Keeping them Interested

I struggle sometimes in keeping the children interested in their school work. School goes much better if we get it done first thing in the morning. If I wait until after lunch to do the bulk of the work ....forget it...their brains are already playing hide-n-seek. LOL ;-) I will say that blocks and puzzles are a lifesaver for the preschool age. :-) Here is a picture of Little E last week. He played with his blocks the entire time the older two did their school lessons.

Yes his eyes are glowing. I seem to have more trouble with his eyes then I do with anyone else. Oh well....Sort of freaks me outside sometimes though. :-) Anyway, another great thing about these blocks is it sometimes gives motivation to the older children. If they know they can build with blocks when the school work is done...sometimes it gets them to stay on track and get things done.

I don't have a ton of pictures from school lately but I do have one of the lab day on Saturday. Beloved and the children did an experiment with a balloon rocket. Can you see it? It's the green blob on the left of the picture. Speaking of lab day...I have to get caught up on all the experiments we were/are supposed to do. I have fallen way behind on that, but Beloved has a half day off from work tomorrow so that would probably be the best time. :-)

Lab Day

Today was a "lab day" for school. Except...we don't have a lab, but we had fun anyway. :-) We talked about volcanoes today: the different shapes, lava, how they can change the landscape, etc. This was our first experiment of the day.

What did we do with dirt, Styrofoam cups, and toothpaste? We were showing the impact lava can have on changing the landscape. We put a hole in the bottom of the empty cup, placed the opening of the tube of toothpaste in the bottom, and filled the cup with dirt.

When you squeeze the tube, the toothpaste displaces the dirt. Can you see it in the picture? I even made sure the toothpaste was red ...like lava. ;-) If you click on the pic to enlarge it...you can see the toothpaste a little better.

Then the children made their own volcanoes out of play dough. We then did the typical baking soda and vinegar to make the volcanoes erupt. :-) They had so much fun with this.

After we did our projects for volcanoes we went on to what I said we would do a long time ago. The next project for the Instant Challenges. We didn't follow it exactly again, but the children had fun. All three worked on it together. They used styrofoam cups, chenille sticks, tape, marshmallows, foil, and straws. Here is their boat that they made with these objects.

Believe it or not....it floats! The children did a great job. I am so proud of them. At first they complained because they didn't know how. They kept asking for help, but I told them to just think about it and they finally did it. See?!