Week 2

A bit of morning Bible reading

 Week 2 included a study of the life of Abram and life in the fertile cresent, the planet venus, math, reading, and a bit of art history.  The boys are getting their daily school routine figured out and the girls are getting used to independent play during school.  The homeschool tubs I made for the girls are working well and keeping them busy.  We enjoyed a field trip this week as well!

Grammar is not his favorite, but he is working on it diligently

Proving he has Ide blood, Noah uses his tongue to improve his coloring/writing skils ;)

Venus Experiment

We used butter to represent rock in our volcano experiment.  We discussed how rock starts as a solid, but is melted in the super heat of Venus.  It then erupts from one of the many volcanoes and spreads over the surface. Once it is on the surface it cools enough to turn back into solid rock. A silly, messy experiment, but I think we all got the point. 

Our solid rock

The rock liquefying under the surface of Venus

The volcano erupts

Liquid rock spreading on the surface

Checking out the cooled, hardened rock.

Field Trip: Blank Park Zoo

Our first trip to the Blank Park Zoo.  We took a little home school field trip to see the animals that would have been on Noah's ark. 

This little animal explorer worked really hard to write down the names of the animals he saw

A little tortoise we saw along the way.

This was Zoey's first time at a zoo (not counting sleeping at the St. Louis zoo as a baby)

Owen was able to complete his list of 40 animals as we toured the zoo. We made 40 our goal so we would remember the 40 days and nights of rain on the ark.

When the animals are a little bigger and more frightening than you are ready for it is nice to have a big sister around to make it all better.

My butterfly-loving boy!

We all thought the zoo was fun!

A little musical break in the Africa section of the zoo.

The Jensen kiddos

Sweet sisters

I think there will be many zoo trips in the future for these kids!

Week 1

We spent the week getting into the swing of things with home school.  We worked on creation through the flood in our humanities curriculum.  

 After spending Monday and Tuesday with friends the girls joined us for school.  They had a hard time getting used to playing independently at first, but they seemed to adjust pretty quickly.

 Owen really likes our classical writing curriculum.  The grammar curriculum is not his favorite, but I think it is important to be sure we have the basics down.  This week: Declarative sentences, Questions, and phrases. 

 The boys enjoy starting the day with worship. 

 Noah seemed to get the hang of the continents and oceans pretty quickly.

We had a little celebratory lunch/ ice cream out to celebrate the completion of our first week of school!  

Mercury: Crater experiment

 The smooth surface of Mercury made from flour.

 The kids launched pebbles at the "planet" to replicate asteroid strikes.

 Removing the asteroids

Examining our crators. We noticed that different sizes and shapes created different sizes/shapes of crators.

Home School Beginnings

The Jensen Christian Academy of Intellectual Exploration:

Today was our first day of home school.  We have all been looking forward to this.  Noah is starting Kindergarten and Owen is starting Second grade.  The girls played at a friend's house so that we could focus on a getting off to a good start.  We will have a few minor adjustments to make with our schedule, but all in all things went really smoothly.

My excited Kindergartener

 Noah age 5

My happy 2nd grader

Owen age 7

 Here we go!  Ready for our first day.

 The boys did a great job on all our school work. 

 We had a great first day together!  I am excited to see what the school year holds.