International Space Station

The ISS passed over our place on August 25 & 26, with possible additional viewing nights on August 27, 28, 29 and September 7. Tonight, it could be seen by the naked eye for approximately 4 minutes!

The video is a little shaky, but this gives you an idea of how quickly it was moving.

To see what dates and times the ISS is visible to you, check out the NASA Human Space Flight website.

Make Some Lava

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been studying Venus in science using Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy text. Each lesson incorporates a mid-lesson activity (usually an experiment). This unit's mid-lesson activity was to make lava using some basic household supplies.

We used butter to represent rock. When heated, the rock melted into molten rock (or lava once it's spewed from a volcano). After the volcano erupts, lava rolls down the mountain, destroying everything in it's path and ultimately cools and rehardens into rock.

The change in chemical properties were what was being presented as well as giving the kids a visual of what happens when a volcano erupts. Our volcano erupted the butter, which ran into our dirt (flour) destroying/displacing all the dirt in its path and rehardened leaving lava trails in the dirt.

My daughter really enjoyed this activity and was very excited to build her own volcano!

Getting (Back) Into the Groove

So, I'm back after nearly a month of traveling and excitement!

We are back on track with school now this week, and I'm rather excited about it! Our school days have been looking a bit like this after our "little" break.

Bible - 1 worksheet and memory verse work
Phonics - 1 worksheet after boardwork
Grammar - practice sentences
Literature - 1 chapter of "Farmer Boy"
Science - continued study of Venus

To ease back into things, we've done 2 hours per day this week, and next week, it will be back to our regular 3-4 hour schedule!

And because no post can be complete without a pic, here ya go: