Fun, Family, Educational Time

This week Phil and I decided to have mandatory family time. We have a Friday family fun night most Friday nights in our living room where we watch a movie, put together a puzzle, work on a class project together, make a dessert together and/or play a game together (usually Candyland).

Well we'd been feeling that the girls needed to get out and go to a museum or on a family road trip or something to just get out of our normal surroundings. So we did a little searching and decided on the Tennessee Aquarium.

I wanted to go to Tellus Science Museum here in GA since we are studying Matter right now but the idea of combining a little road trip with an educational experience won out. And I'm glad it did. A two to four hour road trip has become an epic event for this clan. We sing karaoke, the kids do activities, of course we take an abundance of snacks and treats, we try to get as many truck drivers to honk their horns as possible, we count cars or buses or whatever might get our attention and we read. So it's some of the best family time that we have.

Anyway, we had a glorious time in Chattanooga. We saw some of the most amazing and beautiful creatures God has made.The jellyfish was everybody's favorite.

I learned that my girls know more about marine life than my husband and I put together and we have not even studied marine life in school yet. When my four year old stood at this one particular aquarium and said it's an anemone! Look! An anemone! Phillip and I were like...what is she saying? LOL and then we looked at the plaque beside the tank and sure enough, it was a hairless anemone! She said that she got that from Finding Nemo. I'm thinking who watched Finding Nemo and learned what an anemone was? Same with Madison, she recognized this special type of jellyfish from watching Octonauts on the Disney channel. Thankfully I haven't been one of those no t.v. moms because they've certainly learned a lot by watching. T.V.

In school, we are still singing the three states of matter song. The girls finally know all of the words and are still having a lot of fun with it. They look forward to singing it everyday. Their little friends that come over for school one day each week are loving it too and they've learned soooo much about matter in so little time and it has been a blast for all of us!
 
Stayed tuned... we will be loading a new song this weekend or early next week!

We talked solely about the properties of each state of matter and their molecular structure, we did a different worksheet each day and ended the week with the most fun experiment that I found on the Two Posh Little Divas blog; creating a gas to blow up a balloon! My. Girls. Loved. It. We are going to do it again tonight at Friday family fun night so Daddy can join in the fun! If you plan on doing this, my tip is to buy a large bottle of vinegar so that you can do the experiment over and over again! Also, if it has been years since you've worked with vinegar and baking soda (like me)...be ready, the chemicals react fast to each other and it will startle the kids (to excitement)!

 

The Gas Experiment (our second go at it)

Thank you for reading my blog! Leave a comment if you feel so inclined and check out the blogs that I'm linking up to today! Preschool Creations, Homeschool Village, Collage Friday and WUH.

Favorite pic of the week...

Room full of Jellyfish. This was a jellyfish aquarium in a dark room

 

with mirrors so they look like thousands of glow lights.