Journey to Excellence

As I sit here on Thursday night, I realize that WE DID IT! We had a full, successful week! I am exhausted but so excited! It has been magical! Dang! I realize that it's Monday and I still haven't gotten my wrap-up done for last week. Darn beautiful weather and desire to get ahead of the business of the week!! I still stand on the premise that our week last week was Magical! It was the kind of week I wish we could have every week. Dawson ~ 9th Grade I attribute a lot of our success last week to recognizing that we needed to camp out on a topic. We could have moved on to the next topic in science, but I felt like we could use one more week of reinforcing the concepts involved with Cells. And I am so glad we did! First, I found a great site called Quizlet that has previously prepared flashcards on all of the parts of the cells. Dawson practiced with the tools, played some games, and took a test. Then he did a plant cell virtual microscope lab , and we had some great discu...

Our study on The Human Body is coming to a close, and we are ending it with a study on Nutrition . It has come at the most perfect time. We have been having some "chunkey monkey" issues with our littlest one and using this opportunity to learn about healthy food choices will be very beneficial to her. Brynne and I have been discussing healthy food choices versus non-healthy food choices. We have discussed that eating treats are okay, as long as they do not tip the balance of the Food Pyramid. We read the book Showdown at the Food Pyramid , that demonstrated this perfectly in a cute story! We have referred back to it many times this weekend. Brynne made a large Food Pyramid by cutting out pictures of people exercising, and different foods from the food groups (notice that she put Goldfish crackers in the milk category because they have "cheese" in them). We used the USDA My Pyramid for Kids site to learn about the Food Pyramid. She played the game Blas...

Sorry this is going up so late! Last night my husband and I went on a date. And, today was just an absolutely beautiful day, and I spent it outdoors planting fall flowers, cleaning out my gardens, and doing some fall decorating. This past week, Brynne studied the state of Kansas. We have more activities to complete next week, so our official Kansas post will be next Saturday. For "homework" in Eli's public school second grade class, his teacher sends home Literacy Bags for them to work on for a week or two and complete. So far he has had bags on frogs, main ideas, and this week, U.S.A. There are many mapping activities in the bag, so we have really been soaking them all in. Brynne has caught the fever and extended the bag lessons into her regular school day. Here are the different things she did this week with U.S.A. maps: Eli and Brynne used a United States laminated map to answer questions. Eli has a fascination with China and wanted to know where it was l...

I have been participating in Teaching Blog Addict's Science Week this week. Today's Linky is for Science Freebies and Science Unit Sales . I didn't have anything to contribute, until Dawson was working on a plant cell microscope lab this morning. One of the questions posed was: Why doesn't an animal cell have a cell wall, when a plant cell does? Here is the technical answer from Wikipedia : The cell wall structure provides a lot of support and stabilizes the overall structure of the plant. Cells can't move around. In animals, multiple interactions between cells and molecules around them (referred to as the extracellular matrix) help to hold everything in place but animals have no real equivalent to the, relatively rigid, cell wall. Dawson had an example to share: He put water in a glass to represent the plant cell with cell wall. It was stable, and the cell did not move. And he dropped three drops of water on the kitchen counter, to represent animal cells...

On Mondays, while Dawson is at guitar lessons, Brynne and I like to do a nature study. This week we decided to venture out to the neighborhood across the street from ours. It's a fairly new subdivision, with a nature theme (the elementary school is built in the subdivision and it has a nature theme, too). There are gravel walking trails everywhere. We pulled off at the side of the road near the walking trail and our first stop, the cattails. Then we went on toward a tree that looked interesting. It had huge red thorns on the branches, about every 2-3 inches. It was the coolest looking thing. Looked kind of like the briar patch. We saw lots of neat wildflowers. But our greatest finds were cactuses! I had no idea that we had natural cacti near us! They were everywhere and so cool to see up close and personal and in their natural environment. It was a beautiful afternoon and we got to see lots of things we haven't ever seen before. We will definitely be hitting m...

For continued study on the basics of cells, I wanted Dawson to know the parts and their definitions. I came upon this website, Quizlet , where you can make your own flashcards. Then you can do different practice techniques and games with the flashcards. There are also some pre-made flashcards, like for Cells . Dawson was able to study the flashcards, then do practice activities called: Speller and Learn. Then he played a couple of games called: Scatter and Space Race. Finally he was able to Test on the terms. This is a great tool! I am linking up with Teaching Blog Addict's Science Week . Today's theme is Links to Science Videos and Fave Science Websites .

I am participating in Teaching Blog Addict's Science Week this week. Yesterday's topic was Favorite Science Books . It is no secret, with our Human Body study this past month, that the series of books by Pamela Hill Nettleton have been my favorite! They are so perfect for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade level, even kindergarten. Heck, I've even enjoyed them!