Friday 18 December 2015

Weekly Wrap Up 12/18/15

This is the week of attending Christmas Parties!  The kids each had a Christmas party to attend and so did my husband and I!  The Christmas tree is up and most of the presents have been bought.  Still have to do baking and wrap presents but it looks like I might actually get it all done this Christmas!
I am looking forward to having a week off to relax between Christmas and New Year!  I plan to work in my stain glass studio and create something!

MarioFan attended the Homelink Christmas Party Friday morning which was for middle school and younger crowd.  They played lots of games and did some crafts

For the gift exchanged they did a very neat left right story...I have never seen this before and it was so much fun.  You can find several examples on the web.  This is the version that was used at the party

Later that evening Firedrak had her party with the highschoolers which was part dance. games and tons of food!

A Jenga Competition ensued!
 My husband is back in town after being away for two weeks so we are starting to do our family traditions to get us into the mood Christmas!
We always try to attend at least one Christmas play.  Since both kids have read the Christmas Carol book for school we went to see a local production put on by children.  It was very well done!

I Love the local live nativity that is done by this church, we try to go to it every year!
It is called The Return to Bethlehem and tell the story of the birth of Christ from the point of view of the towns folk and Roman citizens in Bethlehem

the congregation dress up and play the roles of the shop keepers, Roman soldiers etc.

Each stop along the way tells a little of what the people see and hear 


Of course it ends with a baby.  It is so well done, I just love it!
We also had another opportunity to volunteer for an hour ringing the Salvation Army kettle bell!
The kids really got into the spirit and sang songs and loved dressing up in Christmas colors.  It was a beautiful day to ring the bell and we had lots of donations during our one hour shift!

We haven't been neglecting our school work this is the last week of our coop classes before winter break.  So we are just tying up loose ends to make sure we are at a good stopping place by the 23rd.

Firedrake had a great lab experiment that she has been working on, we are using EO Wilson's biology book thru Apple iTunes.

The chapter she is working on is learning about cells and osmosis.  First we had to decalcified the eggs 


carefully scrub off all of the shell leaving the egg bare
We were looking at all the different variables that occur that might effect the rate of osmosis, including temperature and saline level.  I think we de-shelled about 15 eggs for these experiments!

This one was the kids favorite and also the only one that visibly showed results...all the others needed to use a scale to note the subtle weight changes.  
 Somewhere in this week we also had time to attend a Mad Science field trip!
Kids saw lots of dry ice experiments

and then worked on a mystery introducing them to forensic science

They looks at chemical reactions to identify powder left at the scene

examined finger prints 

teeth marks and many looked at many other clues to solve the mystery!  It was a lot of fun


Whew what a busy week!  Next week starts to slow down a little and we plan to take about 10 days off for our Christmas break and I have promised myself not to do any lesson planning during this time!







2 comments:

  1. That Mad Scientists trip looked like so much fun. I tired reading all you did this week!

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  2. Another busy week I see. It looks like you had some fun adventures. Loved reading about them and the photos were awesome. Merry Christmas with hugs~

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