Sundial

We made a sundial yesterday.  It's just a piece of plywood with a nail in it.  Each hour we went out and marked where the shadow landed. 

Drive to Collect Donations to Help Animals

E has been working on a doing a drive to raise money for the local animal shelter and a horse rescue.  She wanted to do something to help animals, so we called the animal shelter to see if she could volunteer, but they said she was too young.  So we googled for ideas of ways kids can help animals, and came across the idea to do a drive to collect donations.

She called the animal shelter and horse rescue and asked what they need.  Then she presented her idea to 4H and asked them to make it a committee. Then she did a presentation for the Humane Society and asked them to help.  She wrote a letter to businesses to ask them if she can put collection boxes in their locations, went to their locations, talked to the owners/managers, told them her idea, and got permission to put the boxes in 3 businesses.  Another business owner heard about it and offered to let her put one there, and of course there will be one at our county 4H office.

Yesterday, we went shopping for all the box decorating supplies and the kids on the committee, including L, met to decorate the boxes.  E typed up the lists of what the animal shelter and horse rescue said they need, I formatted it, and we posted them on the boxes. 

Not sure if the other kid's mom is ok with her picture being on a public blog, thus the editing.

Today we went down to the newspaper office, and she told one of the reporters all about the project, so we're hoping it will be in the paper next week.  The boxes will be up for the whole month of April, because it is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month.  So I'll post an update after that with a tally of what gets collected! 

We also went down to the animal shelter today, so the girls could see the animals they are collecting donations for.  Those poor dogs will probably be really glad to get some new blankets and beds!  Other than that, they look like they are cared for well, and we were glad to hear that even though they are not a no-kill shelter, they do work with various rescues to try to either adopt out or transfer the animals before even considering putting them down.  The girls REALLY wanted to take home one of the adorable kittens they had.

She has learned so much from doing this:

Public speaking/presenting skills
Cold calling skills
Making a plan and implementing it
Typing and writing (spelling, reading)
How shelters/rescues work
Volunteering
Working with others
Finding a way to make something happen when the first idea doesn't work out

Smashing Grapes

We finally smashed grapes with our feet like I posted as a plan back in August.  It was fun!  I wish I could afford to fill up the tub with them (as E  begged me to do!), but instead I just got a big box of them and divided them into two big mixing bowls and let the girls smoosh and stomp to their heart's content.  Then we strained out the juice and drank it.  I offered some to D and he looked at me like I'd just asked him to smell sweaty feet.  I told him I had washed the girls feet really well before they stomped the grapes, but he said "It's not that I doubt you washed them, but, um, no.  That's just gross."

I showed the girls the video of I Love Lucy where she stomps grapes in Italy, which is hilarious and if you have never seen I Love Lucy, you really should watch it.  I told them that their great grandma's parents came to America from Italy (well, technically Sicily which is a detail to me, but apparently very important to them) right before she was born.  We imagined that some of our ancestors might have stomped grapes at some point.

I tried to make raisins from the smashed up grapes, but they didn't turn out.  I didn't actually read how to do it, I just spread them on a pan and stuck them out in the sun. After a few days, I was afraid they had gone bad rather than dried out, so I threw them away.

All in all, it was a fun project!

August Learning Inspiration

Here is a list of some things we'll be doing this month, subject to changing interests. These are things I came up with by writing down the interests they express during our conversations, as well as things that I think they will enjoy that they haven't seen before. I'm putting the list here in case anyone else needs some inspiration, and please feel free to comment with the things you're doing this month too, because we all can always use more inspiration!

Places to Go:

Music in the Park
Hot Air Balloon Races
Go to community college to see the Geology class's rock collection and have the teacher identify our rocks (I haven't set this one up yet, but I'm hoping he'll go for it. The anatomy teacher did.)


Crafts:

Homemade fingerpaints
Make Flubber
Bees



Projects:

Make a movie (We have shot the raw footage for movies about bees and Princess Diana and E has ideas for Spiderman and Rapunzel movies, now we just need to learn how to edit them. E also told me today that she wants to make a movie with clay characters like in Chicken Run).

Making wine (hehe, ok not really wine, but last week or so E and I got on the topic of making grape juice and I showed her videos of people crushing the grapes with their feet like they did back in the days before the machinery that does it now. I think it will be fun for them to get a bunch of grapes and crush them in a bowl with their feet! Then we will drink some juice and maybe try making some kind of Traditional Foods fermented drink).





Books/videos/things to look up:

Yom Kippur is coming up next month, so we will get some books and have some discussions about that in advance. We may also discuss the 9th of Av, if I can find a way to present the reality without going into too many horrible details.


Pirates have been a common play theme around here lately, so we'll get some books about real pirates. Today we found out about Ching Shih. She was a Chinese pirate who commanded 1800 ships and 80,000 pirates.



Games to play:

E has been enjoying this 3D Logic Game the last few days. She got to level 8 with only two little hints from me.

Some kind of addition and subtraction game that uses jumping or throwing or some other activity to play (let me know if you know of a good game!) I think there are some ideas on her flash cards, but I need to read them again.




Things to do:

I'm going to start taking them outside every night to see the moon and whether it is waxing or waning or full.

Use a piece of butcher paper to trace their bodies. Then we'll make drawings of life sized organs, bones and other body parts to glue to their paper "body." We'll make "blood" with food coloring and marsh mellows for blood cells. (I got this idea from a fellow homeschooling mom, and I might set it up to do as a group project with some friends).