April 28th

 I feel like we managed to cover several subjects today.  A little of Science, a bit of Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, Art and Sports.  This art project was an attempt to work with shading.  The paints didn't co-operate as I had hoped they would but oh well.  First draw a picture, anything you want in the centre of the page, then use water colours in one colour to add varying degrees of shading around the image.  Then fill in the image with zentangle doodles. 

 And in math today we worked on fractions, decimals, and percentages and how they relate to each other.  Of course it didn't hurt to use junk food as a motivator.

 100 pieces of licorice (well 50 cut in half)

 What percentage of the licorice have been covered? 

 

And here's an art project that we did a couple of weeks ago but I forgot to post.  We took advantage of book stores giving away calenders which hadn't sold and cut the pictures into tiny strips, then we drew an animal silhouette.  This was a giraffe that didn't have enough room on the page for a longer neck.  Then simply glue the strips on.  I chose to do a tree which might have been a nice project for Fall since we were using lots of golden hues. 

See previous post about Water Surface Tension

Experiments with Water Tension

I thought it might be fun to take a look at water suface tension. We began by asking the basic question. What IS water surface tension? The most simple basic answer is that water contains properties that cause water molecules to want to stick together. They don't want to separate. Water usually has some sides that contain it but take a glass of water for example and the top is open. At the suface of the glass the water wants to stick together and forms almost what looks like an elastic, stretchy barrier. Much like a balloon. At some point those molecules will break apart and the water will spill over. We used a full glass of water and added paper clips one by one until the water suface tension broke. We were very surprised and amazed with how many we added. 307 regular sized paper clips, 4 large, 4 safety pins, and 4 small misc objects. The glass was more than half full of paper clips and yet the water tension did not break. We ran out of paper clips before we could answer our question. I should note that in the end I removed at least 3 teaspoons of water to return it to the glasses regular full position. Next we added water drops one at a time to the surface of a penny. It took 16 drops before the water tension broke. We could see how the drops clung to each other when placed near but not directly on each other. Of course we've all seen this little trick of nature but it's interesting to take a closer look at it. Then we searched Chris Hatfield, our Canadian astronaut on youtube and watched what happened when he wrung out a wet cloth in space (an Extreme Environment - our Science Unit this term). The results were shown above. The water tension appeared to be even stronger in space due to the lack of gravity which would cause the molucules in the water to pull away from each other.

Math and Language Arts

This thank you letter is a while coming but that's my fault.  He stayed with his aunt and uncle over part of Spring Break.  As always he had a fantastic time with the exception of having an ATV roll over him.  Note that he did NOT include gratuities for that part of the holiday.  'Taking good care of me' is a bit of an understatement since auntie probably saved his life by taking the brunt of the crash.  For that we ALL say THANK YOU!

 We're trying to come up with different ways to solidify the concept of comparing fractions.  I saw this idea on Pinteret.  I'm not sure if we played the way they directed but we just went for it.  Each player rolls 2 dice to come up with their fraction.  The smaller number is the numerator while the larger number is the denominator.  Then we used pictures to have a visual reference and then determined which was greater than and less than.

Then we also did a bit of an oral pop quiz.  He did great and had no trouble.  A couple of days ago I gave him a written math quiz covering fractions and back to prime and composite numbers and he didn't do so well.  Written = not a very accurate gauge on his knowledge.  Unfortunately the world works a lot with written evaluations.

 And writing is still a challenge.  If he was to speak and have me scribe he could go on and on but doing the whole process himself is a bit overwhelming.  We have been trying to do some writing exercises called 'blabber' where he just writes anything for 5 minutes without regard to grammar, spelling, etc... but that was losing it's usefulness.  Today I asked him to write a short paragraph and use some words I provided.  It seemed to work much better. 

Impromptu Experiment

Sometimes air likes to push things like a rocket on a string because the air in a balloon is all compressed and when the end gets opened and the air escapes through the end of the balloon and it makes itself fly in the opposite direction.

Extreme Environments and Sonar

In Science we're talking and learning about Extreme Environments. Today we're touching briefy on different technologies used to help us explore some of these extreme environments. Using Radar, Satellite and Sonar are just a few of those technologies. It's fun to see how technologies used for Extreme environments are also used for every day uses - and usually we use them without even making the connections between them.

Lately...

 We've been using this Pizza game to work more on our fractions.  It's got several different games.  We usually modify them a bit to suit us.  It's so nice to finally be able to get back outside a bit to do some 'lessons'. 

 Who?  What?  When?  Where?  Why?  homework assignment from school. 

Where in the World is Mckenzie?

We've recently begun a project which is taking us around the world.  After completing his globe we're now embarking on the next phase of the project which is exploring parts of the world.  We are following an old season of The Amazing Race, keeping track of where exactly they go and what they're doing.  Mckenzie is following along as though he is on the journey himself. 

 We've made a little passport book for him and once he completes one leg of his trip he searches out the flag for that country, draws and colours it as well as writes the names of the cities, towns or villages he visits.  Then we use google maps to see where exactly it is in the world and in relation to us back here in Canada.  We zoom in, check out the environment to see whether it's set in the mountains, desert, grassy plains, etc.  We try to find out more about the climate in relation to what we see and where it lies in proximity to the equator.  I won't go into full detail here on the blog, but I'll do a quick summary of where he went and what he did.

Also please note this little disclaimer *** the photos below are not ours.  We found them on google.  I don't know who took them, the odd one may be watermarked but I don't claim them as my own - I wish I could!**

On the first leg he travelled to Lima Peru.

 You can see where Lima Peru is, marked by the letter A.

 From Lima we travelled North to a city called Ancon and visited Playa Hermosa Beach, below.  We even slept on the beach!

 After Ancon we flew to a mountain city called Cusco which is 11,000 feet above sea level.  The air was very thin up there snd I felt light headed and my heart was beating fast but we drank a special tea to help us with the altitude sickness.  We didn't stay in town too long, but rather took a taxi about 22 miles to a rural village called Huambutio and took an exciting zip line ride that was 1400 feet high. 

 While in Haumbutio I had the chance to rope a lama and bring it to it's pen, it was pretty hard, it didn't like me because it was spitting on me and didn't listen.  We also travelled in the back of a truck to the local market where they sold so many different things, it was very colourful. 

 

 When we googled Cusco we could see the writing that was on the hillside, we also noticed a picture to the right of it but it didn't really make any sense - until we looked up Peru's flag.  Can you see it?  (goggle photo above shows a better shot even though it's upside down)

Hope you enjoy our travel journal.