Show & Tell: Adventures Week 25

Last Thursday we wrapped up Week 25 of Adventures in My Father's World.

Usually this is the part where I tell you which states we learned about during the week, but this week I'm going to give you a hint and see if you can figure it out.  Ready?  Here's your hint: 

We ate pork loin and corn casserole for dinner Monday night. 

If

you

guessed

IOWA,

you're right!

Actually, we added both Iowa and Wisconsin to our notebook as they were the 29th and 30th states.

In history, we learned so many things about the Gold Rush of 1849.  We learned about Captain Sutter and the day one of his employees, Mr. Marshall, found gold on his land.  Captain Sutter wasn't happy about this discovery because he didn't need the money and he was afraid that people who did need it would come dig up his land, which is exactly what happened.  We were surprised to learn that not many people ended up getting rich from the Gold Rush.  The main way it affected our nation was by bringing so many people to the West Coast.  We also learned three properties of gold:  (1) It's very heavy; (2) It's very tough; and (3) It's not affected by acid the way most metals are.

Here's the notebook page Hannah made for the Gold Rush:

I bought some gold colored beads and some foil pie tins and let the girls "pan for gold" in a bowl full of mud.

Hannah found the first gold nugget.

This was their stash when Millie decided to quit.  (She does not like to get dirty!)

But Hannah worked a little longer and found several more pieces of gold before she decided to quit.

In Science, we learned about atoms and molecules.  We learned that water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, and we made some marshmallow water molecules.

Each "molecule" has two pink marshmallows to represent the hydrogen atoms and one green marshmallow to represent the oxygen atom.

We put them all in a cup, and when Greg came home from work, Hannah asked him if he wanted a glass of water.

I love the look on his face.  "What are you talking about?!"  Then she got to explain it to him.  :)

We also did some hands-on activities with dishwashing liquid.  Hannah learned that dishwashing liquid helps cut through grease to remove substances that water alone can't.

We buttered a dish, and Hannah tried to wash it with water alone.



Not only did the butter stay on the dish, but it made her hands a slippery mess!



When she added a little dish soap ...

... the butter rinsed right off.

Our book did an excellent job of pointing out that people often have to use a detergent similar to dish soap to clean up birds after an oil spill because they need something to cut through the oil that's all over their feathers.

We also learned that dishwashing liquid can spread water out.  We did two experiments to demonstrate this.

First we sprinkled some pepper onto a bowl full of water.

Then we added some dish soap in the middle of the bowl.  The dish soap caused the water right around it to spread out, pushing the pepper to the edge of the bowl.

And finally, we made some homemade bubbles and learned that when you blow air through a bubble wand, all you're doing is stretching out the soapy water around the puff of air.  That's a cool way to think of it!

In math, we started a unit on weights.

One of our assignments was to find an item that weighed 1 kg.  We must have spent a good 10 minutes weighing various items in the pantry.  Finally, the peanut butter worked for us!

And just in case this might be helpful to any other All About Spelling users out there, I finally realized this week that just because a curriculum comes with tiles that love to fall off the dry erase board and land in or under the workboxes below it as you're trying to move them around during a lesson, doesn't mean you have to use them!  A red and blue marker will work just as well to allow your child to see the relationship between vowels and consonants!  Happy, happy day!

This week Kathi at A Heart Like Water is debuting a new My Father's World Weekly Homeschool Highlights.  If you're a My Father's World user and you'd like to see what others are doing or give us a peek into your schoolroom, feel free to head on over and link up!  :)