Week 3 Wrap up

We started our school year early for weeks just like this one.  Schnickelfritz's grandparents are moving to town and the house needed a lot of work.  The previous owners had a cat and a very different taste in decor so we were scrubbing down walls, scraping off wallpaper, vacuuming and re-vacuuming and more.  We managed to cover the essentials--Bible, reading, writing and math, but the rest of the time was used to develop Fritz's servant heart.  He was enthusiastic enough about wanting to help but he wanted the "glamor" jobs if you can call them that--painting and scraping wallpaper.  When he was assigned to picking up the glue-backed wallpaper scraps he balked at the job.   It was hard to know where to draw the line between forcing him to do the assigned task (and listening to his whining and complaining) or just letting him go off and play so at least we had some peace while we stripped wallpaper.  He did take to the vacuum cleaner, granted it is easier with no furniture in your way.  I'll have to remember that at our own house.

We complete Lesson 12 in Math U See Delta.  Fritz has no problems with dividing by 7 or 8.  We're up to Millard Fillmore on our Royal Rangers project on American Presidents.  I found a Scholastic poster of official presidential portraits that we've cut up and rather than writing their home states we've cut the shapes out using the 50 States cartridge on the Cricut.  I made a customized worksheet using Graphic Toolbox and StartWrite lined paper so Fritz can record terms of office, vice presidents, political parties, and two significant facts or events from each president's administration.

I'm collaborating with another homeschool mom in our town to set up our Land Animals of the Sixth Day science experiements.  I hosted the first one, to test the effect of camoflauge in being able to elude preditors.  Our three kids played the part of Skittles preditors.  We scrunched up yellow, orange and green construction paper and tossed them in a box with 42 Skittles of each color.  The kids had 2 minutes to seek and seize the Skittles but they were doing such a good job I cut the time to 90 seconds.  At the end we were suppose to count the Skittles found and with luck prove that it was easier to find the red and purple skittles because they weren't camoflaged to match their surroundings.  Unfortunately, one Skittle predator was a tad too enthusiastic in her role and began loading her mouth with Skittles as fast as she found them.  Once we caught her in the act we tried to establish the color and quantity that had been devoured.  At the end of our experiment we had found all but 4 purple candies but the color with the most still hidden was red.   I was trying to think on my feet and ended up saying that in real life experiments are done over and over to make sure results are consistent.  We also discussed other ways animals can avoid being eaten--like being very fast or hiding underground.