Friday, January 11, 2013

First Official Week Back

We've had a very good school week this week. Notice the big black square with my profile picture and a song title???  {smile}

My husband and I came up with this little song in about 2 or 3 days to help me teach Matter to the kids. Everything that I found on the web was a little lyric-heavy or dove a little too deeply into the subject for my little early elementary minds. So I tapped into the wonderful musical resource that is my husband and this is what we've created. The Three States of Matter Song. Stay tuned for more!!!!! (wink) 
The Three States of Matter Music Icon

We had so much fun doing this and my Phillip is sooooo great with making silly lyrics that make sense. You should see some of the hand-made anniversary cards that I've gotten over the years.

My lesson plan for Matter included singing the song at the beginning of science class and to end the class with it. We tackled one state of Matter each day, did a work sheet for each state and ended the week with an experiment. The girls drew what they understood from the experiment on the white board. It was fun and they've learned so much. I'd planned to start the water cycle next week but we are going to plow into the three states of matter a little while longer, there are so many ways to teach it and drive the point home.

Like next week we are going to focus solely on the properties of each. Do more experiments and draw the atom structure of each state to compare and contrast. Which this week, we did more of a physical illustration (using our bodies) for understanding the atomic structure. So fun!


A mom-friend at our co-op expressed a need for "time" and suggested that we swop teaching duties once a week to give each other a day to do other needful things. She runs a business here in town that takes a lot of preparation and planning week to week. I just needed to catch up on some cleaning and laundry so it worked out great for us both. Our girls are the same age and grade which makes sharing teaching duties pretty easy. I don't know how long we will do this but for this week, it was a God send! Because of this though, Madison worked her Saxon Math book, which she hadn't done in months and thanks to her regular Abeka Math, she could jump in there with no problem!


Working with Saxon flash cards
Chelsea, this week has been working on a math worksheet using counting bears.


Madison is learning more about proper nouns from her Rod & Staff English book. In History, we're learning about the French/Indian War so we watched some YouTube videos on how to speak French. I'd planned on making a French dessert (Riz au Lait) but we ran out of time and my husband did not pick up the bag of rice!

We did end our hard work week with a Friday Family Fun Night where we made your own parfait...Hey...isn't parfait French????

Favorite picture of the week...Chelsea leaving ballet class.



Thanks for reading. Linking up at Collage Friday, A Mama's Story, We are that Family, Preschool Creations and WUH! Have a happy weekend!



7 comments:

  1. I love that you came up with a little song to teach matter--how creative!

    Those parfaits look yumalicious!

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    1. Thank you! The parfaits are easy to make and the recipe can be found on the blog! Thanks for following!

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  2. How fun! You guys wrote and sang the States of Matter song? Creative! It's cute! My youngest listened with me. He likes the boing sounds! LOL

    That's really such a great idea to exchange teaching with another Mom! The kids get to have another teacher for the day...and Mom gets some time to do whatever needs doing...or nothing! LOL

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  3. It has been a lot of fun! Thanks for listening to it and I'm glad your youngest liked it. The little girls that came over for school this week liked it too and their mom used it to carry out the lesson at her house. It feels good to create something useful and even better to get positive feed back. Thanks again!

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  4. Great song. Made me think of all those wonderful Sesame Street songs.

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  5. Wow! It is so great to teach through songs! They will remember matter for the rest of their lives!

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  6. Fabulous. My husband's a musician, too. We're always making up songs as a family. This is my first time on your blog, so I'm going to take a look around!

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