Midweek

photo: NASA

RUSSIAN ROCKET: This morning, the Soyuz TMA-20 rocket successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The three on board are Commander Dmitry Kondratyev of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Cady Coleman of the U.S. and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli. They're headed to the International Space Station and should dock on Friday. Go Soyuz!

WAY UP YONDER: The kids watched a BrainPOP Jr. video on "Arctic Habitat" this morning.
Afterward, they did a related activity about the Arctic food chain. CJ grimaced upon seeing it, as it required drawing pictures, which doesn't thrill him. And truth be told, I almost didn't give them the assignment as I know CJ doesn't really like drawing. BUT I did sock it to them because the only way to get better at something is to keep doing it, and really once he gets started drawing, he doesn't seem to mind so much.
After that, I was ready to move on to some other work, but the kids were itching to get back to BrainPop, so I let them have their way. In checking my Internet history, it looks like they learned about fossils, frogs, heat, light, magnets, simple machines, and sinking vs. floating. Good for them!

LUNCHEON: We went to science class an hour early today to participate in our first "Pizza Wednesday." It takes place at the Home Education Exchange once a month. The kids thought it was pretty cool to get to eat pizza in a school library. They each devoured their slices right down. After he finished (quickly!) I asked CJ if maybe he'd like some salad. I'm glad I asked. He said yes, and for the first time ever, he ate a full helping's worth (instead of a meager little leaf that he's compelled to eat, per usual). Excellent! PENCIL PUZZLES: In science class today, Annabelle sat across the classroom, rather than right next to CJ. I think that's probably good for both of them. Bee wants to hang with some girls and CJ needs to get used to cuing off the instructor rather than off Annabelle.

We started with something easier - balancing a cardboard cutout of a pencil on a Popsicle stick. A counterweight way down low made it easy. Next up was the real deal - a genuine No. 2 pencil. That wasn't so easy to balance on its tip. the challenge was to balance a pencil on its graphite tip on a Popsicle stick. Sounds impossible, doesn't it? And I believe it would have been, if not for the aide of a long, pliable length of wire and a counterweight (clothes pin).

The kids were just given the tools and no specifics about how to "Make it so," to borrow a line from Captain Picard. That's right - they'd have to draw upon the knowledge they'd gained about balancing and stability in the weeks previous and use their brains!!

I'll be darned if (way across the classroom from me) Miss Annabelle was the very first one to figure out how to make it work. She wrapped one end of the wire around the pencil near its tip, and pulled down with the remaining length of wire and hung a clothespin from it. Nice work! Next, we had to balance the pencil with two counterweights.

BUNNY BONUS!: Imagine the kids' delight when they spied five 6-week old bunnies in a kennel outside the school's office today. A homeschooling family had brought them in to let other homeschoolers meet them. The kids each got to sit and hold one. They were warm and fuzzy and of course Annabelle wanted to take one home.

FUN AND GAMES: The kids spent a good amount of time late afternoon and evening on CoolMath-Games.com, where they played math and thinking games galore.

They enjoyed Bloons Tower Defense (strategy skills), Feed Fribbit Addition (flash card addition like problems), Gluey (anticipating, predicting and figuring out which configurations would earn the most points, Construction Fall (laws of physics) and Civiballs, which was great for learning more about the laws of physics. I caught Christian playing it after the kids had moved on.