So this is Ari observing our condensation experiment. We put ice water with food coloring in a glass and waited for it to start forming water droplets on the outside. And then a series of leading questions to get the kids to figure out that it was water vapor in the air condensing on the glass and not water FROM the glass (you know, because it wasn't green). I read a bunch of different variations on demonstrating condensation before I settled on this one. A lot of them just involved holding ice water over hot water on the stove. But the green food coloring seemed like a stroke of genius to me. It helped ME grasp the whole water cycle thing better than I ever have before, I think.
We're doing earth science for the first half of the year, then switching over to space science after that. I wrote out plans for the year--the basic idea is that we read about a topic in Usborne's Our World--a glossy two page spread on volcanoes or seasons or ecology or whatever; there are many pictures, so it holds Milo's interest as well, generally. And then we read some other books on the topic, or look at websites, or watch a United Streaming video. Then we do some kind of experiment or demonstration, and Ari writes up how we did it (I'm using this experiment page, at least for the time being). Our World only devotes two pages to weather, but I think it's too exciting for all that, so we're spending a few weeks on it.
Ari and I are reading The Weather Detectives
The kids in it don't really seem much like detectives, though. They just sort of travel around and check out the weather. There don't seem to be any particular mysteries in need of solving.
Ari's been reading a ton over the summer. Before he would always go in spurts; for a week or so he'd read and read and read. Then he'd be all done with it for awhile (I mean, he'd still read, but it'd be a Dr. Seuss book here and there instead of spending an hour at a time with Magic Treehouse books). But so far this summer, he's read the first two Boxcar Children books, a Third Grade Detectives book, The Littles Throw a Party (that's the one he picked out as his prize for finishing the summer reading program at the library), Flat Stanley, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, and the first two Arthur chapter books. In the read-aloud category, we just finished Matilda a bit ago, and then I really, really wanted to read The Hobbit to him, but he protested wildly that it was "boring" (which means, in Arispeak, "too hard to understand") so we're reading The Phantom Tollbooth instead. Maybe next year for The Hobbit.
Milo is flying through the Singapore Earlybird books with Dave. There are 4 books, and he's nearly finished with the first one. I was thinking of going through Phonics Pathways with him, but I don't think he's ready yet. We got to the blending part, and he just doesn't get it yet. So we'll just do lots of "reading readiness" type stuff for now and try again whenever he's interested. Reading is funny. Ari was reading a good bit by Milo's age, but he's always been a very visual learner. So he was sight reading way before he was sounding things out. And then we just sort of went back and put the phonics on top of that, so he'd have the decoding skills. He's very good NOW at sounding out words he doesn't know, but for a long time it was too hard (or, you know, BORING), so he'd guess at words he didn't know. My mother insisted for a long time that he wasn't really reading because he wasn't sounding out the words. But he could pick up a book he'd never seen before and read it because he knew so many words by sight. Anyway, so Milo is not as intensely visual as Ari, I don't think....he knows all of his letter sounds, but he doesn't remember words when he sees them, so I think it's going to be slower for him because he's going to need to really get the sounding out thing before he starts reading much at all. That's my guess, at any rate. Time will tell.
These are the rings I made so we can count off the days until we go to Disneyworld. Very festive! Except if we forget a day and then forget that we forgot, we'll be completely off track. But, at any rate, only 50-something more days until Disney!