Crete

We missed doing a SOTW chapter last week, but we did chapter 18 today. There were 2 main subjects: bull-jumpers (very interesting!) and the story of King Minos and the Minotaur.

For our activity, we built a maze for our Minotaur. Again, we used some Littlest Pet Shop critters to act out the story and used Model Magic to build our maze. It was a lot of fun!

edheads.org

I've been posting some of our favorite resources on my blog - both for others to use and so I don't have to hunt them down when I want to use them.

A few months ago, we had a lot of fun playing at www.edheads.org. There are 4 parts (and they also have some lesson plans): The Odd Machine (forces and simple machines), Virtual Hip Surgery, Weather, and Simple Machines.

Our favorite game was the Hip Replacement Surgery. Very cool! And, we've had a family member who's had the surgery, so it was something we could relate to - and even explain fairly well!

Funbrain Math Arcade

Alexandra had a lot of fun playing Funbrain's Math Arcade yesterday. It is a great arcade-typed game that reviews basic math facts. Some of the games go for speed, and some just for accuracy. And, you get to set what grade level you would like to play! (I even enjoyed it on my own!)
http://www.funbrain.com/brain/MathBrain/MathBrain.html

Geography On-line Games

Here are 2 fun and educational on-line geography games to help learn the names of the states and countries... and more!
http://sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/owlmouse.htm

Sir Cumference

We recently bought a set of 3 Sir Cumference books by Cindy Neuschwander. These are great picture books that teach about geometry. Alexandra is really enjoying them and they are a good introduction to math terms like circumference, diameter, and radius. (There are also 2 others in this series - the newest one is available from Scholastic and I'm planning on ordering it, too.)

amphibians and reptiles

Yesterday was a beautiful day! It has been cold & rainy most of the past 2 weeks, so we decided to take advantage of a warm (low 60's), sunny day.

After lunch, we had a scheduled docent tour at our museum. It was supposed to be on Texas Wildlife, but there were boxes piled up in the exhibit. So, they decided to give us a tour of the new Frogs exhibit instead - for free!

Since we'd studied frogs on Monday with our friends, I was happy to see that I'd covered the subject pretty well. We knew most of what the guide had to tell us, but we learned some new things, too. And, I loved seeing some live salamanders!

The frogs were amazing. Alexandra loved watching the tadpoles and everyone loved the poison dart frog exhibit. Alexandra even made a new friend.

After the tour, we went to the zoo. Besides looking at some other animals, we went to the amphibian and reptile building. We're going to study reptiles briefly this week, so I thought this would be a great place to start. Since Alexandra already knew the main types of amphibians, she had no problem figuring out which animals were the reptiles. And, of course, we discussed some of their differences. It's neat to be able to put what we're learning "to the test!"

By the way, all of the photos were taken at the zoo - I didn't take any at the exhibit. And, Alexandra took the picture of the crocodile (although I cropped it). Her's actually came out better than mine! And, I think I figured out that is best to take photos at an angle if you are taking them through glass, like I was for these animals. I'll test it some more next time.

more fun with math

What a wonderful school day we had today!!! And, it all consisted of math! 2.5 hours of math! And, this from a girl who is usually complaining about math. Wow!


I had Alexandra take an assessment with ALEKS yesterday as she has been flying through her lessons. Well, she missed almost half of the new skills she'd learned, although 2 of them were really just because she'd made a mistake and not because she didn't understand how to do it. So, I decided she needed more review.

First of all, I printed out the worksheets they have available. What we love about them is that they're only 16 problems long and there is usually only 1 of each type of problem! We'll probably do these 2-3 times a week, but not every day.


Then, we worked on subtraction using a game from Peggy Kaye's Games for Math called "Largest and Smallest", I believe. We've been playing this quite a bit and it's really helping with borrowing. Then, we did some review with money - I just handed her 5-8 coins and she added them up.


Next, we played a rounding game I made up. We played it with a deck of cards, laid out a number, and then drew from a pile of cards that say things like "round to the nearest hundred." She has to round it and write the new number. I do the same and then whoever has the largest number wins that hand. I actually thought it was kind of difficult and was willing to quit, but she insisted on continuing. I think it really helped.

I'd also made up a simple game about writing long numbers. (For example, write seven million eight thousand). I just made lots of cards that said a number (like four hundred or sixty three or nine). We laid out three of these and the first card was your millions, the second your thousands, and the third your ones. You had to write the number out (like 7,800,000) and then the largest number won. Again, not a wonderful game, but it's helping.


We're also working on multiplication and I took 2 cards and labeled one "doubles" and the other "3's." During the day, she had to tell me her doubles (1+1=2, 2+2=4, etc) and her 3's (3, 6, 9, etc) each 5 times and she got a sticker on her card each time she said them. We're going to keep working on these 2 until they come easily and then go on to the 4's. (Or, maybe we'll move on to 1x2=2, 2x2=4, etc)


Well, that's our day! I was just amazed that she kept at it so long and that we had so much fun. I've found a few games online about money that we'll play tomorrow and next week. I'll let you all know if there are any winners!