School and Summertime

We started back to school this past Monday....for all intents and purposes I have a 5th grader, 3rd grader, 1st grader, a pre-K and a baby in need of entertaining. I won't pretend I was nearly as ready as I usually am or as ready as I wanted to be, but for me the best thing is to jump in otherwise I will procrastinate.


But this past weekend I did work out a new schedule for us. I am attempting to give it a good try this time in an attempt to use all of our time better. The boys have been agreeable and it has helped me since I worked 3 specific times for them to do very specific chores.

I haven't had a chance to take too many pictures....school mornings are hectic and include me spouting out spelling words while feeding Annika her breakfast and helping Lakin with what he chooses to do that morning.

My original plan for science this year included an entire year devoted to life sciences- going through each of the Kingdoms- but then I changed my mind last minute. My boys, Rylan especially, have been obsessed with weather for a really long time. They are constantly checking the temperature and the forecast. Over the past few months I would sit down to check the forecast myself- they tend to keep WBIR.com's weather page up round the clock- and find myself reading the weather for places all over the country. The page was never local anymore. And once they discovered The Weather Channel they branched out even more. I would find them with the globe checking random cities all over the world: Antarctica, Nigeria, Greenland.... so I changed gears and started looking at doing that for our science the first few months.

We started slow and easy this week- easing back into work and all. We started with a few simple questions and experiments on the sun.

• Why is it warmer in the summer and milder in the winter near the oceans? (Air vs. Water)
  
• Which gets hotter- land or water? (Land vs. Water)
• Why is it hotter in the Summer than Winter?
• Why is the Equator Hotter than the North Pole?

They picked cities and checked temperatures for that last one. Rylan wanted to check Adam, Oman. I'm not an expert but I am not terrible at geography, but I had no clue where that was. So this weather channel obsession is helping with world geography too I guess...

But it is also still summer with plenty of time to play and enjoy. Lots of tomatoes, lots of okra and eggplant. The last of the cucumbers and the beginning of peppers and butternut squash and corn.

This was dinner.

We made Eggplant Fries. They were pretty good- though I think I prefer it breaded and baked.

Tonight I went after my basil. I have 3 huge sweet basil plants so I picked a ton to make pesto...

I would like to say she helped, but she probably made more of a mess than anything else throwing leaves all over the place- before she realized she could eat it anyway....