The Baker's Little Apprentices

Pony Princess and Smallville have always shown an keen interest in cooking. They are always quick to help out in the kitchen. They especially love baking task. Rather its kneading bread dough or mixing muffins you can find the littles afoot. 

Here they are helping me make burger buns. 

Dad is our in house master baker. His specialities are pizza and pies. Here he is showing the children how to roll and prepare a pie crust our holiday sweet potato pies. 

Hour of Code @ the Apple Store

Last night the children got the opportunity to participate in the global movement to expose students to computer science called Hour of Code. This particular Hour of Code event was held at our local Apple Store at the mall. They go to use an Ipad Mini provided by the Apple Store along with a set of earphones that they got to keep as a parting gift. 

The Apple Store employees went around assisting the children in completing a logic puzzle based app designed to familiarize them with the concept of coding with Java Script, The game is available for free on Code.org. It had an Angry Bird theme which the kids got a kick out of. One of the facilitators also told me about another cool free resource site that goes further into depth with coding and that is Code Cademy.  The Hour of Code events are free. As of today 73,678,242 students have participated in an Hour of Code. 

Atlanta Cares STEM Fest 2014

This past weekend Mecca the Great and I had the opportunity to attend the annual Atlanta Cares Mentoring Moments STEM Fest founded by Susan Taylor of Essence Magazine. It was held at the Georgia Tech student center. The event was free. Its purpose was to encourage an underserved community in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. 

They opened the event with a grand performance from the all woman African drum ensemble Giwayen Mata.  They did a wonderful welcoming song and dance from West Africa. 

After that they had opening remarks from the sponsors and organizer Brenda Coleman. 

Then the children broke off into groups to attend there workshops. They had several tracks that the students had pre chosen. Mecca the Great chose the Medical Careers tract. There were other choices like engineering and such. I peek into one workshop room that had a presenter set up with 3D printers. It was awesome. 

The first workshop was from a professor who teaches at a nursing school. She did a hands on lab on the respiratory system. She did a powerpoint presentation to discuss the anatomy and physiology of the lungs. She also touched on common health related issues in the lungs like tuberculosis and emphysema. 

She gave them a quick quiz to see who could remember the anatomy of the lungs from the powerpoint. Mecca the Great did pretty good too. We are studying human anatomy and physiology this year but we have not done the respiratory system yet so this was a head start. I am glad she got a preview of it. 

Here are some of her nursing student volunteers demonstrating how much tar is in the lungs of a person who smokes a pack a day after a year. Its was ugly. 

The cool experiment they did was on lung capacity. Mecca the Great got to help with this one. She was quick to volunteer too. I was happy to see her get on out there. 

 The next workshop was on chemistry careers. I did not get a chance to sit in on this one because they had parent workshops going on as well. I went in to get some great information on other S.T.E.M opportunities here in my local area. But I did manage to get a shot of her in the lab coat and goggles looking like a professional scientist. I did find out later on that she was working on a group experiment with the other students. As a homeschool mom I was really appreciative of the opportunity for her to collaborate with her peers. 

The final workshop of the was a sweet treat from the CDC(Center for Disease Control). The students got to hear about all of the various career opportunities available at the CDC. I mean things that one may not have considered. They spoke about how you could contribute to an organization such as theirs as a graphic designer, IT,public relation, educator, curator, interpreter, etc...  

The students got an opportunity to try on a hazmat suit. The presenter was a microbiologist who specifically deals with white powder events or basically bioterrorist threats. She is the one that test things like anthrax and whatnot. Her presentation on this day though was on the hot button topic of ebola. She really thoroughly explained it to the students and the adults sitting in. 

At the end of the presentation on ebola she asked for volunteers for a hands on experiment on how germs are spread. They had the students put on gloves and they were covered with some sort of powder They then shook hands with the one who did not have powder on there gloves. When they turned on the black light you could see the transference of the "germs". 

