Happy Birthday, Dad.

 

This wasn't his favorite birthday. He felt pretty sick, but we tried to make the best of it.
He worked from home that day, so we took him on a lunch-hour adventure to a wildlife refuge that I had recently visited for an educational course. During the class, I had seen two wild bald eagles nesting (one was even chomping on a recent kill) and the place has a scope set up to see them. Since Alex had never seen a wild bald eagle, it seemed like a good fit.

 

When we got there, both eagles were away from their nest. So we went on a stroll to where a local artist began a handmade, huge, eagle nest. People are encouraged to add to the nest, weaving the wood in and out. I love stuff like this - and so do our eaglets. We could have been there all day. :)

 

As the gigantic gaggles of migrating Canadian geese flew through, we watched and listened with awe. Then, Alex spotted an eagle! One had returned close to the nest - yay! We went back to the scope, and the birthday boy got a good look.

 

That night, the kids and Grandma and Grandpa Poe surprised our Eagle Scout at his Boy Scouts meeting with a game called "Do you know Brother Poe?" and some icecream.
And as I type, he's still celebrating his birthday - by playing golf at the renound Bandon Dunes! So maybe it is  his favorite birthday after all? ;)

 

 

Homeschool Bodies: Teeth

I'm so thankful for teeth! During our week of tooth study, we practiced flossing with ribbon on egg cartons that had nasty green tissue paper bits of food between "teeth." They loved it.

They learned to identify different parts of the teeth, including the: enamel, dentin, pulse, root, crown and nerves. They also identified their incisors, canines and molars/pre-molars. Plus, we learned how to look at a skull of an animal and be able to tell if the animal was a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore solely by looking at the teeth. Pretty cool.

Then we tried an experiment to see about staining the enamel on teeth. We used eggs to represent teeth, and tested them in grape juice, hot chocolate and lemonade.

Here are the results, after sitting in those bowls for two days. Yuck.

Here are two silly girls writing down their hypothesis and observations.

We had to try and clean those stained teeth right away, so each set to work.

Scrub, scrub.

 

The after-brushing eggs looked much better, but still not as white as the original. Lesson learned: keep teeth white by not letting food/drinks sit on them. Brush right away!

Of course, we needed to update our wall bodies.

Here's one written hypothesis, observations and results.
Hands-on experiments make such an impact - I don't even have to tell them to brush their teeth after drinking a glass of juice any more! :)

Homeschool bodies: Flex those muscles

 

Flex those red, tissue paper muscles!

 

We learned that there are three types of muscles: smooth, cardiac and skeletal.
After trying our hardest not to move a muscle, we discussed voluntary vs. involuntary muscles.
And we attempted to build some skeletal muscles through vigorous exercise too.
I had to take pictures of their notes - so sweet.

I love our paper bodies! They brightly welcome every visitor to our home - talk about a conversation piece. Ha.

Homschool: "Right on!" randoms

 

These random school activities have my kids cheering, "Right on!" (ok, they don't actually say those two words - but they're thrilled). First off, they eat up writing prompts with funny pictures. I show them the pic, and they grab a pencil and handful of imagination and let it roll on out. We just do a rough draft - so best guess spelling and punctuation - and then have story time together.

 

In history, we learned about Ashurbanipal, a powerful king of the Assyrians who fought like a lion - and actually fought lions. Though he initially sounds like a pretty cruel leader, we have a soft spot for him because he was the first librarian. In fact, a few stone tablets from his collection still exist today. The trio worked dilligently in creating this Playdough recreation of Ashurbanipal on his throne, surrounded by tablets.  

Big Sis and E! could have played this rolling game all day. Roll two dice, cover the sum with your marker and see which person can use all their markers first.

Homeschool history: King Tut's influence

These metallic King Tut paintings make me shimmer and smile! I love how each one is unique and reflective of the artist. We've been learning a lot about ancient Egypt, and all the Poe Gnomes agree that we wouldn't want to build a pyramid!

My heart swells when school ends and the children play what they've learned. In this pic there's a "pyramid" of chairs to the left, and Lil Sis is being mummified by an embalmer and high priest.  Ha!

King Tut's influence continues today ... meet King Tut, our new beta. He's a fighter of a pharaoh fish.

