weekly wrap up 3-11-16

The last two weeks the weather has been crazy, we have gone from beautiful sunny days to cold snowy days and everything in between.

It was so beautiful two weeks ago the kids were dressed in shorts when we went to the park for a nature walk

That night we had a massive hail storm

with pretty good size hail

Just a few days later we had 5 inches of snow fall, the largest snow fall in our area for the year.  Of course my husband was out of town so it was up to us to shovel it all.

Kids getting their exercise in

and collapsing from exhaustion after all the snow shoveling:) 

Then the weather went back to being in the high 60's and we had another gorgeous weekend.  It has been a crazy ride weather wise around here!

FireDrake went to a dance held by our Homeschool group!  I chaperoned and assisted with the refreshment table for the evening.  

She had fun meeting up with all her friends and even got on the dance floor a few times!

I spoke to someone at coop who mention that the city park has lots small examples of different types of bridges that we could examine up close so on one of the nicer days we grab our bikes and headed downtown on a bridge scavenger hike and found all the ones we have been studying over the last few weeks!

arch bridge 

beam bridge 

suspension bridge 

  This truss bridge was built in 1885 and was one of the first bridge built in the park:)

Next we will be learning a little about moving bridges and then wrapping up our Bridge unit as we prepare for the project fair at the coop.

I haven't mentioned in a while our history lessons.  I create my own history program and as we have finished up talking about the Industrial revolution and the Gilded age in the cities we have gone back in time to discuss how the west was lost to the Indians.

I have gathered up many books on some of the famous Indians of that period that resisted being forced onto reservations and we have been reading many.  We are also watching documentaries and movies that address this time period.

At the start of our unit, MarioFan built an Indian teepee from a kit I found at a local store

MarioFan looked online to find some simple Indian teepee designs to recreate on his teepee

The finished project:)

If you are interested some of the documentaries and movies we are watching on this topic include

How the west was lost by Peter Kater

The West by Ken Burns

Geronimo: An American Legend

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee

The last of his tribe (the story of Ishi)

If you know of any other great movie for this time period feel free to let me know:)!