Blast Off!

For The Boy's birthday earlier in the year he got a rocket kit. I had put it up for later and we totally forgot about it. We recently found it again and the boys have been begging to do it. We needed to get to the store to get a 2 liter bottle of soda and drink it. This of course was a big hit with the boys. LOL This is The Boy after we had taped up the contraption.

We had to take our paper, wrap it around the clear tube and tape it up. Making sure it would slide off the tube, Then we had to punch out the wings for the bottom and the cone for the top. I saw we but this was ALL me, it was way to hard for the kids to do it. I used a glue gun to glue the wings on the bottom and the cone on top. Once I finished all the boy's rockets we headed outside! Here they are with their rockets.

We would put the rocket onto the tube and then stomp on the bottle. This would force the air out of the bottle, through the tire tube, and push the rocket off the clear tube. We had to make sure the top was totally glued onto the rocket or else to much air would leak out and the rocket would not shoot. There was a lot of rocket repair after shots that had the rocket land on its' tip. The kids had a blast and even loved blowing into the tube to blow the bottle back up. As we went we had to re-tape the bottle to the tube and it was starting to leak air. We got some pretty good shots off and it went farther then I thought it would a few times.

King Cluck

Meet King Cluck.

He will soon be mummified. We are studying Mummies and what better way then to mummify something. Of course when I told The Hubby we were mummifying a  chicken he thought I meant some bacon wrapped chicken for dinner. Imagine his surprise when he came home to a blob on the fridge. LOL You can see above the items we used. We chose a Cornish Game Hen since it is smaller and will take less time and materials.

We used the rubbing alcohol to wash the hen off and kill the germs and hopefully lower the smell level.  Here you can see Monkey prepping King Cluck for his bath. Cat boy was going to bath him but even with the gloves he decided mom should do it.

Next we mixed 2 parts salt to 2 parts baking soda. We will check King Cluck every few days and replace this mixture whenever it starts to get wet. We used 4C salt and 2C baking soda. I think it was a tad much for our little hen but not by much. I think we might make a HUGE batch next time and then just use what we need each time we change it out.

Here is Monkey helping me load up the cavity with the mixture. We made sure he was nice and full and then both him and Cat Boy made sure the bottom of the bag and all of King Cluck was covered.

Here is King Cluck all covered. He will sit in the back for the next month or 2 on top of my fridge. When the mixture gets wet we will take him down, Clean him off and re-cover him. Of course I will blog that as well. For now I just hope he does not stink.

Sailing

So today The Boy and The Hubby are out sailing. They are doing the mixed couples race which is a little over 10 miles up the Patuxent River. When they get there there is a little raft up which they might hang out at if the rain stays away. Last year was the first year they did this race together and got there in about an hour and a half. They didn't time themselves officially because they were not a mixed gender team but afterwords it was decided that a kid sailing would count. After all having an 8yo as your crew was not an advantage. LOL This year he is 9 so still not an advantage. I sailed this with The Hubby 2 years ago and it was HOT with no wind. We were gone about 11 hrs. It was NOT fun. The weather today looks perfect. Here are some shots of them from Thursday Night Racing 2 nights ago.

 

Started School Today

Today we started school. Monkey has been begging me to start for a few days now so I figured we would give it a go. We always start out the year a bit slow to get everyone back in the groove. We do do some things over the summer but they are more relaxed and here and there so it takes some time for us to get back into the swing of things.
 We started with math. All 3 boys use Singapore math US edition. Singapore Math Monkey started with 1A, Cat Boy with 2A, and The Boy is in the middle of his 4A book. When Monkey finished I gave him my phone and had him start tracing letters and numbers using the Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) app I have on my phone while I worked with the other 2. When he got bored with that I put some Leap Frog videos on for his letters on Netflix. We just use Netflix for streaming and it is really great. There is even a Homeschooling with Netflix group on Facebook. Homeschooling with Netflix.
 Next it was time for Science. We have been using R.E.A.L Science by Pandia Press for a few years now and LOVE it! R.E.A.L Science Odyssey There is a ton of great experiments that really keep the kids engaged. I am using the same book for all 3 kids. This year we are doing Earth and Space. Since I could not find our thermometer to do the first experiment on Weather, I went and found a short video on Amazon Prime about how they predict the weather. Then I ordered a new thermometer on Amazon with Amazon Prime. I absolutely LOVE Amazon Prime and if you don't already have it try it out. They have some promos with Amazon Mom and Amazon Student.
 That was all we managed to do today. I am waiting on a few more books to come in before we have everything we need to start, but since we start out slow anyway it is ok. We also need to finish setting up the school room since we are moving it from its own room into the basement. However if I waited for that to get done we would NEVER start school.

Long time no post

Wow it has been 2 years since I have last posted. Funny that the last post I posted was of Cat Boy's first day of kindergarten and now we are starting on the 2nd year of homeschooling him. It has been going great and the best thing for him. Kindergarten was wonderful for him but 1st was not so we pulled him and have never looked back! This year Monkey will be starting Kindergarten, Cat Boy will be starting 2nd grade, and The Boy will be in 4th.

Of course taking Cat Boy out of school was the least of the changes around here! We welcomed Princess into our family almost 6 months ago! The boys all love their little sister and she is already so spoiled with love. She gets so sad if she is alone because she is so used to having SOMEONE to entertain her.

The boys were excited she was home

Out little princess

As we start our new school year, and The Hubby gets ready to start his new company (check it out if you need any IT services. www.erilistechnologysolutions.com ) I hope to keep this blog updated. We have a lot of exciting changes and things coming up in the next few months so hopefully I can use this to keep everyone updated.