Week In Review 8/29/10

Boy have we had a week.  It's been a long time since I've had a fatigue-induced mental breakdown, but I suppose I was due.

Monday we took the kids to the park for one last summer picnic.  We were sick of sandwiches, so we brought Dominos pizza.  That stuff is good.

We played at the park and had a good ol' time.  Then it was home and bed, and our first day of homeschool.

It was hard, people.  Hard.  So much time, so little cooperation from the littles who were not used to being ignored for so long...  Cameron and Ethan were amazing though.  They did beautifully.  

We did our basics; math, reading, (both individual and group), language arts, spelling, penmanship, ...uh...did I get it all?  I don't know.  And then there was our science unit for the week:  insects.  

I jest not - my kids are now bug experts.  We watched DVDs on bugs, or arthropods if you will, we built a bug trap (as depicted below), made construction paper insects and labeled all their parts, sculpted models of insects and spiders out of salt dough and then baked and painted them...  The kids rocked it out.  And when they took their final tests on the unit, they each scored 100% without any help from me.  I was so proud.  

They both know that spiders are not insects, but are members of the arachnid family which is a sub-group of the arthropod species.  They also know that pill bugs and crabs are both crustaceans.  (Hello!  I didn't know that!  Well, I knew that about crabs, but not pill bugs.)  

If you asked them what three characteristics are true of all insects, they could tell you that they are all invertebrates, they all have six legs, and all true insects will have a head, thorax, and abdomen.  Then they could point out those parts to you and tell you how to spell them.

I have no idea how long it will take them to forget all this stuff, but who cares?  We had success on our first week!  Of course, there are a lot of things we need to tweak and perfect, but we'll get there.

Here's the kids' trap.  They dug a hole, and placed four flat-ish rocks around it.  (Flat-ish is a word.)

Then they put a large yogurt tub in the hole, and filled dirt around it to make the top of the cup flush with the earth.

 

Then they put a box on top to keep water out of it, and waited over night.

The next morning, they found that they had captured at least three spiders, eight beetles, several potato bugs (pill bugs to some of you), and one earwig, which was evidently killed by one of its cup mates.  It was hard to document all of this because all the insects and spiders were racing around the cup like crazy trying to stay away from each other and find a way out.  We took video of it, but I hate loading video on this thing, so you're out of luck.  (Or maybe count your blessings cause this post is already really long.)

The boys documented their findings...

...and sketched pictures of all the different kinds of insects they found.

And there you have it - a taste of our first week.  

And finally, Cameron's sunflowers are really super tall now.  He's an excellent gardener, and he didn't get that from me.

Have a happy week, everyone!