Family Schooling: Our new co-op school and a Korean Festival

 We started classes at our new home school co-op this week. Miss L is taking ballet while the 3 oldest take an art class with a pro-art teacher. I am the assistant in that class so I was able to snap a couple of pictures. She gave them several drawing exercises and then asked them to sketch their dream house. Brother S drew his house under the sea with sharks around it. Brother M's house had a special room for spiders and bugs and a whole upstairs full of legos. 

 This is sister A explaining her house to the teacher (in the blue Hawaiian shirt).

The older kids are also doing a physics lab class.  They learned about space and are launching some kind of bottle rockets next week. 

 On Saturday we went to a big Korean Festival.  The best part were all the shows.  They played traditional Korean instruments and did traditional dances.  Miss L was mesmerized by the dancing and "princess" costumes.

 

  I loved seeing the older ladies all dolled up doing their graceful dances. I have seen them practicing similar dances at the rec center. It looks like good exercise.

They had stands with a variety of Korean foods and a booth explaining Korean culture.  Their were also a ton of vendors selling things. Hmart had a wheel you could spin to win free food from their grocery store chain.

Where were you during Hurricane Florence?

 We were worried about the hurricane and sad to hear about the damage it caused, but sooo happy to welcome our friends who had to evacuate their home on the coast for a few days. We had a wonderful time playing and chatting with them. The kids made several cup sculptures.

Then knocked them down in various ways... 

 

 We went apple picking!  These are Fuji Daybreak apples. 

 

 It was a little rainy, but we still had fun.

 Then we picked raspberries and made raspberry shortcake for dessert that night.

Field Trip: Baltimore Museum of Industry

We checked out the Baltimore Museum of Industry this week.  It was a wonderful museum and hardly anyone was in it! There were lots of hands on activities for the kids.  It was like stepping back in time to what Baltimore might have been like in the 30's, 40's, and 50's.  The print shop showed the evolution of printing at "The Baltimore Banner". 

 

A gas station had a fantastic old car that the kids could play in and pretend to fill up and clean.

 Brother M could barely reach the pedals. The kids were impressed that the windows could be rolled up and down manually.

 This cross section of a working engine was very well done.  The colors showed which parts get hot and cold and where the water goes.  The boys and I have had several conversations about this so it was nice to be able to see one in person. The pistons moved up and down as you turn the crank.

They had a real old pharmacy/soda shop set up. 

 The kids were excited about the ice cream...

 I loved looking at the apothecary aspects of it. Look at that huge mortar and pestle on the bottom shelf. I wish I had one like that!

Practice connecting the fire hose to the hydrant. 

 This is a recreation of the Corner Grocery, which apparently was a real shop at one time.

 It was fun to see all the old time labels and jars of candy on the counter.

 

 We went into a re-creation of the first local cannery.  The kids said that I needed a pressure canner this deep so that I could do all my jars quickly.

At the end their was a modern industry section showing how a video game design company develops its products. Then the kids were able to go in and make their own video games on the consoles inside.

We all agreed that we would like to visit this museum again one day. 

Grandpop Came to Town

Whenever Grandpop comes to town I know that we are going to have some great pictures.  Grandpop was watching the kids while I went to the orientation meeting for our new homeschool co-op.   Here are some snapshots from Clockworks Photography:

 Little Miss Rainbow Unicorn. She loves this helmet.

 Probably one of the few turkeys that has ever had his portrait done by a professional photographer.

 Playing Exploding Kittens:

 Two redheads:

Family Schooling: Back to School

We started our more rigorous school schedule again this week.  We are doing a new Biology curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful called Kingdoms and Classifications. It has been great so far.  It is geared towards grades k-6 so all the kids can participate in various ways. The older kids do microscope labs.

 Their are matching games with pictures of different types of cells. Those red cups are a sorting game that shows the order of taxonomy by decreasing magnitude.

 The kids sorted buttons by different characteristics.

 Brother S is learning to read this year and we are using a new curriculum that is supposed to help all the kids with spelling and letter direction/order.  It is called Spell to Write and Read.  I love programs that can work for all the kids together.  One of the first exercises is running around the clock - they need to know the clock so that they can form letters according to placement around the clock face.  They learn cursive and printing at the same time. It is supposed to help prevent or remediate dyslexia because of the way the cursive letters flow in one direction.

 Sister A and Brother M also decided to do an art project based on this foldable house.

 They made foldable house for their dolls.

 We had some tiring days getting back on school schedule.