I cannot wait till next years event. I will definitely take Kinetic Kid along with me next time. 

Human Anatomy Unit Study: Skeletal System

We just wrapped up a unit on the human skeletal system. For Mecca the Great and Kinetic Kid it was there second time cycling through the skeletal system. I taught life science in a homeschool co-op 3yrs ago and we did life science(insects, human body, animals, plants). Pony Princess is just like her big brother Kinetic Kid. She is really into science especially the gory things. My little Smallville was able to identify the bones very well for his age. He even learned the different types of bone and that our blood is made inside the bone. He really enjoyed this unit. Mecca the Great went into the greatest details on this one with the vocabulary and learning more bones than the others. They are moving onto the muscular system next. Here is a list of the things we used for this unit:

Booklist

• Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology Fourth Edition( Chapter 6 The Skeletal System)
• The Skeleton Inside You (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)(library) 
• The Kingfisher First Human Body Encyclopedia (Kingfisher First Reference)(library)
• The Body Book: Easy-to-Make Hands-on Models That Teach( This book had information as well as reproducible printouts that we used to make our own skeletal system poster)
• Human Anatomy Coloring Book (Dover Children's Science Books)

Projects

Pasta Skeleton Project(Pinterest)

Experiments
(This experiment came from the DVD we checked out from the library)

Busy Body Experiment
What happens when minerals are take from your bones?
What we used:
2 chicken bones(from cooked chicken)
2 jars
water
vinegar
tape and label for jars
pencil
science journal
What we did:
Place each chicken bone in its own jar. Cover one bone with water and the other with vinegar. Leave them to sit for at least 4 days. You can check back periodically and notate any changes in your science journal. 
Results
What should happen is the one is the vinegar will demineralize and become flexible and the one in water will stay firm and rigid.

Worksheets/ Printables
Label Human Skeleton 

Media/ Websites
Human Body in Action Skeletal & Muscular System DVD( library)
Make Me Genius The Skeletal System
Bozeman Science Skeletal System 

What We're Reading: Don Quixote

About 3 weeks ago we started reading Don Quixote. I have to tell you it was a long slow read for my oldest when we started out. I know its more difficult because we are reading the unabridged version and I did not have to read that personally till senior year of high school in AP. But usually she does just fine with whatever difficulty level of literature we throw at her. She was able to narrate with ease. She recalled many details. I am so happy we lined our history study to the literature list cause she was so excited when they made mention to the Moors in Spain and when one character was referred to as a Castilian and she knew where he was from. You should have seen to look on her face when she was able to make the historical connections to the time period in this classic fiction novel. Because she was not able to get through the book as quickly as she would have wanted we switched from reading the printed copy to the audio version for free on Librivox. Here is Part I and Part II if you are interested.  She listened to it on her tablet with her new pink head phones that Granddad brought her. I am not worried if something did go over her head this time because we are using a classical model. I know we will cycle back around to it again for high school. By then we would have read Adler's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (A Touchstone book)  and will dig as deep as we can go.

With the rest of the children we read from the abridge version Don Quixote (Oxford Illustrated Classics Series) . They loved it. Of course they brought up that they already knew who Don Quixote was cause they saw him on Veggie Tales: Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler. Boy were they set straight when they found out that Veggie Tales version wasn't as accurate as they would have hope. But this is just one of the greatest reasons why I love sharing the classics with my children. There are references to classic stories all around them in the media they consume and its great to be able to make the connections. It really does bring them into the greater conversation.

What We're Reading:The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

About four weeks back the children and I read from The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. The book is an anthology of classic children's tales. Some of them we were very familiar with and others we had never heard of. We ended up reading The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard and Puss in Boots. Now these are not the watered down Disney type tales you might be thinking of when you hear these titles. They are the real deal unabridged unedited versions. Some of the endings were quite gruesome. Keep that in mind if you want to give this book a try and you have a child that is sensitive to things like that. Beware! But even with the surprises in the story line the children truly enjoyed this one.