Homeschool Bodies: Bones & Joints

We combined the study of bones and joints into one week after Halloween. The girls had learned a few leg bones while we made our skeletal leggings - specifically the pelvis, femur, patella and tibia ... plus, they already knew the skull and ribcage, so we just added a few on to that and called it good.

After dancing to "Dem Bones" and reading about joints, everyone tried walking and moving around without using any joints. That's pretty tricky. Then we learned about tendons and their role in helping bones move - particularly in the fingers. We even created a hand with drinking straw bones and yarn tendons. We slit the straws where we saw joints in our fingers, and that way when the tendons pulled, the fingers moved.

As for our paper wall bodies, the kiddos added wooden skewers for bigger bones, and Q-tips for finger and foot bones.

Haloween math: sort and graph candy

What kid doesn't love to dump out all their trick-or-treat treasures and sort them?
Then the trading begins ... oh, the memories. :)

We also have a tradition of graphing the loot. They love it ... and I'm realizing this pic is upside down, but I'm too tired  to fix it. Ha. You get the idea.

Homeschool bodies: Lungs

Lungs. Those fragile yet faithful and powerful organs. Oh how we love them.

After learning about the trachea, bronchioles, alveoli, diaphram and protective rib cage, we made paperbag lungs.

Here's E! adding fingerprint alveoli to his bronchioles.

They loved blowing on that trachea and filling the lungs up with air.

And as fate would have it, we also celebrated Aunt Shar's double lung transplant anniversary!
The split cauliflower looks awfully like lungs, right!? It was an uplifting night; and it sure felt fabulous to be together with family.

Pumpkin art

 

Grandma and Papa helped the kiddos with these beautiful pumpkin paintings. The colors are so vibrant and cheery. They've been festively sitting on our piano.

Happy Halloween! 2013

Going to Dad's work for indoor trick-or-treating is always a high point of the holiday.
It's hard to resist their cobwebbed file cabinets and spooky decor - not to mention the awesome treats.
 

Here's a group of trick-or-treaters in the conference room/party palace. I know E! looks scared (he was!) but rest assured, the zombie behind him kept whispering that everything was going to be ok and not to worry. ha! :)

Wardrobe change! On the actual holiday, we had two Rapunzels and a Captain America.

We started at Grandma and Papa's house for an early round of trick-or-treats.

Then headed to GPa and GMa's for another round - even Cozy dressed up!

The cousins came too!

And so did Aunt Les! After our neighborhood adventure and traditional chicken noodle soup dinner, everyone snuggled up for some Charlie Brown.

Oh, and here are our pumpkins for 2013. E! picked a picture of a pumpkin and we tried to carve its likeness (far left), Lil Sis did a Potato Head girl (middle) and Big Sis designed her triangle teeth pumpkin (right).

Homeschool Bodies: our guts t-shirts

In prep for Halloween, the trio got "Guts" shirts from Science Wear to decorate.

One organ at a time they added careful colors.

Big Sis decided to label many of her parts.

Each day a bit more came to life.

Top off the look with a brain cap (thank you Pinterest!), and add some felt bones to leggings to make a complete outfit. They felt oh so proud of their final products!

Homeschool bodies: The digestive system

Digestion: it's equally awesome and disgusting. The kids loved it!
We began with a paper towel esophagus leading to a gallon size freezer bag stomach that had some bile and acid in it (water). The kids then fed chunks of bread down the esophagus, and helped churn the stomach and acid until all the chunks broke down into a nice slime. Yuck.

We played a post it note game to identify the digestive system's key players.

And we pushed a plastic Easter egg through one of the girls' tights to see how the intestines must flex and push to move the waste through - no gravity help there!

They set to work on creating a digestive system for their paper bods ... ok, ok, it's not really "work" as much as play. Goof balls. :) 

So, the purple sequins is the small intestine, the pink tissue paper is the large (with a tiny green fleck of tissue paper as the appendix), the mini sandwich bag full of puff balls represents the stomach with some food in it - and there's a straw that leads into that bag for the esophagus. Also, there's a blue flat oval shaped liver pasted on back there. They did great!

Fruit Loop 2013

We got to take the cousins to the Fruit Loop, and the weather was fabulous!

Bowling with pumpkins.

Look at these studs by the BBQ feast.

That BBQ is the best in the world.  

GPa and GMa took a ride on the green tractor.

And the cousins loved their icecream.

Wow.