Building Bridges

This week during "Christmas break", we've been "studying" bridges. It all started with a class we took at a local museum a few weeks ago. During the class, we learned why people use triangles as part of their bridges. (Triangles are much stronger) We also made a toothpick & clay bridge with lots of triangles.

This week, we've been studying the 3 basic types of bridges: beam, arch, and suspension. We made models of all 3 with simple materials like index cards, straws, and dental floss. We were impressed with how much load the bridges could bear! Photo is of our suspension bridge, which held over 250 pennies before it collapsed.

For our activities, we used these 2 websites: www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorere/card_bridge.html and www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/educator/act_suspension_ho.html


We also watched a wonderful video of the collapes of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It was about 2 1/2 minutes long. Unfortunately, I can't find the website now, although I find lots of websites with shorter videos.

And, we watched a couple of videos from our library. Our favorite was called "Big Cable Bridges."

Now we're enjoying seeing what types of bridges we see as we travel around town!

Feliz Navidad

Alex's Spanish class had a Christmas Party this week - Feliz Navidad! The children sang two songs in Spanish, broke open a pinata, ate Mexican snacks, and then had a birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday (Feliz Cumpleanos) to Jesus. Alex had really been looking forward to the pinata for a few weeks, and she wasn't disappointed! Each child got two turns to hit and then they got lots of candy.

Getting Ready for Christmas

We have less than 2 weeks to go until Christmas. Last week, we "trimmed" the tree. We even bought a new artificial one this year with the lights already "strung." Alex loved decorating the tree and the house! What an extra joy Christmas is when a child is involved...






We've also been doing some holiday baking. Alex helped me make a batch of toffee, some gingerbread men, and some peanut butter fudge. It was my first time to make the fudge & I had to make a second batch after Alexandra went to bed tonight because I messed up the first batch. But, batch number 2 turned out great! We'll be giving some of these treats out to Alexandra's teachers & friends - mine, too!


Tonight we also made and decorated a gingerbread house. This is only our second try, and we thought it turned out pretty well! We bought pre-formed pieces & decorations from our grocery store & it included a mix to make the icing. This icing was WONDERFUL! It was so much like "glue!" It WAS hard to squeeze out, but it kept everything in place. Alexandra even put a gingerbread man INSIDE our house. She told me that she'd never do this if she was the mom - too messy!

Las Posadas

We are using the Evan-Moor "Theme Pockets: December" book this December to study December holidays. Yesterday, we were working on Las Posadas which is celebrated in Mexico. We read a wonderful book, so I just had to share it! It's called Nine Days to Christmas by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida.

Also, today for Las Posadas Alexandra made a luminaria. Here's a picture of her holding it to light the way to the Inn!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we are doing the Evan-Moor study entitled "Life in Plymouth Colony." It's a History Pocket book. Anyway, one of Alex's favorite things has been the tithing man and his pole. The tithing man who watched over the long church services. He had a pole (forgot if it has a name) that had a fur (or feather) on one end & a knob on the other. If a child was giggling or talking during church, the tithing man tapped him on the head with the knob. If anyone (except a baby) fell asleep during church, the tithing man tickled them under the nose to wake them up. If an adult smiled or talked during church, they had to pay a fine! Glad our church isn't so strict. :-)

The picture above shows Alex holding her Tithing Man's pole. Hopefully, she won't bring it to church! :-)

Italy & DaVinci

The past few weeks, we've been studying Italy. I must be running out of steam, as we did a little less for this country, too. We did have another Treasure Chest about Leonardo DaVinci. From that kit, we built a model of Da Vinci's flyer.

And, we'd picked up a book that had a model of the Coliseum. We made it, too.
We've had fun studying countries, but we are going to take a break for November to study about Thanksgiving and then probably study Christmas Around the World in December.

Pollination

I adapted this from something I read on a Core Knowledge website about insects. We filled a conatainer with Cheetos, drew a bee on Alex's finger and then had her finger "visit" the flower looking for nectar. When she picked up her bee finger, "pollen" was on her finger! A great way to demonstate pollination!

Egypt, cont.

We didn't do near as much on Egypt as I had planned. We did go to the exhibit at HMNS. The 3D movie was great, but we kind of sped through the actual exhibit.

The first photo is of Alex stamping hieroglyphics on papyrus. The second photo is Alex with a temple model we built. And the last photo is Alex as we were playing the Egyptian game, Senet. All of these items were from a Treasure Chest kit (it's available at Rainbow Resource, although we got it at a discount bookstore).

Italian Festival

In October, we went to an Italian Festival. We had already eaten lunch so didn't try any of the main dishes, but we did try Italian doughnuts. They came coated in either powdered sugar (Alex's favorite) or cinnamon sugar.

We also watched dancers doing Italian dances - especially tarantella's. A few weeks later, we were studying arachinds and read that the tarantella dances were started because of a ban on dancing! They created the dances saying they were "sweating out the poison from tarantulas." We even went on stage and danced a little! The photos didn't turn out very well because of the lighting. This photos is actually just two of the dancers having fun before the show. They wore tambourines tied to their belts.

The Sedgwick County Zoo

While we were in Kansas, we also visited the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita. This was my first time there, although Alex had been there before. It was beautiful with lots of shade. We spent a lot of time watching the swans. One of them would "bark" at Alex if she hadn't fed her in a while. There was also a fish who liked to steal the food by popping out of a pipe.