I used this a narration exercise. I would read aloud the stories to the younger two and then they would practice orally narrating the story back to me. They are new to narration and I find that short stories like fairy tales, myth, legends, and fables are the easiest to start out on.They did a coloring sheet after they narrated the story and glued it into there composition notebook.  Kinetic Kid(7yr old) read the stories aloud to me cause he needs some extra practice reading aloud and then he did an oral narration and then I had him write his narration down in his notebook. He got to color a page as well. The first written narration he did was like pulling teeth but by the time we got to last story we read which was Bluebeard he was literally running out of room on the page. I was so proud. Mecca the Great(10yr old) read the story independently and did a written narration in her notebook which she read aloud to me after she was done. She is blooming into a very good writer. Now the thing with her is that she gives every single detail when she writes. Which I guess is not a bad thing cause when she starts to edit more she will having something to work with when she starts to widdle stuff down a bit.

When we read Little Red Riding Hood I also too the opportunity to read to them Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story From China by Ed Young. We did a venn diagram comparison chart for there notebooks on the two stories. We also observed that all  the stories seemed to have a main female character that was facing harm.

After we finished reading the stories for the week I hunted down movie versions of each story on Cable, Netflix, and Amazon Prime and we had a Friday Movie Fun Fest. It was awesome!

Here are the printables we used with this book:

The Sleeping Beauty 
Little Red Riding Hood
Lon Po Po Venn Diagram 
Puss in Boots
Bluebeard  ( This one is just an encyclopedia image that I printed out and let them color)

National Chemistry Day 2014!

A few weeks back I had the pleasure to attend a free event at the Fernbank Science Center  for National Chemistry Week. It was an awesome event. The theme was straight out of a Ronald Dahl book. It was Candy Chemistry. Every booth had a delicious treat involved. I really loved the opportunity to network with the various vendors and event sponsors. It was a great opportunity to find out about other community S.T.E.M events. My oldest was really excited when she saw her #1 college pick Spelman College there. They had some awesome ladies from the chemistry department helping out at the booth. So of course we took that as an opportunity to chat them up about there experiences on campus and the type of work they are involved with as a Spelman students. It was a good thing to because Mecca the Great was intending to major in biology and transferring to a school for nursing so she can become a nurse midwife. At the time we look into it Spelman they didn't offer nursing. But the ladies at the event informed us that Spelman has now partnered with Emory University and are now offering nursing as a major. She also told us about the scholarship funds available to students who dual major in a technological field. The ladies also gave her tips on how to stand out as an applicant when its time for her apply. They gave us great advice and insight and it was just more affirmation that Spelman should remain at the top of her list. 

One of the booths had a guessing game where you had to guess the mass of the amount of M&M's in a jar. They gave us a mathematical equation that they showed us how to work to come to an answer. It was fun and of course they got a fun size bag of M&M's to walk away with as a reward. There was an experiment on density where they got to make a rainbow in a test tube using sugar water with food coloring. Of course they had some experiments that involved Pop Rocks and Soda. Now that was a trip down memory lane for me and it was a totally new experience for the kids because they had never even heard of Pop Rocks. Talk about feeling old. They also got to build a molecule with tooth picks and spice drops. I laughed when I saw it cause we did that experiment last year during a chemistry unit study. I like when I go out and see some of the stuff that we do at home is on track with what others in the education community find appropriate for that age. I have actually gotten a lot of great ideas for lesson plans from attending my local community S.T.E.M events. There are usually some great take home pamphlets and worksheets at the booths. I left this particular event with a  candy chemistry activity booklet that we used for extension exercises later in the week. Now the highlight of the day for all the kids was of course the cotton candy machine. Talk about a sticky blue mess. There is nothing more scientifically exciting than spun sugar.

Our Extracurriculars for the Year!

