Science

We spent a fair amount of time this week making a volcano. We papier-mached, we researched the optimal ingredient ratios, we painted, and we waited and waited and waited for everything to dry so we could make our hand-crafted volcanic eruption.

And today, when we finally put everything together? It was a pretty pathetic eruption. Things went much better when we were just doing our research.

I’m sure that’s an appropriate metaphor for something along these lines:

And you know what? We did find the journey to our disappointing volcano quite enjoyable.

US Geography

We took a break from our Geography study this week, because I neglected to put the necessary library books on hold. We’ll be back at it next week with a study of Florida. Which means, of course, that we’ll be making key lime pie.

Reading

We’re making good and steady progress on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” It’s much easier to do that when your primary reader (by which I mean: me) doesn’t have a cold. Pete has also been reading the first “Encyclopedia Brown” book and a biography of Rosa Parks, and Poppy just finished “A Snicker of Magic” for our book club. Her current literature study book is “The Westing Game.” She’s not crazy about it so far, but I suspect that’s because she knows it was one of my favorites when I was her age. I find it very frustrating that she’s so reluctant to consider the titles that I suggest she’d like, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Math

Poppy finished her current math curriculum yesterday, and she’ll be starting the new one on Monday. Pete finished his old curriculum a few weeks ago and had been working on Teaching Textbooks 3 while he waited for the new level of McRuffy Math to arrive. It finally got here late last week, and he started it on Monday morning.

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!