martinzoo

Today was our first day of 5th grade. And as expected, it went fabulously!

The beauty of our first day is that we spend it in our pj’s. We think it’s kind of funny to stay in pj’s when our neighbor’s kids are all decked out in new outfits, headed off to the good old public school.

We began our day very academically with a load of Language Arts. We learned about the four major skills that must be learned in Language Arts; reading, listening, speaking and writing. We learned new skills to make reading more effective. And we learned an easy technique for finding the topic of a paragraph or story:

Step 1: Underline the nouns in each sentence that you think are the subject of that sentence.

Step 2: List all the nouns that you underlined

Step 3: Write the noun that you listed most often, that noun will be the topic.

And we learned about vowel diphthongs; which is when two vowels join together to make their own sound - such as the “oi” in oil and “ou” in couch. This will be the basis for our spelling list this week. GB finished the LA aspect of our day by playing the spelling bee game on his computer and doing some worksheets to reinforce the words.

After lunch is when we do our unit studies. This first unit will be on the effects that drugs, alcohol, and tobacco have on our bodies. I blogged earlier about the great program that we are using from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.   We did the first module today. It’s mission had two purposes: to introduce the child to the processes of science and to illustrate how information is transmitted through the senses.

The first half of this activity was to watch a video explaining the unit, and then examine the gooey object in the ziplock bag. He should observe and predict what he thought it was made of.

The second half of the activity he was to work on the experiment. Given the ingredients, plus some other ingredients, he was to try and duplicate the mystery goo.

Here is GB examining the mystery goo.

He immediately went straight for the cornstarch and water. Can’t get anything by him!

Mixing with fingers turned out to be the best way.

After mixing the water and cornstarch, he compared the mystery goo to his new mixture. Just for comparison I asked him to mix up the other two choices too. Just to be sure that he had the right one, even though he said he was 100% sure that it was cornstarch and water. And, of course, he WAS right. But I still wanted him to see the differences.

So his next target was the talc and water.

It gave him this greyish, clay-like substance. It was definitely NOT the same as the goo.

And lastly, he mixed the sugar and water, which had no substance to it all. So he concluded that he was right from the beginning about that cornstarch. But I feel like that just shows that he is in touch with his sensory abilities and was easily able to use them scientifically in an investigation. …………

…….Or, it was just too darn easy for him. But we shall see how the rest of the unit goes. He’s pretty curious about the effects of drugs and alcohol. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep his attention with it.

Today GB and I decided to try the alka-selzer rocket again. But this time we wanted it to be bigger. So we used a water bottle that has the pull top on it. That way, when the gas needs a quick exit from the bottle, it will be able to escape without exploding.

We tried a couple more times, and got better results with the angle of the rocket. But we didn’t get good video. So this was the one we decided to use. You get the picture, though.

And no, no dogs were injured in the making of this video. Sometimes that dog is such a ding-a-ling………..LOL!

I don’t know what’s been up with me lately. I’m in some kind of funk. I have no real energy or zest. I think part of it is that GB is finished with school. And part of it is that, even though I had a spectacular time in Santa Fe, I got all pooped out. I love to travel, but it does wear me out. And I just can’t seem to get my get-up-and-go back.

I keep worrying that I’m gonna forget some major commitment, or be slack about something big. Right now, I’ve been pretty slack with my house keeping. My floors need washing and my bathrooms need scrubbing. But all I want to do is read and watch my new favorite show, Jon and Kate plus 8. I keep thinking that if she can keep it together with eight kids, I ought to be ok with my group.

Anyway, we did do one school-y thing today. We made a rocket out of a film canister, some water, and some crushed alka-seltzer. We’ve tried it before, but we had major success today. It really makes a huge difference when you use the film canisters that snap when you close them. Don’t use the ones with the easy-off lids.

Here is GB demonstrating. And just in case you can’t hear him, he cracked me up when he called the alka-seltzer ‘Alcatraz’! How funny is that!?

On day 21 we finished our Tomatosphere project. We found that we had better germination in the “B” plantings. Of the 33 planted for each test group, we had 12 germinate in the “A” group, and 15 germinate in the “B” group.

As far as the growth and vigor of each group, we found no visible difference. All the plantings were roughly the same height (4 1/2 inches) and all showed good growth. GB was unwilling to do the extension activities because that involved cutting the plants off at the base and drying them in a paper bag to weigh them. He felt as if that was a waste of good plant life. Since I’m the only one who will really eat the tomatoes, I felt as if it was my call…………. but I bow to the child with the strong opinions.