Unlike previous years I decided to really go bare bones with being out the house. With 5 children and the price of gas these days I just really wanted to limit the amount of time I spend driving around town. So we are down to 2 outing days per week. I try and double up on those days with grocery hauls and library runs as well. This year I have Kinetic Kid and Pony Princess in a Jr. FLL Team. If you are not familiar with FLL or First Lego League that basically means my kids are on a Lego
competition team. Our team is 100% homeschool kids so our meetup days are all age friendly cause the coach knows we are with all our kids all day. So my oldest is a Team Helper and my youngest two get to play with duplos on the floor while the other two work with their teams getting ready for there first competition project. So far its been a great experience. They really love it. And who knew my little Pony Princess would love Lego as much as her big brother Kinetic Kid. They have been learning about incline planes, gears, levers, pulleys and whatnot without me having to create a Physics lesson.

We also attend a homeschool craft hour at our local public library. Our children's librarian is totally homeschool friendly and she arranges a creative and fun craft hour every week for us. She takes on some really messy projects to. I mean thank God for people like her cause one the main reasons why we always failed to fit arts and crafts into our day is cause its just way to much to clean up after.

I know other families do way more activities than us. And most will have an individual activity for each child. But that is something that would have us burning the the candle at booth ends. I also prefer activities in which all or more than one of the children can participate in. Last year we all did Tae Kwon Do as a family. It went great. It was a perfect opportunity for my hubby to get a chance to participate in our homeschooling. With all his hard work he doesn't always have the energy to come home and do any help with the bookwork but something like being able to participate in the childrens extracurriculars is a true blessing.

This year Mecca the Great and Kinetic Kid also get to participate in a science club and a book club at our local public library as well once a month. The science club has brought in various experts in their fields. They have had a member  of the Atlanta Audubon  Society come out and do a presentation on birds. Last week they had a member of Georgia's Mineral Society bring various samples and did a presentation on Gold in Georgia. We actually have a few gold mines up in Dahlonega, GA. Hopefully  we will get the opportunity to pan up there someday.The book club has been selecting books from the Newberry Award list. They have done some very awesome stories so far. They have read Bridge to Terabithia, The One and Only Ivan, and One Crazy Summer. I have really been taking full advantage of what my tax dollars have to offer.

Maker Faire Atlanta 2014

At the beginning of this October we had the privilege of attending the annual Maker Faire Atlanta .

What is a Makers Faire you might be asking yourself. Well its an event to celebrate artist, engineering, science, and all sorts of DIY'ers. This is the place for children of ALL AGES to show off their creativity and bring it to the public in a street festival format. Needless to say my children with all there love for most things S.T.E.M/ S.T.E.A.M were amongst their tribe. We had a ball seeing the inventions and innovations of our regional community. Look at Kinetic Kid with his head under the huge paper mache Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

We had the opportunity to test out a bicycle that had a motor attached to the back wheel that was able to power a bubble blowing machine. It really got my children's minds turning when they saw this invention. They were thinking of all kinds of ways they could add onto this concept. They mentioned to the creator that he should try selling it as a product that could power a charger to charge things like cell phones and ipods that people like to carry to listen to music when riding there bike.

 One thing I notice about this particular community is that my children fit right in without any age discrimination. They have experienced that sort of thing in the past when they are out in the community and they have questions that are unexpected from someone there age. Usually the adults unprepared for such a thought out and articulate response say something condescending or ignore them. But the scientific community is different. They always seem to be open to anyone who wants to "talk shop". 

Of course Google was in the house. They had an awesome air rocket activity that the kids got to launch from there PVC pipe launch pad. Of course we took note of this one so we could recreate it later at home. Realistically we probably won't get around to trying it out till the summer. That is when we are usually able to fit in the fun stuff like this that might not necessarily fit into our current studies for the year. 

Now for me the coolest thing I seen was this hover craft that reminded me of "Lost in Space. All I kept thinking when I saw this thing was "Danger! Will Robinson!"