Poco Mountain Girl

The first taste of cool weather has brought days at the park, new friends, the reappearance of the crock pot (and cookie sheets), and lots of time for just living and learning.

I’ve found a set of unit studies for Caleb, and so far I think we like them a lot. He’s starting with the Pilot/Plane theme, and covering lots of different subjects and skills all relating to piloting aircraft.

There is plenty of descriptive reading (which he loves) combined with science and history, math, geography, handwriting skills, word puzzles, etc. The studies include drawings of flight inventions by Leonardo DaVinci, Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, air molecules and what happens when you heat/cool them, math problems relating to flight, and hands-on experiments such as a self-powered balloon rocket.

Besides the unit studies, he’s also made exploding CO2 sandwiches (pictured in the sandwich bags) and the Egg in a Bottle, where a hard-boiled egg slides itself through a narrow bottleneck with the help of a little heat-induced air pressure. The balloon above was blown up by the reaction of baking soda and vinegar in a water bottle.

We’ve been at the library a few times a week, to the playground to swing and slide, and to the neighbor’s balcony to observe sunspots through his high-powered telescope. Not to mention long walks and bike rides every day.

Today we head to the garden to pull up and turn under the remains of a luscious, fruitful season.

Although our time in Lakewood has been been full of sun, rain, and downright good times, we are so excited for what’s coming next week: our new home. We’re packing for real now, and as the boxes pile higher and the rest of the house grows sparse, we sort through what we really want, and count it a good opportunity to weed out what is really just extra stuff.

And between boxes and balloon rockets, there is always time for a good chocolate chip cookie.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2011 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Caleb, Colorado, Home Sweet Home, unschool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.