Constitution Day Activities

I got an email today with a link to activities about the constitution. It'd be a great way to celebrate Constition Day... today! The website is ConstitutionFacts.com. I looked at one of the quizes, and I have a LOT to learn... or relearn!

Colosseum & types of columns

(Alex made this cute dog with a bow in her hair while we were working with Model Magic. Alex was in charge of the photography today.)

In Mystery of History this week, we read about Nero who persecuted the Christians. One of our activities was to learn more about the Colosseum. We were excited to do this as my brother and mom are going to Italy for 2 WEEKS next month! I can't wait to "share" their trip via photos. I'll be sure to get some to post for everyone.

Anyway, did you know that the Colosseum was financed by melting down a golden statue of Nero called the Colossus? Pretty interesting, isn't it?

 

Anyway, we found some great sites about the Colosseum:

• We read about the Colossus statue financing the building of the Colosseum at Kidipede.
• We were able to take a quick tour of the Colosseum at Discovery Channel.
• And, at Google Earth, you can now view some Roman structures, including the Colosseum, in 3D! You go under "Gallery" and then click on "Ancient Rome 3D." Very neat!
• We didn't try it, but you can also make your own paper model of the Colosseum (for free!) from this Canon site.

So, at the Discovery Channel site, we learned that there are 3 layers at the colosseum and they each have a different type of column - doric, ionic & cornthian. Between each column is an arch. I decided to review arches since we haven't talked about them in several years. So, we learned about them at these sites:

• This site teaches you the parts of a column. We learned learned the terms capital, shaft, and base.
• And, using the examples we found here, we made our own columns out of Model Magic.

(Above, you'll see my 3 examples of columns - I used the lids of highlighters for added stability.)

Green Fruit Beetle or Figeater

We had a GORGEOUS day today. We spent some of our school day reading in the backyard. Alex even swam, though I thought it was way too cool! And, I ended up taking a nap underneath the cloudy skies. Just such a wonderful day!

In the evening, we went outside again to eat dessert... and I saw this big beetle floating on one of the toys in the pool. He was a beautiful green and we'd never seen this insect before. Alex ran in and got my camera. (Do you see his gold trim around the edge?)

He was evidentally a little water-logged. He flew a short distance and I then I took some more photos... with his wings still hanging out. (I don't know why this photo won't load the right direction... I took it horizontally...)

Alex also grabbed one of our insect guides and found that he is a type of scarab beetle called a fig beetle. On the internet, I've found him more often called a Green Fruit Beetle or a Figeater. I love how his antennae break into 3 parts. Isn't he beautiful? (And, I thought I'd try another photo, but it came out sideways, too!)

One Year After Ike

Hurricane Ike hit one year ago today. If you were following my blog then, you might remember that my husband was out of town and Alex and I drove up to my mom's in Dallas. We ended up going on a vacatioin and were gone for 2 1/2 weeks. Our street was without electricity for 8 days. Our losses included all of the food in our refrigerator & freezer, a lot of limbs off of our big ash tree in the backyard (& other limbs), and our fence. When we returned home, we found the mess above.
And this is what we did about it (and it sat there for weeks, but I understand and am grateful it eventually got picked up!).

Above is our ash tree last year.

And this year after a major trimming and time to grow again.

Part of our fence last year.

And our new fence. I love it! It is quite a bit taller and looks wonderful.

I know many people suffered much more loss than we did, including the lives of loved ones. I am grateful that our damage wasn't too costly and that, most of all, we were all safe.

Our Timeline

We went to my mom's last weekend and she helped me make our timeline board for Mystery of History. We used only a few supplies - a trifold board (like you use for science fair) and 2 colors of duct tape (which I let Alex pick out).

We used several rulers & meter sticks to measure where we wanted the tape to go.

The finished project... just waiting for our figures to be added!

And here are our first 3 figures. We decided to make our own. We are both really enjoying this project and it is a great way to end the week in a brief review.

My First Notebooking Pages

I've been wanting to try notebooking pages for a long time. But, I wanted them to be made for "us." So, I finally searched online to find out how to make these pages! I first went to Jimmie's Squidoo lens which took me to Gidget's Homeschool Treasure Trove (since she uses Word which is what I wanted to use.)
Above is my first attempt. We are using Mystery of History Volume 2 this year and I wanted a page about the Colosseum. I saw pages made by Heartwork in Progress and was going to use them, but thought I'd try to make my own so I can use them for any topic. Basically, when using Word, you insert text boxes to fill with photos, lines (I just hold the underscore key down), and the title. If you right click on the frame of the text box, you can vary the thickness of color of your border.

