I want to be like You: Brie

Showing posts with label Brie. Show all posts

1/31/12

Gabriela

Gabriela~ I can't believe you're 10 years old. You are such a blessing to us. We hope your day was special! We love you deeply!

G~ Generous...you have the most generous heart I know. Always thinking of others and getting others gifts!

A~Artistic... you have so much creativity, you are very artsy.

B~ Beautiful...Almost every time we take you somewhere, we hear how beautiful you are. I think your blue eyes and blond hair are strikingly beautiful!

R~ Responsible...I can ask you to do a job, and you get it done!! (normally!)

I~ Intelligent... You have the God given ability to do anything you put your mind to doing!!

E~ Extraordinary...The way you create, the way you pitch in to help, the way you love others...extraordinary!

L~ Lovable... You are very good at showing your love!

A~ Amazing... I believe that God has something special planned for your life, and I believe you are an amazing girl!

6/6/11

Fire...or not!

We have learned from our study that you need 5 basic things to survive in the wild.
-fire
-shelter
-signaling
-food and water
- first aid knowledge

One thing we learned... don't call us to start a fire for you! LOL!
We tried the old Cherokee method of rubbing a stick back and forth. I'm sure we didn't try long enough, but we did try. Brie really did well at sticking with it. After all her effort it still didn't work. Zeke wasn't as willing to be patient with it! (To our credit it had just rained) I have several other methods we are going to try. I want to try the magnifying glass method, the chocolate soda can method, and the flint/knife method.

This was our notched board. The kids took a rock and dug these sections out to create the notches.

Brie collecting some dried grass to use for tinder.

Trying the old fashioned Indian way!

Still trying! (and yes the chairs need painted! It's on my to do list!)

4/7/11

More ocean

After a 5 week study we finished oceans, and we learned a lot. Here are a few more pictures from some of our experiments/projects.

This experiment came from Bill Nye's ocean book. Did you know that a squid can squirt it's ink in the shape of it's body. That helps it to escape from prey. So we colored a picture of a squid and then the kids tried to get the "ink" to take the shape of the squids body. They couldn't do it, but it was a great reminder that God makes everything...and he created everything to work the way it does!

The following experiments are from our Awesome Ocean book...

Fill a tall glass almost to the top with water. Insert a drinking straw about 1" into the water and slowly blow a bubble. Both kids declared it's pretty easy. Now push the straw farther into the glass so that the end is just 1" from the bottom and slowly blow a bubble. The kids said it was much harder to do, because of the pressure.

We learned that every minute in the day (in most places) air presses against our bodies with nearly 15 pounds of force. It's equally distributed throughout our bodies so we don't notice it, unless the air pressure changes. (think about being in a plane and how your ears get blocked) In the ocean, changes in pressure are more noticeable, because water is much denser than air. As you can see in our experiment we filled a bowl with water, put a plastic bag up over our hand and wrists. (secure with a rubber band) Dunk your hand into the bowl of water and there is enough pressure to make you feel like your hand has been shrink-wrapped.

(and if you're noticing that the water looks white, I had a little accident! I was pouring coffee creamer into my coffee, and poured it into the wrong thing! Please tell me other people do things like this.) =)

Another pressure experiment...using a pushpin poke 4 holes in a water bottle. (vertically, and about 1" apart) Fill it up and set it down in the sink. Then observe how the water is coming out of the holes. The hole closest to the bottom makes the straightest stream...why? Because it's under the greatest amount of pressure.

One of our last days of our ocean unit was beautiful, so we went outside and painted some ocean scenery. We briefly talked about horizon lines thanks to this post! (if you are looking for art ideas, visit her blog, she has some great ideas)

The finished project..Brie's is on the top, Zeke's is on the bottom.

I think we all enjoyed our ocean studies. We could have easily made it a longer study! Imagine the fun we could have had if we actually lived near an ocean!

3/23/11

Lego Quest

I found about this through this blog. I thought it looked like a lot of fun! This weeks theme is natural disaster. If you're homeschooled/unschooled you have until Monday 28th to enter. (click the Lego quest picture for more information)

Brie and her volcano!

Zeke and his tornado!

3/22/11

Behind

We are nearing the end of our school year, and as I was checking to see if we were on track, I realized we had a problem. Brie was behind on math. Oops! So that means for the next 5 weeks we are drilling like crazy, and pounding her facts. She has already made huge improvements! She knew her multiplication facts pretty well to 3, so we started by working on the 4's.

