Chicken Coop June 20-26th, 2016 Almost Done!

Chicken Coop 

June 20-26th, 2016 Almost Done!

Finishing the walls

Three panels of roof on!

Roof done!

Working on the gate:

Buried wire and it should be safe from any animals that try to dig under

Inside the coop: Painting going on!

First we painted everything with Kilz to seal it all up

.........................

SL Core G Week 28 B Middle Ages (88th week on Core G!) June 20-26, 2016

SL Core G Week 28 B

 Middle Ages 

(88th week on Core G!)

June 20-26, 2016

Dd made Dh a Father's Day card...with the help of those funny minions!  This is from some of that paper she soaked in tea and tried to make look aged.  She worked hard to make the paper look this bad!

Hello Friends!  This was finally an academic week!  I was really feeling low about our slow pace, and having a week where we actually accomplished some work makes me feel so much better!!! 

We worked with Mrs. March, and she changed Dd's sax/piano lessons from Tuesday to Wednesdays from now on.  That means one less day of driving for an hour and a half for a thirty minute lesson.  Now she will have her lesson with Mrs. March and then have her band practice--back to back!  That is awesome for my schedule; so very much better!!!!  Dd's violin lesson with Mrs. Reed is going well too!  We have really accepted that it is 99% likely Dd will not be able to get into the intermediate orchestra after just a few months of violin.  Dd says she will keep working on learning the violin and then perhaps NEXT year she can get in.  That is definitely more likely to happen, and I don't have to feel pressured to make her practice more now for that!  Musically this week went well, and Dd cut back a bit on her practicing this week.  She needed a bit of time off.

Dd helping Dh put the new door he built up in the run.  He had a lot of fun making this door.  

We all have been working on the chicken coop---and are getting so very close to being done with it!  Who knew it would be this big of a project?!!  and how expensive it would turn out to be!!  At least our coop is very well built and will stand up to most animal attacks, and last for years to come!

I let Dd pick the paint for the inside of the coop.  She picked a dark and a light blue.  She did a good job helping.

Weather and Chickens:

It has been very hot, and our grass is brown and dry in many places.  Each day I bring the two chicken tractors out for the chickens to eat the grass and weeds, but the yard isn't doing very well with the dry, dry grass.  The chickens are still eating a lot of bagged food; they certainly eat a LOT!

Dd certainly tries hard to teach our kitty, Agnes, to cuddle.

Our lessons:

Bible:
 Veritas Press Gospels

Card 116: Completed

Apostles Sent Out

Matt 10: 5-15, Mark 6:7-13, and Luke 9:1-6

Read with Bible and Believer's Bible Commentary

Student Workbook pages completed for cards 114, 115, 116

Journey Through the Bible:

pg 259

Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations

Alex Harris, Brett Harris

Do Hard Things by Harris

ps 167-182

Trying to continue to use this book like a devotional.  We just read one or two sections each day--something to chew on!

Math:
 Teaching Textbooks Algebra I

Two days for lesson 39, Two days for the Test 5

*slow and steady, Algebra is hard for us!

Foreign Languages:

1. Sign Language:

Test for 3 & 4: passed Monday

Test for 5 & 6: passed Friday

taught lesson 7 on Friday

2. Rosetta Stone: French

60 minutes this week

Sonlight (SL) Reading:
 Reader:

The Samurai's Tale by Erik C. Haugaard

I read this in the times Dd wasn't reading it.  She had thought she wasn't liking it, as she was reading other samurai books, but finally came around to liking it.  I think it helped that I started reading it last week and really enjoyed it very much!  It always seems to help Dd if I've read it and liked it--plus I can discuss the book so much better.  I recommend this book; thought it was very well done.

SL Read Aloud:

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

We are still reading this, but we listened to it on audio a few years back and really liked it then (and now!).  Such a fun mystery!

Dd read her SL assignments for Kingfisher and Favorite Poems Old and New.  

SL Timeline and Mapping for Week 27: Completed

Language Arts:

Easy Grammar, Plus

pg 291-295

Wrote Thank You note to G & G

Ten Minute Writings--having Dd write for ten minutes each day on whatever she wants, until we can start back on our writing program.

Science:

Apologia General Science: Module 10: complete

all the readings, study guide, test, and experiments for this experiment.  I made a few posts on the specific experiments we did this module.  

Music:

1 Violin Lesson

1 Band Lesson

1 hour of sax

6 hours of violin, sax and piano

**Instrument Fitting** 

This week our band had a class offered for "Instrument Fitting" where the students took a big test on their musical ability, and then got to try out ALL the band instruments!  It was really interesting.  Dd hadn't ever got to try a Tenor Sax, and thought if she had before she probably would have picked that over the Alto Sax.  She got to try everything from the flute to the tuba!

