Christmas Crystals

Math

This week we played a game called Assassins. We took ten slips of paper and wrote one number between 1 and 100 on each paper. Then, we each took a playing card and multiplied the numbers on the card together. If we had the answer on one of our slips of paper, we've scored a hit! If we scored 3 hits, we would win. I (Kaylee) won!

Language Arts

This week we are beginning our December book, The Lion of Mars. It's about space and is recorded in 2091- 70 years in the future!

Science

Spa Chemistry (Kaylee):

This week I made some more soap.

I melted clear glycerin in a bowl and left a metal spoon in the (hot) soap base. I was uncapping the lid to the color dye and was about to add it to the glycerin, when I looked at the soap base and noticed it was getting solid. It hardens quickly! I tried to lift the spoon and see if it was completely hardened. The spoon was hardened into the glycerin, and when I pulled, the soap base came up with it!

Eventually I got it off the spoon and re-melted it

Elementary Science (Landen):

This week I mined some diamonds. Just kidding! 😆 I started growing some crystals!

First I added the crystal base to some crystal solution I mixed up. Then I let it sit in the warmest room in the house- Kaylee's and Emberly's room- and waited for it to grow. It will take about a week and a half until it is fully formed. 

Every day at 12:00 p.m., I check the crystal to see how it is growing. On the second day, I noticed some crystal forming around the top of the container. This is called "crystal climbing." I cleaned off the top of the container and put a little donut-shaped cut-out around the top to block the crystal flakes from growing over the sides and getting blue dye over Kaylee's room.

When it is fully formed, it will be a glow in the dark crystal! I can't wait!

Tech

Digital Photography (Kaylee):

This week I learned about focusing points. The teacher on Creative Live taught about when to zoom in, when to zoom out, and when to keep it normal. Then I went out to our backyard, which seemed like an ordinary, boring yard- and found that there are lots of interesting places to explore!

I took a picture of a sunset, with our tree blackened in the fading light.

Then I found some strange berries- don't eat them- in a far corner of the yard.

Before sunset, I took a picture lying down on the grass, looking up at the leaves.

I found these pretty flowers near the red berries and snapped a photo.

There's this beautiful bush in a different corner that has been brown all summer long, but in the fall, it's turned beautiful.

This one was the hardest. I took a close-up picture of the bush and tried many different positions before finally deciding on this one.

Finally, I took a picture later in the afternoon of the same tree as the one one earlier with the bright green leaves.

Digital Art (Landen):

This week I did a screen shot of our family and then I painted over it to make this work of art.

After I painted it, I deleted the picture in the background and this is what I ended up with:

Elective

Culinary Arts (Kaylee):

This week I made some pecan pie brownies from my Thanksgiving Twists Radish pack! Thing is, I made a Thanksgiving Twist on my Thanksgiving Twist treat... if that makes sense! Instead of pecans, I put pretzels!

We enjoyed it with cool vanilla ice cream.

P.E. (Landen): 

I practiced basketball and had a game on Saturday. It was hard. The other team's players were so much taller than the rest of us. We lost 22-42. I played against one of my church friends. The game was rough. Their shortest player was about as tall as me. The other players were even taller. I hope we'll win next week!

Arts and Crafts (Emberly):

It's almost Christmas time, so this week I made some paper ornaments!

First, Mom and I cut out some circles from brown paper bags and folded them in half.

Then we glued them together to make this ornament! It was so much fun and a bit hard, too!