Day 17

27th October 2021

Something Special

We woke a little fuzzy today.

We lazed around after breakfast & watched Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.  (The remake with Johnny Depp not the original with Gene Wilder, sadly).

I wondered aloud if either of them would make it to the end of the day without being hauled away by Oompa Loompas?!

Mila says she’d make it – Linc just gave me a wry smile. 🤔

After that I taught Mila how to put on a load of laundry. 👍👍 (Lincoln learnt last week😂)

So, Mila has been struggling to hold her pencil, since forever.

She holds it so awkwardly.

I told her kindy teacher and she said, she would grow out of it.

I told her 1st grade teacher and she said, “Yes, she’s still working on that.” (And I gave her a bag full of pencil grips, maybe 3 different styles).

I told her 2nd grade teacher and gave more grips, and you know what?

In 2 & a half years at school, Mila did not learn to hold her pencil correctly.

My friend Kim, who teaches high school said, “You should persevere with that because kids who can’t hold their pencil in high school really struggle to write, and there’s so much writing in high school”.

I became desperate.

We had been on her for so long to work on her grip, she was over hearing about it.

She screamed & threw her pencil across the room on the first day we tried.

“I’ll never be able to do it!!” 😠

So I made her a deal.

I said if you can commit to changing your grip and making an effort, and you can write correctly for 1 week straight without me having to remind you.

I’ll give you twenty dollars.

You could have heard her squeal from where you are.

In just 3 short weeks of home school, our daughter can hold a pencil. ✍👏👏👏

Wormholes

I made their favourite lunch, a pick plate, and we watched another video from the ‘In A Nutshell’ (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/wormholes) series, this one was about wormholes. (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/wormholes)

We’ve been reading up on quantum physics on and off over the last few years, (an interest of Lincolns) so we do understand the basic concepts of relativity & string theory, but wormholes, wow!

So awesome!!

The idea that the big bang shook the elasticity of space, and tore holes in places, & warped space like ripples in a pond, and that black holes could be connecting one side of the space ripple to another, and thus creating worm holes to another time & dimension in space;

BLEW OUR MINDS!!

If there was a tear in our space and time, and we were able to enter it safely, how far would we travel and where would we be?

We chatted about this excitedly for quite a while.

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P6rdqiybaw

Honeycomb

After lunch, we made honeycomb.

I remember making it in science when I was in year 7. I burnt mine. 😞

So we worked in a little chemistry, a little maths, a little patience & a sweet treat!

We learnt the reason the honeycomb goes so fluffy and airy when you stir in the bicarb soda is because the heat of the sugar releases carbon di-oxide from the bicarb and it gets trapped in the sugar which creates all the bubbles!

The recipe we found was in grams and so we had to calculate how many grams were in a cup in order to figure out our measurements.

Then we had to practice patience while it ‘completely cooled’. 

It’s a long wait. 

We liked the honeycomb but thought we should make it into a violet crumble by covering it with melted dark chocolate.

Yep, that was the right choice!

The Ripstick

A friend loaned the kids a ripstick yesterday, and we’ve been dying to try it out.

So, after our bake session we took a walk across the grassy field and played around at the skatepark for a while.

Linc says the ripstick, “Is kind of like surfing.”

The kids were invited to their friend’s house for dinner & so at 4pm, they dissapeared.

I’d like to say I curled up in a sunny spot & caught up on my reading, but I didn’t.

I folded laundry and made dinner. 🤓🤓🤓