Science - Apologia Zoology 2

Our science curriculum this year is Apologia Zoology 2 - Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day.  Micah & Lilly have their own notebook journal, but we study the text and do experiments together.
Throughout the year the kids will be adding sea creatures to their "ocean boxes" that they've just made.

Dolphin Tale 2

Veterinarians

We're going to be studying sea creatures this year for science, but this week we found a week-long study preparing us for the Dolphin Tale 2 movie.  Homeschoolmovieclub.com provided a fun curriculum for us.  The most fun day was pretending to be veterinarians.  The kids found all their 'sea creature' stuffed animals, categorized them, and then gave them check-ups.  Tomorrow we see the movie!

Grouping the 'fish' together with our 'melons'.

Learning about different 'marine' careers.

We're growing cotton

A couple of mystery plants started growing by the firepit.  I didn't recognize them, so I let them grow for a bit.  They started flowering, so I let them continue to grow.  The flowers changed colors, then turned into these hard ball-type things.
One day Lilly says "we're growing cotton".  Sure enough those ball-type things were opening and showing cotton.  We looked up the stages of a cotton plant and they look the same as these - which are from our plants.
Micah remembers us going to Schnepf Farms last year and picking some of the cotton that's in the field across the street.  The kids pulled out some of those seeds and planted them - for fun.  That must be how they got here.  Lilly loves to go out and "pick cotton".  She really wants to go through the steps (which we learned about last year) to make clothes from it.

Cleaning Lessons

The kids each have areas of cleaning that they are in charge of.  Micah gets the floors.  Lilly has an interest in doing the floors and will many times offer to help him.  This particular weekend I enjoyed stepping back and watching him give her "pointers" and give her areas to do.  He'd say "oh this is a good area, there are always some good spots here."

Ice Den - Homeschool Public Skate Days

Over the summer we attended a few of the Homeschool Public Skate days.  For $5. each we get free skate rental for 2 hours.  It's awesome!  We all liked it so much we've decided to attend as many dates as we can during the school year.
It's 2 times a month - first and third Friday from 11:45-1:45pm.  We noticed a huge different in attendance during the school year.  We practically have the entire rink to ourselves.  The kids are starting to do "tricks" and get quite comfortable on the ice.

Lilly's laptop

Our friend, Kelli, was done with her Samsung Netbook and passed it along to Lilly.  Lilly is enjoying it for some of her educational computer discs and a few online sites.

Dave's Wiffle-Ball Cannon

Dave saw this online and looked around to see if he had the items.  He was so excited to have us come over and test it out.  We used wiffle balls, tennis balls, and water balloons.  We shot them out, caught them, and adjusted the angle to get better distance.  It was fun!

More 1st graders

Lilly likes to bring some of her stuffed animals to school.  She REALLY likes the BIG EYES and got several new ones for kindergarten graduation and through the summer.  They joined us for the first day of school.

1st Day of School

Today was our official first day of school.

5th Grade

1st Grade

Eastside Group Camping - Labor Day Weekend

We were back at Dogtown Lake for another great camping trip.  This was our 2nd Eastside camping this summer - a new tradition.  It was a beautiful weekend and 30 degrees cooler than Phoenix.