Saturday, January 29, 2011

Much Ado about Much Ado

Our new play is here!  Our new play is here!  Our customized script for Much Ado About Nothing, done by Marieka Greene of KidsLoveShakespeare, looks wonderful!  Katie says Ursula is the Best Role in the Play.  Travis is happy with Claudio, and is looking forward to playing him with a mustache (I don't explain, I merely report).  Their first rehearsal is May 9th, which gives us plenty of time to learn their lines.  We love Shakespeare!

We finished the Martin Jenkins adaptation of Don Quixote this week.  The kids would have been happy if it had gone on another 300 pages -- they loved it!  I enjoyed it, and Chris Riddell's illustrations are fabulous, but I did think the adventures got a bit repetitive. 

We finished Laura Schlitz's The Night Fairy in three nights.  Katie loved it -- "It was fabulous!"  Travis started out saying it was too young for him, but he hung on every word any way.  Not sure what we'll read next.

Katie's Usborne Science Encyclopedia came this week, and we started NOEO Physics II.  I think it is going to be fun -- plenty of experiments, and the material seems at Katie's level.
This is one of my favorite part of the curriculum...

Seven Young Scientists Club kits, with all the materials needed to do the various experiments!  I am rotten at planning science out in advance, and with these we ought to be able to complete our experiments without being stymied by the One Missing Ingredient.
We read about Energy this week, and our experiment, from Gizmos & Gadgets, by Jill Frankel Hauser, which we did today because we didn't on Friday, involved observing the stored energy in a twisted up rubber band.  I remember having rubber band powered airplanes as a child, and they always worked as advertised, so I thought this would be a no-brainer.  Hmmmm....


I didn't really mean it when I said I hate science.  I like science fine.  It's troublesome experiments designed to illustrate really simple principles that I don't like.  But the kids like them, and I like the kids so on we go.

*If you switch the picture quality, right to the left of the little YouTube sign, to 720, the quality is much better.

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