We started drilling the Maria Miller way. You can watch a video here. (If you have any math concepts that need improved I would recommend going to YouTube, and searching Math Mammoth.) She is the creator of Math Mammoth. She also has math worksheets, which are free. We use these quite a bit. She has premade for grade level and some concepts or you can generate one with the things that need worked on.

Here is our drill work...
This is our skip counting outline. (sorry for the blurry picture!)

Then we went over the facts, again and again and again!

Something else we've been using is Timez attack. Brie hasn't had much experience with the number keypad, so her first time was horribly frustrating! I think by the third time she did this, she had all of them mastered.
( We right now are only trying the free trial. I'm still considering trying a paid membership, but haven't made any decisions yet. )

3/19/11

Ocean....

We have been studying oceans for a few weeks, and we've done a lot of experiments. More than we've ever done! I enjoy experimenting, and I think the kids do too! If you like experiments and are going to study the ocean I would highly recommend the book "Awesome Ocean Science!" by Cindy A. Littlefield.
Here are some of the experiments we did. The first one here was seeing what happens to salt water when it's dropped into fresh water. Because of the density it sinks!

We also put a piece of a carrot in the fresh water, and added salt til the carrot started to rise!

This one was about estuaries.

Brie is preparing the "fresh" water.

Zeke is adding food coloring! (He added a lot!)

As you can see Zeke's river "flooded" the ocean! *He was supposed to gently squeeze it in*

We did it again, so we could see how the river water floated on top of the ocean!

I think my favorite experiment so far has been about the Coriolis Effect. If you want to try it fill a bowl almost to the top with water and sprinkle on a pinch of cornmeal. Now blow easily and steadily across the water surface and watch the way the cornmeal is carried by the currents. The same thing happens when wind blows across the surface of our spinning planet. (and yes I'm easily entertained!)
Zeke made a Lego 3D shark, and Brie made a crab. Not something we normally do, but fun!

Brie and Zeke both wrote poems about the ocean. They are also memorizing "At the seaside" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I went to the ocean

and it had lots of motion.

I dipped my feet in and it was cold,

but I felt so very bold.

by: Gabriela

I went to the beach and saw cool seashells.

I got wet from the waves, and it was really cold.

We went back to the house and I saw a ship sailing,

and then we all had some hot cocoa.

By: Ezekiel

This is the first poems either one has written. I thought they did good! Zeke was very adamant about his not rhyming!! After they typed them up, they made these creations! We sprayed adhesive onto the paper and sprinkled some sand on it for the beach!

I'm glad they both remember going to the Pacific Ocean last year. When I read their poems I could tell they were both recounting their experience last year! I wish we could repeat it! We still have 2 weeks of our ocean study left, so we may share more experiments along the way!

2/18/11

I know this isn't the best video, but I hope you get the idea.

2/17/11

Rag Roll!

I have a beautiful little girl who sometimes wants her hair curly. (she has very straight hair!) (can anyone relate?) I have tried hot rollers, curling irons, braids. Nothing really worked. I saw this idea on a blog somewhere quite a while ago,and decided to try it. It is really easy, and it really makes your hair curly!

It takes me 10-15 minutes to do her hair. (she has fine hair, if you have thick hair it may take longer.)

I used an old t-shirt that had holes, and cut it into 4-6 inch sized strips.
We always start with clean hair, it can be dry/ damp/ or wet. (I haven't noticed that one works better than another)
I take a section of hair, I suppose it would be about the size of one strand of hair for a braid. (does that make sense?) (you could do different size strands)
I smooth it out and then twist it. I take the t-shirt strip slide it down to the end of the hair, I wrap the bottom around the strip and I roll it under all the way up to the top and tie the strip in a knot.

rolling it

Tying it

what it looks like.

All done! (I will try to take a video later and put it on here!)

(Where ever I saw this likened the rags to an extra pillow!!)

1/27/11

Gabriela

My beautiful angel... I can't believe you're 9 years old today! Thank you sweet girl for being who you are. You are such a generous girl who thinks of others before herself. We love you Brie, may the Lord continue to bless and guide you!
Happy Birthday!

1/27/10

Happy Birthday

Gabriela- I can't believe you are 8. I'm so blessed to have you as my little girl. You bring so much joy to me and our whole family. I can't wait to see what God's got in store for you.