Max & Mali - Week 6

 We did some Life of Fred lessons this week. We also played a fun activity with our big yard dice where we tried to make the largest number we could with three dice. 

In history we learned about the Gupta Dynasty in India. The Ganges River is kind of like the Nile River in Egypt. It would flood every year and leave good soil to grow crops in. 

We did some fun experiments with our science class this week. We put Pop Rocks in cola and caught the carbon dioxide in a balloon.  The teachers on the video compared the amount of carbon dioxide to the amount made just by shaking up the bottle of cola and they were pretty equal, so it didn't really do much to make it more bubbly. We also put baking soda in vinegar and trapped that gas with a balloon. That filled up the balloon A LOT! We thought it might explode but it didn't. We also made a "lava lamp" bottle with oil, water, food coloring and Alka-seltzer. We learned about the differences between chemical and physical reactions. We also finished watching the documentary on Netflix "My Octopus Teacher." It was really good. Octopuses are really beautiful and neat animals. 

MAX:

I did more lessons in my language arts program and finished Unit 3. I got to work on my story about the little alien who lives on Jupiter. I read Knight Fight. 

I got my next Bitsbox subscription in the mail. I did one of the apps. It has a castle and a robot defender. I chose a different robot stamp and changed the thing that was "attacking" the castle. It was a diamond and I didn't think a diamond was very interesting. 

MALI:

I did lessons in my Toe By Toe manual. I am practicing not mixing up my bs and ds. I started making a new story. 

I made up a game and we used our number tokens that my mom made with the wood burner. We each had to draw out six tokens and then try and make the biggest 3 digit numbers we could. Whoever had the biggest number of each pair would win a point. I got to ten first so I won. 

I took my camera to the river trail on our bike ride and got some pictures of the ducks. One duck was standing really still so it was nice so I could get a better picture. Lots of them were moving way too much. 

I got a new penguin for my birthday

Mali wrote this haiku after overhearing her brother Leif's 

lesson on haiku. Mom wrote it for her.

The duck that stood still a long time

At first we were only feeding 3 ducks, but by the end 

there were at least 60!

Cool mushroom we saw growing on a cut log on the river trail

We went to the Wilkerson Farm Fall Fair and did the corn maze

We made it through the maze!

I tried out DanceMat Typing this week but I didn't like it all that much 

so we are going to look for another typing program

So good! Watch it!

Can't really see them, but I drew some big lowercase b's on the sidewalk

Playing the game I made up with my mom

Coke plus pop rocks

Look how much more inflated the vinegar + baking soda balloon got!

Vinegar plus alka seltzer

cool top view of our "lava lamp" bottle

Mali - Week 5

 In Life of Fred this week we learned about the not equals sign. Fred was NOT EQUAL to a bowl of soup. It was a funny chapter.  We also finished our collection of 1000 natural items. 

I did more lessons in my Toe By Toe workbook. I did an activity where I drew lines between pictures that the words matched. 

We learned about the byzantine empire in history.

In science we made rock candy but I think maybe ours isn't going to work. We will have to try again. 

I really wanted to catch a grasshopper this week but kept not finding any. I had my mom and brother help me make a bug jar. I was frustrated that I couldn't find a grasshopper. Finally I found one. I also got to use my camera to take a picture of it. 

I made this karaoke machine out of cardboard

I helped my mom prep a bunch of peaches to freeze

We had SO MANY birds at our feeder this week

The grasshopper I caught. 

I got this Gravity Falls book and my Dipper hat for my birthday

Max - Week 5

 The coolest thing I did this week was to use my Bitsbox to program birthday card apps to send my dad on his birthday. The one with the dancing birthday present we just copied the source code but then made the text box bigger and changed the words. The one with the 43 in the background they showed us on the card what it should look like and we had to figure out all the commands to use and where to put stuff. It took quite a while but it was neat when it finally worked. My dad really liked the cards. 

Dancing Present Card

43 Card

Week 4 - Weekly Report

Max: This week I finished reading the Dinosaurs Before Dark book from the Magic Treehouse series. I practiced my spelling words and did some pages in Explode the Code. 

Mali: I did more lessons with my Toe By Toe book. I did some activities in my Dyslexia skills workbook. We started reading the new Princess in Black book we got. 

Math - We walked around the neighborhood and counted steps. First we estimated how far 100 steps would take us. Then we estimated how far 1000 steps would take us. It was really quite far! We used click counters to track our steps. We also started a collection of 1000 natural items. We picked up and counted 620 little seed pods we discovered on our walk. We are also practicing our “adds to ten” math facts. 

History - We learned about Christianity coming to Britain from the Romans. 

Science - We learned about the periodic table some more. We went over ionic and covalent bonds. Covalent bonds involve sharing of electrons. 

Music - We had to do video class this week because we had a potential COVID exposure through our neighbors, but luckily it turned out negative so we are okay to go next week. We learned the red chord on the keyboard. 

Tech:

Max (Coding): This week I didn’t end up doing any coding. 

Mali (Photography): My mom and I both tried to take pictures of a couple of birds that landed on our bird feeder. It was tricky to get the zoom to work and to stabilize the camera enough. 

Competencies -

We helped get the cinder blocks placed for the foundation of the chicken coop we are building in the back yard. It took quite a bit of teamwork and cooperation. And communication, too. Sometimes we didn't really understand what our dad needed us to do so we had to ask for more information.     

We had a family game night and played Blokus

Female Black-headed Grosbeak. This bird has come the most to our feeder.

Playing Twister on Family Game Night

Playing Uno

Scenes from our 1000+ steps walk

I built a treasure chest with a wood kit we got.

Hammock time

We were down at our grandparents' house in Springville when the mountain started on fire

Max built this fortress for his Venom toy

Venom taking a nap

Playing a rhyming memory game

Mali made a ping pong bouncing game and also made prizes for the winners

Getting the foundation blocks in for the chicken coop

I wanted to make a volcano so my mom helped me make one with a small 

Gatorade bottle. cardboard, and paper mache.