Marissa's Latest Projects

Marissa seems to always be busy working on a project for school.  

Today their class of 6th graders are headed to Ft Wayne to a place called "80/20" where her group will present a locker storage idea to engineers to see if it will be something the business would want to create and sell.  Her initial design and presentation received some good reviews so she's excited (and nervous) about today's presentation.

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She was also suppose to do a report of some kind where she made breakfast (as seen below) and wrote different facts on the backs of the toast and eggs.  Her challenge was to make the design all out of other materials rather than just drawing them on paper.  So, her toast is painted cereal boxes.  The eggs are actually pieces of wood that she cut out and then added yellow felt to.  And the bacon is an old belt that she painted.  She did really well thinking through her own design and what she wanted to use and I am always amazed at the creativity that goes into her projects.

And finally....

in honor of March madness, all the kids in her class were asked to pick a book that they really liked.  Then the kids were put into a bracket format and at each level, they would make a different presentation and the kids would vote who went on to the next level.

Marissa chose the book "The Testing".  I think she started with a traditional book report.  Then she was chosen to advance so she made a poster.  I'm not sure of all of the steps because they happened at school until the final three students.  Then she had a week to put together a movie trailer to "sell" her book to the rest of the class.  Here is the movie that she put together with the help of some family actors!!  LOL

She was excited when she came home yesterday because she had been chosen as the winner with over 90% of the votes.  She said, "Some day I'll look back on this and say 'how did that win?  It wasn't even very good?"

Fun School Projects and E-Learning

I don't usually share homeschool stuff on this blog, but the girls have been working on some fun projects in recent days.  We have finished up all of the textbooks in our curriculum and could be finished with our year, but the state says we need to use all 180 days of school so that means we still have 8 more days to go.  I'm so thankful for our library and the resources they lend out because I need all the extra help right now that I can get!

One of the books I checked out had a bunch of math projects in it.  The girls learned about parabolas and spent a couple of days working on some.  They used manilla folders and string and stitched a few different patterns...

...and they used colored pencils and paper to work on a few more.

We took another few days to work on Tangrams.  Using the same number of pieces, they were asked to recreate several different designs and pictures.

We learned about fractals and spent some time make snowflakes and different triangle patterns.

We've also been doing more science experiments.  One of our lessons last week was to test if a black marker was really made of black ink.  They dipped strips of coffee  filters and paper towels into water and watched the ink spread out into various colors and determined that "no", a black marker is actually made up other various colors.

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On another note, Melayna has had to complete two Saturdays of e-learning to make up for some snow days that we had during the winter.  By completing various projects online, they won't have to go to school into the month of June.  Most of her subjects were completed on the computer, but for music class they had her make her own colored xylophone and then play it to see how it sounded.

Maker Projects

I checked out a book recently that had a lot of "Maker Projects" in it.  I'm not necessarily good with science experiments but I was hoping that we could handle building a few things instead.  I'm happy to report that most of the things we worked on the past two weeks did turn out pretty well.

Since we're learning about the different kinds of energy in Science, we used the book to help build a wind turbine out of paper cups.  We also built a water turbine out of a two liter but I didn't get a picture of that.

This past week we built "Super Speakers" out of paper towel rolls and paper cups.  It really did distribute the sound and made it louder.

Because we were talking about "Heat Transfer" another day, we made "Baked Alaskas".  I had never heard of a Baked Alaska before but it sounded interesting because we were suppose to cook ice cream in the oven for three minutes without it melting.  (Copying the concept of igloos in winter).  The girls really wanted to try this one for two reasons.  First, they like ice cream so it would be great to eat our science project and second, they weren't sure it would work and they both wanted to watch me clean the entire oven when the ice cream melted all over it.  

Anyway, Marissa made the cakes the day before and let them cool.  We also put ice cream into bowls and then let them re-freeze into molds.  Then on Friday, the girls made the meringue that goes on top of the ice cream.  The cake and meringue would be the "insulator" that would absorb the heat rather than it going to the ice cream.

They cut out their cakes and put the ice cream molds on top of the cake.  Then they smothered their meringue on top of the cake and we baked it at 450 degrees for three minutes.

Sooooooo..... the meringue didn't quite set up the way it's suppose to and it ran all over my oven, but the ice cream was still hard and cold.  Amazing, right?!

And then we ate a yummy snack!!

We also take part in "maker days" at our local library.  It's something new they just started recently in support of our homeschool community and it's been a nice addition to our schooling.  One of the children's librarians puts together projects once a month and then it's a come and go type thing.  

This month they had bracelets to make.  Since Marissa and Morgan both own their own looms and tons of rubber bands, this was a well enjoyed project.

They also had a center where you could make your own marble run maze out of paper plates and strips of paper.  

Even Nolan made a small bracelet before losing interest and running into the toddler room to play.

I just might have been the only adult to make a craft!!  :-)