Week 9 - Gratitude trees, Science, and November beach days

 Hi all! It's been a lovely fall week in CT. We are coming back to the classroom after a fun Halloween. The pumpkins and ghosts have been put away and the turkeys and cornucopias have made their entrance. Okay, maybe not so much the cornucopias but the Thanksgiving stories are abundant. 

In this house, we have always chosen to focus on both sides of the history of the United States. Patrick is passionate about the native people who lived here long before the pilgrims sailed onto the shores. He believes that their story is both beautiful and tragic and, without a doubt, needs to continue to have a voice and a place in the history books. Yet another beautiful thing about homeschooling is adding in more details to something that often is stereotyped and/or overlooked. Back home in Nebraska, Patrick did multiple mission trips to Pine Ridge Reservation and fell in love with the Lakota culture, heritage, and people. The kids were young and so they haven't had a chance to learn as much about the Lakota yet but we read stories given to us by our friend, Steve and talk about it at regular intervals. 

Here in Connecticut, we have a new view. In 1620, the Puritans landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts about 200 miles up the coast from where we live now. They had been at sea for 66 days. They then sailed up the coast to Plymouth and started to build their town where the Wampanoag people had been living. (We love that Wampanoag means People of the First Light.) This has been interesting to the kids because New England was settled so long before the Midwest. In addition, the tribes of people living here had a different history and way of life than the plains tribes. More to come in the next couple of weeks on the Siwanoy tribe that lived on the land we live on today. 

In other news, I made a grateful tree. Grandma Barb made the leaves with her Cricut and mailed them to us and they turned out beautiful! We don't do it every single day but if the kids or I think of something we want to add, we write a gratitude on a leaf and hang it on the tree. We love the ones that grandma and grandpa sent and hung those up first. 

Saturday afternoon we had two friendly visitors! Our friends Jamie and Tricia were kind enough to let the boys play with Rosie and Scout! We had a great time and the kids played with them outside for almost 5 hours!

Monday it was cold and windy! After school I had to dig out the winter coats and grammy hats and mittens! 

SCIENCE - Micah was studying igneous rocks this week. We read about them and then made some! Bits of crayons in different colors represented different minerals. They were put together in a muffin tin and put in the oven to represent heat. They were then whisked into the fridge which acted as the rapid cooling process. 

Emmett's engineering science included studying domes, tunnels and towers. His lab was to see how many cups of water 4 eggs could hold without breaking. Eggs are dome shaped and they are one of the strongest building shapes. Do you want to know the number of cups the eggs held? Spoiler alert - it was A LOT more than we thought. In fact, we switched to a large bucket that held baseballs and 34 cups of water later the eggs were still intact. Whoa! That's strong. 

Wednesday evening I set out all the items for a quick fall painting activity. These trees were so fun and simple. I printed the trunk template out here and then cut broccoli florets to use as brushes/sponges.  Patrick even got in on the action. Apparently he is motivated by broccoli? 

Thursday was warm and sunny. The boys created an excavation site in the backyard and found all sorts of big flat rocks that they slowly dug out. They also found a piece of glass that likely dates back to the early to mid 1800s (based on it's shape and per a friend who is very knowledgable in this area). 

We went to the beach on Thursday morning after morning basket and math work. Jonah found a lobster claw. It was a rare, gorgeous, 70 degree day in November. 

Norah is ready for 4th grade math!

We hope you had a lovely week. 

Bye Soon.