Easter style Math

 Although the 1st term in over for the centre, we've carried on with some work.  Today we matched fractions using plastic Easter eggs.  It was a good visual to see how 10/15 is the same and 2/3 or 2/4 is the same as 1/2  - for example. 

On our advent activity for the day it was to write a Christmas story so we used that to do some Language Arts.  He printed it first then typed it and self corrected.  It's pretty basic and could use a bit of embellishing. 
He also spent some time biking and finished up his last swim lesson.

He's been continuing his chapter reports for the book Stranded by Jeff Probst as well as continuing to research adaptability traits for a living thing in each of these categories: land, air, water.   A little bit of Math Whizz thrown in and I had him use his family tree project to see who was alive between 1920-1930, listing them chronologically.  We're taking a field trip on Friday and it will be interesting to make those family connections with the time period. 

For physical activity he's been busy with his paper route, swimming, and biking.  And he's continuing his 'fun' free reading with the 4th Percy Jackson book.  I swear he just started the 3rd. 

Family Tree Project

Mckenzie and I worked together on this family tree and finished it a while ago now but we hadn't put up pictures of the completed project.  Not only did he make the traditional family tree, he also used a world map to trace where 3 family lines came from up until him.  He used coloured string to do that and also wrote out the movements along the bottom of the map (not pictured). 

He then did profiles on certain family members.  Those with stars beside their names were profiled.  Above are a couple of those profiles.  They include stories, a 5 page short story from his great great grandma retelling her life beginning in Austria at the age of 4 throughout her life as a Canadian pioneer in the early 1900's, an interview with his grandpa who became a paraplegic while still a teenager and stories of his grandfather who was a paratrooper during the war, became a POW and managed to escape the firing squad. 

He feels a great deal of pride in this project and of course we couldn't have done it without help from family members sharing information and photos with us, especially his maternal grandpa who has done extensive genealogy work. 

We'll soon be taking a field trip to the Burnaby Village Museum which is set in the 1920's.  Today he began the task of finding out who in his family tree lived during that time period and how old they were between 1920-1930.  We'll keep that in mind when we visit the museum.  Although we've been there before, we'll be looking at it differently this time, and it will all be decorated up in Christmas glory.  Should be fun. 

Can You Tell What This Is?

What about now?

 Now?

 Sour Cream overtaken by millions of little micro-organisms to create mould. 

 Micro-organism:  meaning 'small' or 'tiny' .  A micro-organism is 'tiny life' that can only be seen through a microscope.  They can do everything that other organisms do.  They are made of cells, grow and develop, reproduce and respond to their environment. 

Most micro-organisms are helpful and can be found everywhere, the air we breathe, in the soil, the food we eat and even in our bodies.  However some are harmful - like this mould we're looking at. 

It's pretty interesting actually looking at it and not just being grossed out by it and tossing it in the garbage as fast as possible.  The appearance and texture of the mould in a tiny area is so vastly different, and that's just from looking at it through a magnifying glass, imagine how interesting it would be through a microscope. 

 While the mould just happened to be an accidental lesson our actual lesson for today was 'adaptations' of animals and how these adaptations and behaviours help them survive in the world. 
That is yet another highly interesting subject once you dive in and take a closer look.  Seeing how all things were created with such intricate skills and systems and the ability to all connect together with the world around them to work together for their survival. 

I've asked Mckenzie to pick one living thing from each of the following categories:  water, land, air.  He is working on learning what features/adaptations they have in order to benefit their survival.  I believe he's picked Komodo Dragon to start with. 

This might be a good place to pull out the Planet Earth DVD's.

Microscopes

 We've moved into the area of microscopes.  Here Mckenzie is testing what happens when you place a drop of water on a clear piece of tape.  The result:  magnification.  And the bigger the drop, the more magnified the image is.  We talked about what a microscope is, how it's benefited our society, what it's used for, and 3 different kinds; simple, compound and electron. 

Today on his own he made his own version of a compound microscope by taping together 3 magnifying glasses.  It worked.  Everything in it was magnified even more than usual. 

And on a different note, the flowers, celery and coloured water experiment didn't yield too much.  The celery changed a little bit, the tips and/or leaves turned colours on the edges but not really along the stem.  And the daisies showed no difference at all.  At least not with roughly 36 hours.  I expect it would take much longer than we were willing to wait.  I needed my cups and counter space back. 

Plant Kingdom

 As we try to finish up our Unit on The Diversity of Life before the New Year we took a look at the plant kingdom.  We made note of several important details about the plant kingdom and then decided to do an impromptu experiment to see how plants would react when placed in coloured water for 24 hours.  We'll find out tomorrow.  I hope it works as planned.  The science text book just suggests using celery but we decided to also use white daisies.