Dodgeball & Swimming Wrap Up!

Last week the boy finished Dodgeball and done formal lessons for swimming. They still have their fun day in the pool this week :)

The parents were allowed to participate during the last Dodgeball class, the fathers had a sparkle in their eye going in and a sweaty stagger coming out LOL

Compressing the balls to try and take the boys heads off!

Winogradsky - Week 2

Here is a comparison/update of our Winogradsky column :)

Day 1

Week 1

Week 2
Looks a lot more granular this week. The black line from the week before has been absorbed by the looks of things!

Long Weekend Fun

We had a great May long weekend!

Track & Field

We joined some homeschoolers this afternoon for a Track and Field day. The focus for the day was to beat your personal best, not the other children participating. I like that they can try and better themselves without the need for peer comparison. It took a bit to explain that to the younger ones and I'm not sure they all got that but everyone had fun!

The children took part in archery, races, shot put, sit ups, push ups, rope jumping, and running long jump. We had other things to do as well but ran out of time :) Here are some pictures of the day!

Winogradsky - Week 1

Here is the Winogradsky Column after a week, pretty cool changes already!

Week 1 - We are now seeing more than the initial muck and water layer. You can now see various layers, the most pronounced being the dark line. The kids are pretty pumped!

Day One - Very mucky initially, did settle so there was a water layer and the muck layer LOL

Zoo Day!

We went over to our big zoo Wednesday and really enjoyed ourselves. This was the first year without a stroller and the freedom was AWESOME LOL It can be so challenging going through with extra baggage but Little Miss had her comfy shoes on and blazed her own trail!

The highlight for the children was a 2 year old Gorilla, such a funny little guy! Here are just a few pictures we took on the day:

Dancing and Winogradsky Columns!

Last week the girl had her dance class and we were able to watch. She has really taken to it this time around. It always amazes me how a little time and development changes their likes and dislikes. I think we'll sign her up for a dance school in the fall.

We also completed Winogradsky Columns this past Monday. A Winogradsky Column is is a simple device for culturing a large diversity of microorganisms (Wiki). Here is a link for the how to: http://themagnifyingglass.typepad.com/weblog/2011/01/make-along-biosphere.html

Materials

Water collected from the same area the soil was collected from

Soil from the forest

Newspaper, egg yolk and ground up chalk to feed the microbes present in the soil and water.

Our Winogradsky Columns :)

Mystery Class Wrap-up

We finished our Mystery Class program and have made our guesses for the mystery locations. Truth be told I tried to guess them and got 4 that matched Carol and Alex's answers LOL But I tried dang it!

Our guesses:

1) Perth, Western Australia, Australia
2) Guatemala City, Guatemala, Central America
3) Sanae IV Station, Vesleskarvet, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
4) Hong Kong, People's Republic of China, Asia
5) Mafikeng, North-West Province of South Africa, Africa
6) Jerusalem, Israel, Asia
7) Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America
8) Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
9) Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo, Africa
10) Daejeon, South Korea, Asia

We had a little pot luck featuring some food from the different locations. It was a really great project :)

Wrap up activities

FOOOOOOOD!

YUMMMY

Slaving over dollies while the older kiddos do their wrap up activities