Three months later.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Asher who was set to finish the testing for his yellow belt in karate the very next day. He was so excited...and felt like he'd been waiting for that for months (well, he had).

Then, he fell and broke his arm and wasn't able to go to karate class for the next two months.

He finally was given the go ahead to start back...just three days after the latest round of belt promotions. Since the promotions only happen once a month, he had to wait another month. (Which, really, wasn't so bad since he was still regaining strength in his arm and refreshing his memory of the material...though that's hard to explain to an eight year old who was impatient and irked by the fact that his little brother had passed him in rank while he was out of commission.)

So. Tonight. He *finally* got that yellow belt. Here he is receiving high fives from his fellow promotees after getting his new belt:

Yeah. He was happy. ;) He's a higher rank than Micah again, so all is right with the world, lol. (Except that Micah is now determined to catch up and has decided he wants to start going twice a week also, instead of just once a week. Since he's in a different category of classes, though, he won't actually catch Asher soon, so it'll be okay. I checked, lol.)

The promotion, itself, was really quite fun. (It's a separate session from classes...just for promotions.) All those who were moving up demonstrated the skills they've been learning in class...forms, combinations, defenses, sparring (for the older kids). Not only did we get to see all of that (cool to see what's down the road!), but the school's Demo Team performed a few times (choreographed routines to show specific skills). And there was pizza at the end...which made Noah and Micah happy. ;)

In any case, so very proud of my boy. He's worked hard for this and it's wonderful to see him excited about karate. 

Krakatoa.

Apparently, I'm on a roll with homeschooling this week. Today's history lesson included talk about Indonesia and the Dutch East India Company and Krakatoa. So. Of course we had to make a volcano. :) 

Note: We've done this before with our homeschool group, but Noah was 7 and Asher was 5, and Micah obviously wasn't old enough to remember. So I figured it was only fair to do it again. :)

Anyhow. Here's the basic dealio:

1. Get small plastic bottle. (Noah loved this because it meant that I actually bought some small bottles of pop, lol.) In case you're doing this for the first time, know that wide mouth bottles don't work as well.

2. Make homemade play doh. This was my first ever attempt at this because I didn't want to buy a bunch of stuff. I used this recipe and was pretty happy with the results. Easy. I'd already decided ahead of time that we were only going to make one volcano and the boys could just share it. :)

3. Make volcano. So, because it was a gorgeous day, we grabbed our handy cookie sheet (I'm pretty darn sure, btw, that I use my cookie sheets and muffin tins more for homeschooling than for cooking, lol!) and headed to the backyard. Started forming the play doh around the bottle. (Noah said we needed a tall volcano, to be most representative of the actual Krakatoa before it erupted.)

4. Improvise. Shortly into this whole deal, we realized we weren't going to have enough play doh. Grabbed all the leftover Model Magic from Asher's science fair project. Used that. ;)

5. Use funnel and pour baking soda into the bottle. Given that Noah recently did his experiments about acid-base reactions for the science fair, we let him be in charge of proportions.

6. Add the acid part. According to Noah's earlier tests, baking soda and lemon juice were going to yield the best results, so we started with that...adding some food coloring every now and then. After we ran out of lemon juice, we switched to vinegar. Turns out that vinegar reacts faster. :)

7. Play. After a few eruptions (during which Noah and Asher talked about how Krakatoa actually erupted in stages and thus insisted that we were reenacting that), the boys switched to just playing, having given up on being able to make the volcano actually explode like Krakatoa apparently did in the end. They powdered the tray and the volcano with baking soda to make the eruptions more visually exciting. Then they just started pouring baking soda onto the "lava" that had already spilled. 

So. We had fun. Got to talk about both chemical reactions and actual volcanic eruptions. Made a mess. ;)

(Disclaimer: Please know that most weeks are not as "cool" as this week has been with our homeschooling. Though I'm working toward more stuff like this...please don't hold me to these standards, lol.) 

Jello cells.

Yesterday, we made ourselves some jello cells. Very fun. Here's how:

1. Consult book. I love this curriculum. We've covered all three books in Level I already (biology, chemistry and physics) but are going back and reviewing them before summer...adding a few more "fun" elements as we review. Here's one of the pages we were working from:

(Here's another source for information and instructions. And here's one where they let the jello set longer and added things on top instead of inside.)

2. Buy assorted candy and jello. (I did this while the boys were at Options this week, to avoid the inevitable begging, lol.) I just snagged a variety of candies from those bulk bins at the grocery store for the most part. If I were to do this again, though, I think I'd brave the begging to involve the boys in this part, too. 

3. Make jello. I'd forgotten how easy this is...and how long it seems to take to set. ;) We used two boxes of each color.

