Weekly Wrap UP 4/21/17

Book club activities for Westing Game have been going well and the boys are enjoying trying to figure out the mystery.  We introduced the boys to the book by having them play the game clue and build an apartment building as this is where the characters live.  I found some character cards free on the web and the boys are keeping a detective journal on each character.

Since this book is a mystery we thought we would introduce the book by first playing the game clue.  Neither boy had ever played the game before 

I found free character cards online and printed them off so the boys could keep track of the 16 characters of the book and on the back of each card we wrote down clues and other information to help figure out who the murder was.  

SInce most of the activity occurs in an apartment building we had the boys construct an apartment building and label where everyone lived to better visual the characters and the place where all the action takes place. 

the books labeled the apartments and we used another set of character cards to put what character lived with whom and where.

The boys are having fun reading and trying to figure out who the suspect is.  Next week the boys will have gathered all the clues and should be able to guess who the murder is.  They are also working on constructing their own 'whodun it' game for us MOMs to play:)

MarioFan is also attending a Brain Discovery class at the local university in the city.  This is really a review for us as we studied the brain 2 years ago but it is always good to do a refresher class.  SInce I didn't post last week I am posting what the kids have done in the last 2 weeks.

The kids learned the parts of the brain 2 weeks ago and last week learned how the sensory and motor cortex work

they did a experiment (one we did at home) 

Recorded their results

This week they looks at cells under the microscopes

Gathering cheek cells

and looking at motor neurons from rats.

Again the kids recorded what they saw.  I was very please to see and hear just how much MarioFan remember from when we discussed it 2 years ago.  It is always nice to know the kids retain the information.

Lastly MarioFan and I had an evening out at the Science center where they had a mini anime convention going on.  My daughter was out that evening with her Dad attending her anime club.  We try to get together individually with each child quarterly to have some special one on one time.

MarioFan loved seeing all the people dressing up in characters he knew

We also took the time to see some of his favorite exhibits at the science center

And even found a few new ones we had to try out!

 At the end of the evening they had a parade of characters and here are just a few pictures I took.  I have no one who these characters are but my son sure did and he along with the audience cheered and jeered  as appropriate:)  We got home late and I was exhausted but we had a good time, although I still need to learn a lot more about anime!

This has been our last two weeks in a nut shell:)  We are down to the last 6 weeks of our coop and the kids are working hard to complete their classes successfully:)