First day of school 2011

Well, it's almost a month late, but I had to put our traditional first day of school pics for 2011 here! I love to click on "first day fun" and look back over the years. Crazy.

The annual Diet Coke and Mentos explosion....

Back to school celebration!

Cookie from Grammy and Grandpa.

We kinda like our traditions. :)

Snowflake Bentley

We just completed Five in A Row's Snowflake Bentley. It's a sweet biography about William Bentley and his quest to photograph snowflakes.

We learned about a lot about Vermont, old-time photography, Caldecott Medal winners, negative space, and hexagons. We learned about crystals, weather, perseverance, and sacrifice. We learned about the miracle of snowflakes and were overwhelmed at how incredibly creative our God is. We learned about sun dogs. Do you know about sun dogs? I had never heard of this phenomenon. It's very cool!

We used these directions to make our own crystal snowflakes.

We even got enough snow to go out with our mini microscopes and examine some close up.

And of course, we had hot chocolate when we came in.
What a great book and great memories. Two things that make learning fun and meaningful!

Catalog Math

Last night when Cole was supposed to be asleep, he was in bed looking through his new Lego catalog, adding up what it would cost to buy everything listed. He is a bit obsessed with all things Lego.

This gave me a great idea today. I am going to make word problems for him to do using his Lego catalog. By doing these problems he will not only be practicing math, but he will have to use reading and problem solving skills as he looks for each item and reads through the descriptions to get information.

The options are endless, and you could even work in shipping costs and tax.

Here are some of the questions I have come up with so far.

-If you lined up the Police Helicopter, Police Boat, and Police Station, how many inches of space would you need?

-What would it cost to order 4 Ninja Training Outposts?

-If you had $35 and you ordered the Log Cabin, how much would you have left?

-What is the total number of pieces in the Tower Bridge and Fire Brigade?

-If you stacked King's Castle and Outpost Attack on top of each other, how tall would it be?

-If you had $300 and you ordered Diagon Alley and Rockefeller Center, how much would you have left?

You get the idea. I think I will do the same with the American Girl catalog for Riley.

It's an easy way to teach higher level thinking and real life application!