To begin with I read a chapter from Socrates Ancient Greek in Search of Truth while the picklets ate their bagels.
We then went onto a writing assignment. Since the picklets were given chore lists Thursday and gave less than a full effort their writing assignment Friday was to write each of their chores giving full explanations on how to do them. As if it were being explained to another person. Handwriting, instruction giving, grammar and thinking skills are all required for this activity. I then had them write sorry notes to their dad about the chores.
The picklets then worked on a Sudoku from here. I really like these puzzles. I usually play right along to see if I can figure them out too.
Science was next. We worked on three experiments from 203 Icy, Freezing, Frosty, Cool and Wild Experiments by Janice VanCleave. I love Janice VanCleave books.
The first one we did was called Slow Thinking. We were trying to trick our brains. We wrote the names of colors in different colored inks on one page and the names of animals in different colored inks on another pages. We then timed to see how long it took to read the words. Ideally reading the animals should have been faster than reading the colors. Not with my crew. It took them less time to read the animals. Go figure. But they understand that colors and words come from two different parts of the brain and it would take some people longer to differentiate the two.
The next experiment was about mixtures. The picklets took food coloring and put 1 drop of each color onto the middle of waxed paper and mixed it together with a toothpick.
Then with a toothpick wrote their names on a paper with each color and the mixture.
They learned that they made a mixture with the 4 colors of food coloring and that a mixture is a physical combination.
We then took that mixture and separated it. We practiced our chromatography skills with the ink, coffee filters and water. 30 minutes later the picklets learned what colors is the least attracted to the paper and what color is the most attracted. Blue was the least attracted as it bled the farthest and red had the greatest attraction as it went a short distance.
While we ate lunch (and after) we watched The Last Lecture. It was a bit long for Sweet but it really held the boys attention. I know Chip learned a bit about personality and the kind of person he wants to be. He just told me, "You know he's right. If you make learning fun kids will learn."
The kiddos then went outside and ran around for a few minutes. When they got back in I had them start their childhood dreams list, if they have any dreams. Chip sat right down and started on his. We talked about whether or not they could paint their walls as Randy Pausch did. The answer? Absolutely! More to come on that later.
I took out the Skittles and M&M's for some math practice. They were each given a sheet from Candy Math to do some cipherin'. Chip got a hand full of each. He had to count how much candy he had and then multiply, divide and find fractions for the lot and each different color. Dill was given 17 pieces and 2 die. He had to roll 1 die and multiply and divide with the other. Sweet had estimating practice and then multiplied the different colors. They thought they were set to eat after that. They were wrong.
All the candy was put on one plate, I sat in a chair and the picklets sat in front of me. The came the multiplication practice. The first to answer got a piece of candy thrown at them. We went through the whole multiplication table up to 13 and then started on fractions. What a fun way to do math!
We ended the day with another 3 chapters of Socrates and then a few games of 4 square. Cool got to the building about 5:00 and we went to the library. Since the flood our selection of books has been pretty bad. We checked out a few books and a movie on astronomy. We were hungry by that time and decided to go to Subway.
I think we accomplished alot, learned alot and had a good day.
copyright 2009 Wicked Pickles-Homefront Lines
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