Weekly Wrap-up: Week 7 - The One With Exploration

CORE WORKS
Cate completed her studies on pronouns with English Grammar 101, and received a 88% on her final exam. The next section covers verbs. With renewed vigor, she wrote, polished up and printed out another 5 paragraph essay this week on medieval music. Eventually I would like to her feel comfortable and confident enough to whip out an essay in 1-2 school days. She's reading Little Women (Alcott) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain). (She started Huckleberry when her other book went MIA. She found it under a comforter the next day...)

She's completed 71% of pre-algebra on Khan Academy.

Sam motored on in his Grammar and Writing Handbook, reviewing compound and complex sentences, improving sentence structure in personal narratives, and correcting sentence fragments and run-ons. He wrote a "perfect paragraph" about attending a Sea Dogs games to practice his sentence writing skills (as well as capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and handwriting). He's reading The Great Brain (Fitzgerald).

He's completed 44% of math 4 on Khan Academy.

SCIENCE STUDIES

On Monday, Sam wrapped up Chapter 2 on the sun, and moved onto Mercury, a quick planet study. His study consisted of reading, a facts page and one modeling project with a notebook journal page. Our project was exploring the effects of meteors on Mercury, creating craters with rocks and flour, then making a planet model of Mercury with them.

Cate will finish up Module 3 on interpreting and analyzing scientific experiments on Monday.

Have I told you how much we enjoy our Apologia science kits from Rainbow Resource? Having the experiment supplies gathered and organized into baggies for us has been a blessing! I hesitated to purchase them because of the expense, but I'm glad I did.

SPELUNKING AND POTHOLING

Road trip! On Sunday, Tom and I took Cate and Sam to New Hampshire, through the White Mountain National Forest, and to Lost Valley Gorge and Boulder Caves. (Unfortunately our other kids had plans this weekend and couldn't join us.) Nothing like the fantastic foliage views along the Kancamagus Highway this time of year! Truly amazing!

BACK IN HISTORY
Cate studied medieval music (through week 23) this week with Easy Peasy, then wrote a 5 paragraph essay to summarize what she had learned.

I switched resources for Sam, and he watched "America the Story of Us: Rebels" and "How the States Got Their Shapes: East vs. West" as well as U.S. geography on Sheppardsoftware.

DAYS COMPLETED: CATE - 59 | SAM - 59

As always, special thanks to these bloggers for their weekly homeschool blog link-ups. Click on over to see what other homeschoolers are doing!

Happy Homeschooling!

Weekly Wrap-up: Week 4-5 (Days 42/44) - The One Where Autumn Returns

Autumn has returned to Maine. In just a few days time, we've gone from hot, humid high 80s to cool, comfortable 60s. Trees are starting to show their reds, oranges and yellows. Sweatshirts have been pulled out of the closets. Windows are cranked shut around dinnertime. Soon, flip flops will disappear. Soups are warming in the crockpot and cocoa is back in the cupboard. If only Autumn would last until Spring...

As you may have noticed, I haven't been keeping up with our weekly wrap-ups. We have been chugging along, learning new things, experiencing life, enjoying our time together.

Tom and I are getting in our last days of fishing in our little dingy. Soon, it'll be too chilly to head out for bass and perch. We've had a wonderful time together!

Sam has been discovering "Sun Science" with Apologia Astronomy Lesson 2. We have 2 more projects, modeling a solar eclipse and making a pinhole viewing box, and we'll be moving onto Mercury. But, in the meantime...

He melted (and burned!) chocolate by focusing the sun's rays with a magnifying glass (in the parking lot of the school while Cate was at concert band practice). 

And made a solar oven out of a pizza box, tin foil and plastic wrap. He baked a cheese burrito for lunch with chunky Southwestern salsa. It "only" took 45 minutes to melt the cheese on a 65 degree day.

Cate loves Chibi, a form of Japanese manga or anime, and has been printing out and coloring them from a website called Deviant Art. With some encouragement and You Tube videos, she's started to create her own Chibi this week (but isn't ready to share).

Who would have thought that after 4 months our supposed-to-be-indoor cat, Stripe, would return! Tom heard her one early evening yowling outside our garage. (Apparently, she was the culprit getting into the trash the last couple of days...) She dashed across the road into the woods, but came to me when I called her. She's in remarkably good shape with no fleas or ticks, but quite thin.

In the meantime at STEM, Jake had an unexpected day off from school yesterday and today. On Wednesday we were pelted with sheets and sheets of heavy rain, sometimes as much as 3 inches an hour. The school's basement flooded! Clean-up and assessment of damage was done yesterday and today.

As always, special thanks to these bloggers for their weekly homeschool blog link-ups. Click on over to see what other homeschoolers are doing!

Happy Homeschooling!

Explorers Blog Hop 3: Mountain of White

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there really is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. 

