Favorite Pics from the McWane Center

Here are more pictures from our trip to the McWane Center in Birmingham.

Oh, the IRONY!!!

You have to know Nathan to get the full gist of why this is such a cute picture. :)

And my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE:

McWane Science Center

We traveled to Birmingham to get Will's non-load bearing casts removed and get his walking casts put on, so I decided we might as well make a school day out of it and plan a field trip! :) We went to the McWane Science Center and had a blast!!

Here are some of the activities from the main level:











And now I have proof that I have chaos-makers:



I have to jump in and say that every time Nathan ran off, we found him here:



On the lower level, they had a water set-up where we could touch sharks and stingrays. Will has always been afraid to touch the water animals in exhibits like this, so I was really proud of him when he finally did it that day!!


Witt - on the other hand - had no problems touching! I don't think this picture does justice to how far down in the tank his left hand was, but I think you can see that I had a firm grip on him! He was almost swimming with the sharks! LOL!


On the second level there were weather exhibits, dinosaurs exhibits, and more.




We didn't have time to make it to the 3rd level. We will definitely be going back to this place!!

ONE TRAIN DAY

PBSKids is having a story writing contest and Will was very excited to join. He is a FANTASTIC story teller and has been for quite some time. I think the earliest one I actually recorded though, was when he was 4 years old. Here's a short vlog of one from when he was 5.

And now he's 7! Where has the time gone??? ... but that's a different post in itself. :)

To prepare for this contest, we talked about the parts of a story. The characters are introduced in the beginning, something exciting happens (like a problem) in the middle-ish section, and then the problem is solved at the end.

His brain works faster than his hand can write, so he told the story and I typed it out. Then, I found the word limit for his age group was only 200 words. Let me tell ya, we had to CUT and CUT and CUT some more!!! His original story was much more involved than the submitted story, but what can ya do? Ya gotta follow the rules, right? :)

So without further ado... here is ONE TRAIN DAY completely written and illustrated by Will (you can click on the pictures to get a closer look if you like):

Once there was a forgotten train station. It was covered with dirt, ivy, and strawberry bushes. It was discovered when a man ran into the chimney while plowing!

The old station was cleaned up and a driver, Samuel, was hired. Samuel's steam engine, Angel, and her coach, Alex, run the station now. There is also a breakdown train, Donald, in case of trouble.

One day, the Electric Crew came to fix the shed lantern because the wires were cut. They boarded the coach. Angel began huffing and chuffing until they were moving out slowly and steadily.

They were having a wonderful ride until Samuel saw logs on the tracks! He quickly screeched the brakes on. Angel stopped an inch from the logs!

Angel put Alex onto a siding and then hitched up to Donald. She pushed and steamed behind Donald, shifting him into place. There were nine logs on the tracks and Donald could lift three at a time so it only took minutes to clear the tracks.

After the logs were gone, Donald was returned and Angel coupled with Alex again. They got to the shed before dark and the Electric Crew was able to fix the lantern wires.

THE END.

Final word count? 200.

Pretty good, huh? :)

Create Your Own Animal

We've been studying animals and how they are classified. Moving Beyond the Page has done a great job integrating math, social studies, and science into this section, plus they did a fine job integrating some imagination and art along the way! It's been so interesting to see that some of the things I would have left out had I been making the curriculum are the things that interest Will the most!

Here's the information about his animal that he created:

Name?

god of the steel gods

Classification?

insect wit 6 legs

Does it have a thorax?

No, 1 large hard shell on his back, but he can roll up in a ball
It has feelers and eyes.
And a very delicate mouth... that means it could break easily.
It also has a small bug-poisoning tail - for insects, NOT people!

Habitat?

Grasslands

Food?

Grasshoppers and other insects that destroy gardens (oh, and crows, too!)

Shelter:

underground

Can you draw me a picture?

SURE! YES!

I thought I'd add the descriptions so you could get a better understanding for the drawing. :) I think this would be a great little insect to have around when gardening time comes along, don't you? :)

The World I Imagine

Will is a member of the 4H club in our homeschool group. One of the assignments for the month was to take a picture of the world you see and alter it into "The World I Imagine".

He took about 50 pictures on his own with a digital camera and then we sorted through the best ones. After that we picked the top 5 and then altered them.

Here are the originals and the imagined photos - all created by Will. He used the program PictureIt to alter the photos.


A bush from our yard:


Trucks in the sand pile:



Well insulated dog house (no redneck comments, please! LOL!):



Patch of clover:



Will's bike:


And here is his favorite, Dog Food(!) - the one he submitted for the contest (Update: and won 1st place for his age group!) :

Homeschooling Days 24 - 27: Sickness

We took Monday off in celebration of Will's 7th birthday, Sept 12. It's a good thing I already had that day scheduled as an off day because Nathan got strep throat and Witt had croup over the weekend and the first part of the week. Then I got worn down, too. Luckily, Will never got terribly sick.

Math almost came to a hault this week; luckily we were discussing the (easy to Will) topic of evens & odds and counting by 2s. Most of our math so far has been review as far as concepts go, but I'm really taking the time to go over them completely as well as give a firm foundation for using the abacus. (He already knew how to count by 2s before kindergarten.)

Will was able to do some of his phonics, spelling words and handwriting. Will also wrote a letter to "Aunt" Deborah in Georgia and we did the Feathers Unplugged Project.

Later in the week we read the book The Little House and discussed how communities and seasons change over time.

Will also took his first karate lesson this week! (Pictures to come...)

Homeschooling Days 19-23

This wasn't really an exciting week beyond the swimming day. Basic Bible, math, reading, and handwriting lessons.

We talked about a few different holidays in the US, Canada, China, and Mexico. We found those countries on the globe as well.

We looked further into Mexico as that is where Will wanted to dive a little deeper. We compared clothes, food, and toys as well. We talked about The Day of the Dead and calaveras. We even watched a tutorial on how to make an easy pinata. (We haven't done this yet, but need to!) We also looked up a few words in Spanish.

This week was also a campus week for us where our homeschooling group meets for art, history, and PE classes on a university campus. As always it was lots of fun!