Sewing!

Lola has been begging me to learn how to sew. Today, we took our first crack at it. She took to it right away and didn't seem to have any difficulty, but she soon bored of it. She still hasn't finished the plastic mesh star that she started! We talked a lot about how important sewing is to our society and so many others too. Sewing has been around since the paleolithic times and even appears in history before weaving.
We plan to revisit sewing (and also rug hooking) next month.

Money Bags

Lola's class has been working on coin value, a subject that Lola has been having some trouble with. It's hard for her to remember the value of the coins and to add them up. I got her this game for Christmas, so we decided to play it today.
Last month, when I was asked by our independent study coordinator to estimate what our focuses were going to be for this month, I knew coin values would be one of them!

The consumer reviews were really good for the game and Lola had a lot of fun with it. It has a feature where you have to assemble a particular monetary amount without potentially being able to use certain coins...for example, you might be asked to assemble $0.50 without the use of quarters. This was really helpful in regards to truly understanding value (as opposed to just memorizing what certain combination of coins add up to).

Sorry, I didn't think to take any pictures while we were playing. I wish I had. Although I have another math idea that I am going to use these coins for and I will take pictures of that.

Moon Sand...

Oh boy, this one was a doozy. I'm not sure moon sand will never make another appearance in our house, but I'm glad we at least figured out what it was all about. It's fun...just *really* messy.

We wondered what was in the sand to make it so sticky but wet and not dry out. We looked online and found out that we basically could have made moon sand ourselves for a LOT cheaper then we paid for a fancy kit. It's just sand, cornstarch and water!!! We decided we will make it ourselves another time. Maybe for an outdoor activity...:)

January is GAME MONTH!!

Lola came up with a good idea. She thought January should be a game month (for homeschooling projects), since it's a short month and because they got all kinds of cool new games for Christmas that they really want to play. I thought it was a great idea, so here we are!

Funnest Math Project EVER!

I love to incorporate math into baking. Lola barely realizes that she is having a math lesson.
Today we baked gluten-free gingerbread men. Lola loves to bake and is very good at measuring out the fractions for the ingredients.
It was originally going to be a gingerbread house but we ran out of time! Either way, the kids had fun. They also got to decorate their cookies and they were very excited about that.

Happy Hunukkah!

I haven't blogged our homeschooling experiences in a long time, mostly because I've been without a digital camera for a while (ours broke in Hawaii)...it's hard to post without photos!

To mark the beginning of Hanukkah this year, we decided to get together with a couple of other independent study families and teach the kids a bit about the history and reasons why certain foods are eaten during the Hanukkah holiday. The kids ate latkes, fried in oil to represent the scant amount of oil recovered by the Maccabees and how it miraculously lasted eight nights...enough time to find new oil. The kids learned about the menorah and how it is customary to light a candle on the menorah and exchange a small gift each of the eight nights.

Afterward, they played the dreidel game with their "gelt", which was the traditional foil covered chocolate coins! They had so much fun!

A day at the zoo

Today, we went to the zoo. Lola is especially interested in reptiles so we spent a good portion of our day in the reptile house. They were a few stand-outs...mainly the Gila Monster, in the second photo. Lola was quite relieved to learn that, while, they are very poisonous, it's pretty difficult to actually get bit by one since they are so slow moving.
She was also fascinated by the albino Burmese python. It was HUGE!