I made this second attempt a little more interesting by using WordArt for the title.

And, on this one, Alex changed the style of the WordArt and the font and I found out how to add shadows. The shadows are on the WordArt toolbar at the bottom of Word and are green with various shadows.

I have made several other pages and really like this one as I added a photo of Alex taken in front of a piece of the Berlin Wall which we took at a museum. I love how you can really personalize these pages!!! I'm excited to do more pages and am already working on a few more for next week.

Rainy Nature Day at Beach

What kind of creature is this??? (Answer below.)

Yesterday, we went on our first Nature Day outing of the year. Our group has now grown to a staggering (to me) 141 families!!! But, we have had a lot of rain this week and we had a 100% chance of rain by 1 pm. So, we only had 3 families for our trip to the beach... and we all rode together in my friend's 12 passenger van.

When we got to Galveston Beach a little after 10 am, it was overcast, but not raining. We were surprised to see so much of the sandy parking lot under water! In fact, we were a little worried that the van might get stuck in the water. We saw one other mom with her 3 children, so we thought they might be new members. I went over to ask if she was with the homeschool nature group, but she said they were just skipping school. :-)

Here's a photo of the empty beach and the clouds. We stayed for about an hour and a half. For about 45 minutes, it was pouring, but it didn't stop us from having fun!

The water wasn't too bad and the kids went wading and built sandcastles since they had all been to our sandcastling "class" back in May. I was really impressed with the castles - one girl made a wonderful arch! I didn't get any photos because it started raining and I was afraid I'd ruin my camera. I'm checking to see if one of the other moms has a photo.

We did really encounter some neat nature. We found 2 different types of seeds that were really interesting. (I'm checking to see if the other moms have photos of these, too.) The kids also found a tiny crab and one of the moms had a net and they caught 3 fish! But, the neatest find to me was this little guy. It is the same critter as the first photo, but we washed him off. In the first photo, I thought his head was on the right and his tail was on the left, but we found out that the 'tail' is actually his antennae! In the above photo, he is upside down and you can see some of his 10 legs (some are sadly broken off, but yes, he was alive).

So, what is he? (And, in this photo he is facing to the right.) He's a type of crab - a mole crab (or sand crab or sand flea). He's a small crustacean found on the coast. They live under water in shallow sand near the shore. They have 2 antennae (we think his were stuck together) that usually 'feather out' to catch plankton in the intertidal zone. When you see bubbles coming out of a hole when the water recedes from a wave, you might have a mole crab 2-12 inches below that location! (I'll have to dig for some again sometime.) The boys had a big shovel and were building a sand castle and I guess that is how they found this wonderful creature, and I'm so glad they did!

Meet Pablo; Barb's "Extraordinary" Nature Challenge

Today, Alex found a little gecko in our house... and she's decided to keep it as a pet at least for awhile. So, meet Pablo!

We thought it was neat the Pablo, a mediteranean gecko, is almost transparent! You can see his eyes through the skin on his head. This photo seems to be focused more on Pablo's legs than his head... and the texture of his skin is really neat! (I'm not sure if you'll be able to see it in this photo or enlarge it.)

Also, Barb over at Handbook of Nature Study has issued a new nature challenge to find the "extraordinary in the ordinary" in your own backyard. Here's her challenge:

Find the Extraordinary in the Ordinary. I challenge you to find five ordinary things in your backyard or in your everyday life that you can study and learn something more about. Find something extraordinary in something you have come to think of as ordinary and usual, so usual that you may not even notice it anymore.

That sounds like a great challenge to me! So, what is "ordinary" in your backyard that you might find something extraordinary in? Alex and I have some exploring and research to do!

Cicadas

Here's a photo of a pair of cicadas Alex found a few days ago. I thought they were dead until I accidentally dropped my camera next to them and one flew noisely away. Then, I touched the other one to see if it was OK and it flew away, too! I love how the one on the right is brown where the other is green.

1st Day of 4th Grade

Monday was Alex's first day of 4th grade!

Alex and our chihuahua, Pandy

Alex set up the timer to take this photo of us on 'our' first day of school. We started the year with our traditional first day which includes photos by the pool and going out for doughnuts for breakfast!