- John Rushkin

Winter has finally arrived in Maine, or rather the SNOW has. We've had bone-chilling cold and light "dustings of white powder", but the snow fell in gusty heaviness last Friday and Saturday, covering everything deeply. 

But the sapling totally embraced it, especially Balsam Fir. He's been (im)patiently waiting for some "real" snow to fall. And 26 inches of snow in 24 hours definitely counts as "real" snow, don't you think? So, they spent the week in and out of the snow, building forts and tunnels and flinging snow with shovels. And I've spent my time heating water for hot cocoa and hanging up soggy mittens, hats, snowpants, jackets, and socks. But it's all good!

  <a border="0" href="http://oursideofthemtn.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p263/Maine_iac_Mom/Ducks/GrassHop_zpsaf7a5be8.jpg" width="150"/></a>

Take a Hike: Acadia National Park - Summit Trail and Jordan Pond

One of our most favorite places to explore is Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. It's especially awesome in late fall when the tourist season is over, the days are crisp and the trails unpopulated. It's such a perfect time to get out and enjoy some nature!

So, despite the dark gray overcast skies with only rare glimpses of the sun, we drove to the park and meandered up the summit of Cadillac Mountain. Cadillac Mountain is 1532 feet high and the first place in the U.S. to see the sun from October 7th to March 6th. Pretty neat, huh? The mountain is composed of pale pink and gray granite and covered with evergreen forests, wild blueberries, and gnarled subalpine plants at the summit. A .3 mile easy trail encircles the summit and provides dizzying views of the ocean and Mount Desert Island.

See the seagull? It decided to have lunch with us! Even though we hopped into the van after a few minutes to warm up (because it was NIPPY on top and we weren't prepared with warmer jackets), it stayed around and watched us, hoping for scraps of, well, anything! (I have an NO FEED WILDLIFE rule though.)

After Cadillac Mountain, we meandered around the Park Loop Road and decided to stop at Jordan Pond and walk the 3.3 mile easy-to-moderate trail there. This path winds around Jordan Pond on a wooden boardwalk, through and over granite boulders, over a wooden bridge, and through the forest with views of the Bubbles. North Bubble is 872 feet high and South Bubble is 766. We can't wait to bring our kayaks here! Doesn't it look peaceful? 



So, we started left of the trailhead (at the lower parking lot) and went over a small stone bridge with clear water rushing under and then walked on the boardwalk through the swampy forest,  and finally "bouldered" (i.e. climbed) through the jumbled granite rocks. Do you have young kids? Such a perfect walk for kids! Varied, but not difficult terrain! We compared tree barks of young and old trees of the same type, found bracket fungi and other common New English mushrooms, and some cool, papery-looking lichen.

That bottom right photo - that's where we did our "bouldering". Believe it or not there's a trail that winds through those rocks! It requires a little motor planning and climbing and jumping, but totally doable and fun for kids to explore. I suppose most wouldn't really refer it it as "bouldering" because it's not that challenging, but that's how we like to refer to it.  And "bouldering" sounds more interesting than "climbing". ::wink::

After a brief break at "Beaver Bridge" for a snack of crackers and cheese and exploring, we walked along the groomed trail through the forest. This part of the trail is easier to wander along as it's on packed, level ground. But Hurricane Sandy brought down some birches and a large pine that we had to climb over and around. The pine's trunk was already half chewed through by a beaver and totally blocked the trail. We had hoped to see a beaver, but they mostly come out at dusk or night-time...and, well, my bunch can be a little loud talkative during hikes. We did see a squirrel in the trees though, and a lone black salamander in a small pool of water (who should be preparing for winter already).

As we wound back around to the trailhead, we noticed the changing light as the sun moved lower in the sky and then heavy, dark clouds moved in again as the winds picked up. Brrr! We walked over a stone bridge with the water bubbling through from a wheaten-colored marsh area, and then up the hill to the parking lot.

Where should we go next?!

Weekly Wrap-up: Session 1 Week 4

In Our Life This Week
Blue Spruce was away for additional job training this week, so I was on my own with the Saplings. It's always strange having a family member away! But you know us - we were "busy beavers" and the week flew by!

What's Cooking?
It's the Girl Scout Bake Sale Fundraiser tomorrow, so Sugar Maple and I whipped up some quick, easy sweet treats to bring to the sale. Looking for something yummy? How about some No Bake Chocolate-Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies? Or Peanut Butter Bars?

Homeschool Elementary

So, what's our fun way of reviewing our Botany? Why, we go on a hike of course! ::wink:: During our stroll near the lake, we discussed and found samples of Angiosperms and Gymnosperms, Vascular and Non-vascular plants, and Monocots and Dicots, and explained photosynthesis and chlorophyll to Balsam Fir while looking at fall foliage and saw several species of fungi. Then we found animal tracks along the water's edge and followed them. Later, we searched through our nature books to ID those tracks. And the rest of the week? Well, we dissected flowers, watched phototropism in our Plant Maze Box, measured the growth of bean seeds in light and non-light environments, and made a list of all the tree species in our yard (just because the kids were curious).

