Our Week with Cookie Science

I can tell we're getting our groove back when we are doing enough schoolwork to get back to art projects.  It feels good.  

This week we finished our Chinese New Year craft.

The kids painted roosters, then wrote 2017 on one side, and their name on the other side in Sharpie.  Both sides got a coat of Mod Podge to make them shiny, then we used satin cord and Chinese coins to make hangars.

The finished rooster ornaments.

I swear, I can't set my phone down for an instant.

 Bri cut her hair this week.  It's all one color again.

The kids were complaining that their science section in their binders were too full, so now they each have a science binder and an "other" binder.

Speaking of science, we finished our book!  We're going to spend the rest of the year using up all the science kits around here.

Miss Katie is getting close to finishing her phonics book 3 from when we reviewed Jolly Phonics.

The first science kit we're working on using up is Moon Dance from Groovy Lab in a Box.  We learned why Neil Armstrong's footprints are still visible on the moon.

Although Earth has erosion from wind and rain, the moon does not.  The kids had fun drawing in the sand and blowing on their drawings to watch them disappear.

We did 2 Atelier Art videos this week.  The project first was turtles.

Katie was supposed to be doing math while the other kids watched the video, but it appears that she was more interested in art, because after naps, when she had some free time, she drew a turtle, too.  (All the guys are catching the turtle.)

More hands on science!

This time, talking about how the moon affects the tides.

Our second art video had the kids painting a wandering black line and then filling all the sections in with colors.

These turned out neat, but the black watercolor was not as bright as the other paints.  I suggested they might like to go over the black line with a big black Sharpie.

Speaking of using things up...  I printed this book for last CNY and never used it.  This year, Katie colored all the Chinese zodiac animals and we read the cute story in the style of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" together.

When our science kit mentioned moon phases, I knew I had to do the Oreo thing.  I went on Pinterest to find directions, and found some printable worksheets.  I ended up not going with the first worksheet I printed because it labeled the phases of the moon differently than our science booklet did, and I didn't want to confuse the kids.  So I found one that used the same labels and printed that.  When we were about to start, I realized the cookies would leave grease spots on the worksheets, so I laminated them.

The kids had a great time, and hopefully the hands on project with help them retain the concept of the waxing and waning moon.  (Jack and Hannah started lunch by eating the cookies on their placemats, and Katie got the cookies I made by putting leftover scraped off frosting between "lids.")  Surprisingly, none of the cookies broke!

Unfortunately, we started our Chinese New Year with sickies in the house.  Hopefully this bug will be short lived and we can get back to our regularly scheduled fun stuff soon!


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