Bleh

Meant to post before, just got distracted. Alex is volunteering with St Bernards starting next week. The interview went great. Yay!

Our apartment flooded, in the closet.

And I bought some more books. I'm really going to stop doing that. Someday. I promise. (fingers crossed behind back)

Fourth grade reading level and up...

set of 6 books, Fish, Birds, Whales & Dolphins, Mammals, Reptiles & Amphibians, Insects

set of 4 books, Muscles & Bones, Ears, Brain, Eyes

Complete Handbook of Science Fair Projects

Every Day's A Holiday, "Value Based Theme Units for Individual Calendar Days"

Pocket Rhyming Dictionary & Lucky Pocket Spelling Dictionary

Too tired for detail.

Japanese

We get access to Rosetta Stone software for free, at home, with a Phx library card. w00t! Alex wants to learn Japanese. Perhaps I will learn as well. :D

Kitchen Science

A discussion of why divers can't fill their tanks with limitless air evolved into how when water freezes it gets a little bigger. Alex remembers when I left a soda in the freezer and it exploded, but he wanted to do another experiment anyway. So we filled up a bottle of water and added some food coloring. That migrated into multiplying the drops of color to get the recipes we wanted to create the right colors. When the color was perfect we added a line on the bottle to show where the water was, and put it in the freezer. We shall see what we shall see.

Fun. :D

Now he's playing with his Spongebob playdough set. He was patently unimpressed with the multiplication workbook I gave him. Shocker, eh? Well, it's there if he gets interested.

Amazon is going to put me in the poorhouse

But I'm all excited. I got for me:

"What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good Fourth-Grade Education (Core Knowledge)"
E.D. Jr Hirsch

"Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter"
Steven Johnson



And for Alex and I to do together:

"Science Experiments You Can Eat: Revised Edition"
Vicki Cobb

"Entertaining Science Experiments with Everyday Objects"
Martin Gardner



And for Alex:

"Stormbreaker (Alex Rider Adventure)"
Anthony Horowitz

"Hatchet"
Gary Paulsen

"Haunted Mad Libs"
Roger Price

"SpongeBob SquarePants Mad Libs"
Roger Price

"Cool Mad Libs"
Roger Price

"250 Piece Tub with 150 Bonus Parts"
K'NEX

"Klutz Kwiz 4th Grade Math: Cards and Math Deck"


...

We've got a globe, maps, art supplies, legos, playdough, tons of books. I think with this last batch of stuff I will have most of the things I forsee needing within the next few months. The only thing I didn't get was magnetic poetry. Next time I splurge I will get some. I think Alex would love it.

I'm going to go get some food and work now. :)

Whee

We hit the library. Got some fiction and a book on cobras. We also went to the bank to take care of my accounts and Alex asked about getting him an account. At some point we may do that. Need to see how responsible he can be first, and right now it doesn't look good, heh.

Today we cleaned up, did dishes, etc. Now Alex is watching Toys Story 2 and I am ostensibly working. ;)

Crazy Busy

It's been a long time since I've posted, oops. We've had a busy few weeks, and I haven't been keeping up. This is supposed to be a kind of record of what Alex is doing and learning, so I will try to keep up a little better.

I've totally abandoned the 23 things thing, sorry. :/ Life and stuff got in the way.

Anyway, we went to the science center yesterday. We did so much cool stuff! We saw a 3D Imax movie about coral and fish and stuff and that was awesome. Alex and I built this cool plumbing thing and I got a terrible cel phone photo of it. Alex was so proud. :) We spent a ton of time in the home building room, Alex did almost all the activities. We went through the human body area, and the insect area. There was one room with all kinds of interactive stuff, and Alex learned about pulleys and levers and stuff. I made lots of paper airplanes, most of which were colossal failures but it was fun anyway. We spent a TON of time with the air pressure exhibit. Alex LOVED it. Then on our way out we did the outdoor water play thingy and he got himself soaked and generally had a fantastic time. It was a great day. :D

We have an appointment scheduled for next week to meet with the Saint Bernard rescue so Alex can volunteer there. He is still in gymnastics and we've had some strange issues come up with that but overall it's been a very positive experience. I'm not sure he's going to want to do it again. I do want him in something big and physical, so if he quits gymnastics hopefully I can get him interested in some other activity.

We're signed up for an animal care class with some animal welfare group and also a dissection class at the science center.

My first round of emails to homeschool groups did not get much of a return but the latest one went very well. I have like 5 groups to read up on and maybe we will visit them all.

I really like having him home. :)