This week's handicraft project was Brown Paper Bag Autumn Trees. (You can find the instructions here.) But they didn't follow the instructions to the T. ::wink:: They created paper bag FORESTS, complete with logs, bushes, people, and birds. Our favorite resource this week! Are you doing any fun, creative fall crafts?

Sugar Maple read Children of the Lamp (PB Kerr) and Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson), and Balsam Fir continued on with Nate the Great and the Snowy Trail (Marjorie Weinman Sharmat) and The Lorax (Dr. Suess)

Sugar Maple

✔ English - Personal Narrative Writing, Using Time Words, Past Tense, Reading, Cursive, Spelling with Samson

✔ Math - Geometry (Line Segments/Points), Tally Marks, Word Problems, Money, Missing Number Problems

✔ Botany - Flower Dissection, Phototropism, Carnivorous Plants (Pitcher/ Venus Fly Trap/ Bladderwort/Sundew)

✔ Ancient History - Gilgamesh, Indus Valley Citadels

✔ Extras - Nature Hike, Lowe's Build and Grow, Soccer, Clarinet/Band, Girl Scouts Outdoor Day, 3D Art, ZooWhiz (computer), Spanish (computer)

Balsam Fir

✔ English - Personal Narrative Story (with I/me), Nouns, Sight Words with Samson, Oral Reading, Handwriting

✔ Math - Subtraction, Writing Equations, Logic Puzzles, Number Lines

✔ Botany - Flower Dissection, Phototropism, Carnivorous Plants (Pitcher/ Venus Fly Trap/ Bladderwort/Sundew)

✔ Ancient History - Gilgamesh, Indus Valley Citadels

✔ Extras - Nature Hike, Legos, Lowe's Build and Grow, Soccer, 3D Art, Baking (Frosted Brownes)

Homeschool High
So, White Pine continued on with his studies. I wish I could put something new and exciting here, but his days pretty much look the same: he piles his books and laptop on the sectional sofa beside him, puts ear-buds in his ears with music playing to block the noise from the rest of us, and he quietly and intently goes about his learning in his PJs until he gets ready for soccer in the afternoons. Very college-like! ::sniffle:: He's certainly growing up!

✔ English - Walden (Thoreau), The Further Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson (Defoe) Approach Paper, Grammar (Adjectives/Adverbs)

✔ Algebra - Multiplication/Division of Signed Numbers, Inverse Operations, Perimeter/Radius, Geometry (Lines/Segments/Area), Order of Operations

✔ Biology - Water Molecules, Water Properties, Acids/Bases, Carbohydrates, Carbon Compounds (Macromolecules/Lipids/Nucleic Acids/Proteins/Enzymes), Ecology

✔ World History - Africa

✔ Extras - Scout Mountain Hike, Corn Maze, Soccer, Scout Meeting

Ponderings

Have you ever seen a molting chicken? Poor things! Our hens are about 15-16 months old now...and starting to go through their first molts (after chick-hood). They'll lose all their old feathers and grow in new ones for the winter months. New feathers are better for keeping the chickens warm. We've got a coop full of flying feathers and grumpy girls! But most of them are still laying!

Something to Share

Well, that's a wrap from Our Side of the Mountain this week! Thanks for stopping by! Have a GREAT week!

Blog Hops 

Nature Studies: Eastern White Pine and Pine Cones

The Trees have been asking (and asking) about Nature Studies lately. Formal nature studies! We ALWAYS talk "nature" out on the trails, but they've been hankering for something a little more in-dept and hands-on with field guides. Not wanting to make our nature studies "schoolish" but at the same time meeting their learning desires, I decided to print-out and combine simple notebooking pages with outdoor exploration and hands-on activities. So, we're starting with our tree names! (I have no idea where we'll find MY tree name: Sweet Pepperbush! LOL)

Eastern White Pine and Pine Cones! The pine tree is our state tree and it's flower, the pine cone and tassel, is our state, well, flower. LOL These trees can grow up to 100 feet high and are plentiful in Maine forests and used for furniture making.

 No nature study is complete without some outside exploration, right? So, we headed out to compare young and old pine tree bark, and dead and living pine needles (leaves!).

 And then we gathered some closed and opened pine cones and a few bunches of needles and headed inside. Did you know that Eastern Pine trees have clusters of 5 pine needles? (It's easy to remember if you think that 5 needles can stand for W-H-I-T-E! LOL) Red pines have clusters for 2 needles. Anyway, the kids carefully took apart pine cones searching for seeds, and then decided to plant the seeds in pots.

Using our favorite field guides, the trees filled out notebooking pages.

Balsam Fir

Sugar Maple

White Pine

Up next: Sugar Maple...although the maples are looking a bit BARE this time of year! LOL