Weekly wrap Up 10/20/17-- Mitosis and Christmas cake

Another busy week of school but we are trying to add in some fun stuff too:)

Once a month for the last several months a local movie theater is showing Japanese anime movies by Hayao Miyazaki.  We have made it to all the movies except one so far.  So far we have seen Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa The Valley of the Wind, Castle in the sky and Spirited Away.  There are two more scheduled before the end of the year.  

I have to add this photo.  I walked into the school room and saw the kids at their computers practically sitting in the same position.

It made me laugh!  OH and this is how their father sits;)

We had our first parent teacher meeting of the school year at PS.  I still find it really weird walking into school, along with all the other parents, lol.  We meet with her teachers (she only goes part time and takes two classes)  Firedrake is doing well, so far has a A in both classes (algebra and psychology) and both teachers are impressed with her work ethic.  Although both teachers did note she gets frustrated when the other kids are not up to Firedrakes standards, lol.  Firedrake does not like it when other kids aren't doing their load of the work and prefers to work alone, rather than in groups.


I forgot to post the project that Firedrake has been working on last week.  While reading Guns, Germs and Steel she is learning about where and how plants and animals are domesticated.  I had her print out pictures of the ancient animal (if we could find one) and located where they originated from.  She has been working on adding the pictures to our wall map in our school room.  The book also discuss why only 14 animals have been domesticated in the entire world!

I think I might have MarioFan add in ancient domesticated plants since we are reading about ancient farming in our history right now:)  

MarioFan is learning about ancient Egypt in our history book and I am read some additional books.

We haven't done as many history activities this year as We done so much  before, i.e. build pyramids, mummified an orange etc... 

 For Science we are learning about Mitosis (Next week we learn more about Meiosis)

This week we worked on understanding how the cell duplicates and becomes two new cells.

We made a poster to explain the process to hang up in our school room 

Our finished work.  Next week we hope to have the Meiosis completed on the other side of our poster.

I finally got to work on making our English Christmas cake this past weekend.  It is a type of fruit cake that needs time to cure in order to maximize it flavor.  IT is the only kind of fruit cake my family will eat.  I also make one every year for my Mother to have when they visit at Thanksgiving.  I got this wonderful recipe from my friend in England and I did a post about it here and here if you want to try it at home:)

I made three this year so I have an extra one that I will probably give to a friend.

Mmmm it looks so good right out of the oven and I have to wrap it and put it away quickly  or my family starts swarming around taking nibbles of it, lol

That is our week in a nutshell, keeping busy as usual:)!