Refreshed Thinking about Homeschooling Half Way Through the Year: Part 1

I had the opportunity to attend a teacher's conference in Birmingham last weekend with my buddies from my previous school. We had a great time catching up on life and sharing ideas for our classrooms. It was alot of fun. I truly do love events like this where I get to be a student and learn from peers and teachers.

The conference impacted me in many ways:

1. I have slacked off on doing some things in my home classroom that I saw as important when I began. Things like hands on experiments and art projects. These really do stick with the kids and make learning meaningful. Just sitting in front of worksheets is not gonna get it.

2. I need to always be a learner. When I cease to learn, I cease to be a good teacher.

3. I need to give them my undivided attention during school hours. Sometimes I am so distracted with other things that I do not give them my undivided attention.

4. Sometimes kids need to learn by doing things like playing games.

So, I revamped our school schedule a little.

On Tuesdays and Thursday we have Spanish.

On Wednesday we have ART.

On Thursday we have Science Experiment and Math Games.

These math games will enforce what we are already learning or they will just be fun thinking math games. We are studying astronomy in science which does not lend itself to experiments although there are some in the book, but our experiments on Thursday will be completely random tidbits of exploration and discovery. We will be using the scientific method to record information as we investigate. I have found a great website for finding experiments and the theory and explanation behind each one. http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/ There is much for sale on this website but there is a section devoted to science experiments and there are tons and tons of them with explanations for all ages for FREE. I am loving it!!! We did our first one today and had a blast. Andrew was cheering--this is right up his alley! And another thing--science needs to be hands on and messy, and so that is exactly what we are going to be.

One more thing that we have changed--we moved math to lunch time when Joey gets home. Andrew's new math teacher is DADDY! These two just think alike and so we felt like Joey might be a better teacher for math. Plus, Joey gets in on the action as well. I will still work with Alora for math.

So for our first experiment-- The living lava lamp! We poured oil into a clear cup, then added water. The water sinks because it is more dense and the oil rises to the top. They do not mix because, basically the large oil molecules tend to clump together. An oil molecule does not hydrogen bond with a water molecule, and an oil molecule's dispersion attraction to a water molecule is weak compared tothe oil-oil attraction. So, the water stays separate from the oil. We then added dots of food coloring to the oil and the food coloring does not mix. It looks really cool. Finally we added alka seltzer to the cup and it released carbon dioxide making a fabulous bubbling mixture. Voila! a lava lamp!