Exercise and Fun:

Capture the Flag/bond fire at the "V" families house.  We were invited to the "V" house, with five other families, for a big Capture the Flag game, grilled hot dogs, and then the kids sat around a bond fire making S'mores.  We are so thankful to have found some great fellowship!

Swimming:

Lots of swimming this week!  Our pool finally got over 80 degrees!

BUSY HANDS:

Dd got a prize for doing her Rosetta Stone for two weeks, it was a knife/fire starter.  She used it on Sunday night to start a bond fire by using only it!  Then she got out our fire/cooking tripod and baked beans and weenie's for our Sunday dinner!  

On Wednesday she got the charcoal grill out and grilled hamburgers and asparagus for our dinner.

Thursday she made GF Snicker Doodle cookies. 

Saturday she made regular Snicker Doodle cookies for the Capture the Flag game we were invited to on Saturday.  

Crocheting: 
Monday and Tuesday Dd made herself a little purse/bag for her new camera (yard sale).  She wanted someway to have it carry-able for her upcoming trip.

Drawing

..............

Apologia General Science Experiment 10.4 Turgor Pressure

Apologia General Science Experiment 10.4 

Turgor Pressure

This was another experiment we have done before, most often with Queen Anne's Lace (weed/flower), but we were happy to do it again.  First the glass of water, add food coloring, then add a plant that would show the veins change as they absorb the colored water.

Turgor Pressure: The Pressure inside a plant cell due to the increasing size of the central vacuole.  

 Plant cells are usually the shape of a square (unlike animal cells).  A plant cell has a membrane around it, and a cell wall srrounding the outside of the membrane.  The cell wall is a stiff or rigid structure that has holes in it.  These holes are important because they allow nutrients  to pass through so they can travel to and from the membrane.  In the center of the cell is an organelle called the central vacuole--which is like a water balloon that increases with size as it fills with water.  The added water will push the organelles and dytoplasm in the cell against the cell wall.  The cell wall will push back against this force, and that explands the central vacuole.  This pushing back and forth causes the cell to become rigid or stiff.  When water is in decline the plant wilts and bends.

It would have been nice to show the leaves of the celery plant after the week, as they were really beautiful with their blue-purple lines were they had absorbed the dye, but it was a busy week!

...................

Apologia General Science 10.3 Vegetative Reproduction

Apologia General Science 10.3 

Vegetative Reproduction

 This was another easy experiment, and one that you can easily see the changes/growth.  I pulled some vines from our yard, and put them in this glass jar.  After a few days we could see the freshly sprouted white root hairs growing out of the vines.  I've done this often with house plants, so we are very familiar with this process of Vegetative Reproduction already.

Vegetative Reproduction: The process by which one part of a plant can form new roots and develop into a complete plant.

The banana ziplock experiment was beside the vines---doing their changes beside each other.

Here is the same plant...now with LOTS of root hairs!  This experiment was easy to do!

.................

Apologia General Science 10.2 Yeast Is A Decomposer

Apologia General Science 10.2 

Yeast Is A Decomposer

This was a really easy experiment!  We were comparing two ziplock bags---one with yeast on a banana, and one banana without anything on it.  As the days went by the banana with the yeast got more and more mushy as it quickly decomposed.  

............

Apologia General Science Experiment 10.1 Factors That Affect Bacterial Growth

Apologia General Science Experiment 10.1 

Factors That Affect Bacterial Growth 

We mixed hot tap water with a chicken bouillon square.  Then we divvied up that water into four glasses.

We added the salt to one glass, the vinegar to one glass, left one glass alone, put one glass in the refrigerator, and added yeast to one glass....that last one was a mistake.  Dd had mixed up the different experiments we were to do during the week, and thought one glass was to have yeast added to it.  So, we put it up on the window sill to see how it would do with the rest of the glasses.

As you can imagine the salt and yeast got VERY cloudy as each day went by.  The chicken bouillon "fed" the bacteria already present in our glasses (and through the dust settling in the air).  As the bacteria was being fed it reproduced and multiplied.  As the bacteria grew, so did the cloudiness of our water.

After a few days we took a piece of paper and wrote "HELLO."  Then we put the paper behind each glass to determine how clear or cloudy each glass had become.  The glasses in the window sill seemed more cloudy than the glass in the refrigerator.  Our house was particularly hot, since it is late June and no air conditioning being on.  

..................