4. Feed boys a snack. (See step 5.)

5. Sort candy. While we were waiting (impatiently) for the jello to set at least a bit, we labeled some cupcake tins with the cell parts we were going to represent. Then we sorted the candy we had into the spots according to what seemed to match best. (And, the boys managed to eat some of our microtubules...but, mostly, our supplies remained safe thanks to step 4.)

6. Add cell parts to jello. Though it felt like forever, we finally started adding cell parts after about 1.5 hours. For the animal cell, we made everything up in a gallon size ziplock bag...the plant cell, having a cell wall and all, was in a glass bowl. (If I'd had a more squarish bowl, I'd have used that.)

7. Return to fridge. It was agonizing to the boys, but we then returned everything to the fridge to finish setting. The torture was made better by eating some of the leftover cell parts. ;)

8. Enjoy. So, we tried to eat these for dessert. It was...interesting. Let's just say that there was ample opportunity for discussion about things that dissolve and things that don't and how that changes the consistency and taste of things. :) Yeah. Not really so tasty. But, we had fun "dissecting" our cells. ;)

That was all. I think it was a hit. I heard Micah talking about golgi apparatus randomly and saw him looking through a library book about cells that I picked up earlier this week. I even got Asher to try jello (which, if you know Asher and his tremendously picky eating habits, you know was saying something). 

Beyond that, boys are still fully enthusiastic about our "build your own country" project...I found atlases open, the globe out, and various music being examined for "national anthem" contention yesterday. We talked about fresh water availability and access to the ocean as they're narrowing down their locations. They started thinking about what national holidays they'll have. And, Noah's read through the entire book at least a couple times.

Life is good. ;) 

This morning.

Micah: "I woke up at 7:30!" (This, btw, is not normal. Given our odd schedule, boys don't generally wake up until 9ish.)

Me: "Why?"

Micah: "Sleep is just...TORTURE! It's sooooo booooorrrrring!"

Me: "Okay." ('Cause, really, what are you gonna do? You try explaining the beauty of sleep to a five year old, LOL!)

How To Build Your Own Country

Oh. My. Gosh. This book is awesome. I bought it a bit ago but finally started using it this week. Woohoo! Can you tell I'm excited? It's such a happy thing when I stumble across an idea or product that just truly excites us. This is one of them. 

It's not actually designed as a curriculum or anything. It's just so darn clever and fun. And it's organized such that it lends itself very nicely to a dandy little unit study. It's broken down into three sections...

1. staking out your identity (name, location, population, flag, anthem, etc)...
2. running the country (government, constitution, laws, money, services, taxes)...and, 
3. meeting the neighbors (keeping the peace, fitting in with the rest of the world, etc).

Like I said, we just started. Each of us is creating his/her own country. I've got it "planned" out to take a couple months. I don't want to rush it and want the boys to actually stop and give this some decent thought. We're talking about making up project boards to present each of our countries and then having those ready to show grandparents when they come to visit in May. :) (Nice to have deadlines sometimes, lol.) This week, I just introduced the idea and started reading the first chapter of the book to them. The goal is to have settled on a location and a name by the end of the week. (We do a bit of geography four days a week.) We're keeping notebooks for any ideas that come to us and will write up the final decisions later (and make flags and currency and passports and all kinds of cool stuff). Already the boys are having an awesome time. Here are just some of the things that have come up for discussion:

- Names. Obviously this has been hilarious and somewhat predictable. Still narrowing it down and trying to steer boys away from any place names in the Star Wars universe. ;) The book, itself, has some awesome choices. (For my own country, I'm in the very preliminary stages but have The Queendom of Bob, Amandaland and Country as possible names right now. I'm open to suggestions, lol.)

- Location. Decided to allow pretending here and let them overlap existing areas if they want. Had to clarify that we must be on the planet earth (for now...may actually go back and do this again for a study on the universe or something...where they can be anywhere in the universe). Worked in discussion about climates and habitats and economy. Found it freakin' funny that Noah immediately declared that he couldn't be an island nation because there wouldn't be enough land for all the cattle he'll need. (At this point, I also suggested Carnivoria as a possible country name, lol.)

- National (fill in the blank). Though I only asked for the first two things, they all quickly latched onto the idea of having a national bird, a national sport, a national food, a national language, etc. (Asher's invented an Ework for his bird, Micah's talking about stunt flying as a national sport and Noah would like to know if binary could count as a national language.) Man, look at all those side research topics. ;) If I were the kind of homeschooler who could let go of curriculum plans and rough schedules, I can really see that this project could cover all subjects.  

- Everything else. And, even though we're trying to focus just on the name and location right now, they've already been talking about forms of government and economy and international trade and armies and just so very many things.

They've been making notes and looking things up, and this has all been going on after "school hours," which just goes to show how into it they are. :) Plus, it's just plain cool. Happy sigh.