May and June

 This kid has torn through all the Rick Riordan books multiple times.  I think he's probably on the 3rd or 4th time for each book.  They are mangled messes, torn and dog eared.  From the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep he's reading.  The only problem is that he has become so accustomed to this particular writing style that it has sometimes been difficult to transition to a different style.  But the books shown below haven't been hard.  He's whipped through them like nothing.  They're the 2nd and 3rd in a series.

 We thought we'd bring Ancient Rome (a topic he's studied in other areas, and is still interested in) and combine it with our Science unit about Rocks and how minerals/rocks are sometimes formed.  So naturally that led us to volcanoes and the notorious eruption in 79 AD in Pompeii.  We've used books and DVD's to help with that.

 This book, Ghosts of Vesuvius gives some great first hand descriptions of the eruptions as told by the 2 Pliny's.  We also photocopied some pages to use as a backing for an art project - seen below.  He chose words to circle/highlight which would be representative of that particular day, Aug 24, 79 AD

And this was just an art project we did for fun.  I love it!  I think it turned out really fun.  He had a good time playing around with his facial features placement before finally deciding on this funny arrangement.  

It's been a tough term.  Just because I don't think either of us were really in the right head space for it.  So it's nice to be taking a bit of a break for a while.  Lots of Language Arts, Science, Social Studies and Math.  Lots of biking and skateboarding and swimming.  I didn't really keep track of our daily work/activities.  It just got away on me.  But I think we did alright.  And hopefully we can keep a teeny tiny bit going this Summer.  But I say that every year and every year we just enjoy the break.  So who knows what will happen.

Weathering

Weathering:  the process that slowly breaks down natural material, such as rocks and boulders, into smaller pieces.  

There are 3 Types:  Chemical, Mechanical and Biological

These gravestones are examples of Chemical Weathering.  The pollutants in the air create acid rain which slowly over time, dissolves minerals.  

They are also examples of Biological Weathering because of the growth on them.

We did pencil rubbings on them as well.  It's our local cemetery and it provided us with gravestones that went back to the very early 1900's.  The level of decay depended on the age and type of rock used.  

We tried an experiment with chalk to see the effects of acid rain.  However, nothing happened.  Maybe it was because we used the big chalk and not the standard classroom chalk.  We placed one piece in plain water and the other in vinegar.  We expected to see the vinegar eat away at the chalk but there was no difference.  The photos were the before.  I didn't bother taking an 'after' photo.  The only difference was that much of the liquid had evaporated in the past week.

Below is our experiment for Mechanical Weathering.  It was meant to represent a glacier slowly moving downward due to gravity, and how it leaves striations on the rock surface below as the weight of the ice (containing rock and other debris frozen inside).  We froze some water with sand inside it, then rubbed it on foil.

Mt. Vesuvius

Mt. Vesuvius

geology.com

live science

history.com

history.com this-day-in-history

bbc ancient/romans/pompeiis

(the eruption in 1944)

Rocks and Minerals

Living off the Grid & Ancient Civilizations

We've been discussing ancient civilizations in Social Studies. Not so much civilizations like the Mayans or other such ones, but more how small communities began to form. How did they come together, how did they decide where to settle and build? What resources did they need to utilize and develop? How could they provide a thriving, successful and safe community? I saw this on Facebook and though it doesn't directly apply, it was interesting to see who even today, there are people who aim to live simple lives. We watched it together and Mckenzie thought it might be scary to live without electricity, especially if you had to walk across the forest in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

Density, Volume, Mass and Matter

Liquid Density Experiment

 We started creating layers of liquids to show how the same volume of liquid can have very different densities.  Our first layer (from the bottom upwards) was honey, followed by corn syrup with blue food colouring in it.  Next came milk, dish soap, water (dyed red) , rubbing alcohol (dyed green) and finally vegetable oil.

 After discussing what liquids were more dense and why we added a few other items to the mix to see what they would do.  Some were challenging to observe because they got lost in the liquids.

 First we dropped in a nut and bolt, which were clearly the most dense and fell straight to the bottom.

 Next came the cherry tomato and we're not entirely sure where it is.  We suspect it's in the red water level.

 The bead sank slowly and eventually settled between the dish soap and the milk.

 The popcorn kernel went as far as the clue corn syrup.

 And the ping pong ball stayed afloat on the oil.

  After this experiment we also used 2 large marshmallows to who how objects that are essentially identical can have different densities, especially if we alter how tightly packed their atoms are.  We squished up one marshmallow and left the other in its original state, then we placed them both in water.  While they both floated, the squished one floated more than half way below the water surface unlike the other which stayed almost entirely above the water surface.

Density

Volume

I wasn't sure how our Chemistry Unit would go since chemistry is most definitely NOT my area of strength.  However, as we ease into it I'm finding that it's pretty basic.  Today we covered how to measure the volume of both rectangular solids as well as irregular solids.  Good thing we had borrowed some graduated cylinders from the learning center a week or two ago.  In the end Mckenzie switched the thumb tack for a set of keys because the tack didn't really 'register' as it was too small and we were using bigger units.  It was nice to cover both math and science at the same time.  Our days always seem shorter when he also has to do his paper route.