Proof Books are here

Aren't the beautiful? (just ignore the sheets behind them which are most definately not beautiful, but it's all we could get here) I'm super excited to see my babies ready to go!

We are going to go ahead and have a batch printed out in the next few weeks. This is about a onthearlier that we had anticipated. So, in light of that we will offer the pre-order price of $24 for a combo set for the next two weeks only. Then the price will go up to the regular price of $25.98 for a combo set. For now, we will be including media mail shipping for all orders of $24 or more. The books should ship on or before March 5th, 2010. Physics for the Grammar Stage will be ready for print in several weeks and should be available to ship by April 15,2010. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to send me an email at info@elementalscience.com.

Now I just have to wait 12 more weeks for my other baby to come, who will hopefully be quite a bit cuter :).

Project: Exploding Volcano!!!

Well, sort of :). Princess was a bit disappointed that our volcano didn't go boom. I think that she's been watching to much of Mythbuster's lately. Anyways, here how we made a volcano from scratch and then exploded it in the shower (that's right, in the shower).


First, we started by making some salt dough. For this project I chose a salt/cornstarch dough because it tends to dry quicker, here's my favorite recipe for that...

• Mix 2 cups salt with 2/3 cup of water and heat over medium heat for several minutes. In another bowl mix 1 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cups of cold water. Remove the salt water from the heat and add in the cornstarch water. Return to the heat and stir continuously until thickened. Let cool a bit and then knead the dough until it's smooth and workable. This makes about 2 cups of dough.

So after making two batches of dough, we had enough to cover our glass bottle. Here's what it looked like (she's already started to paint it in this picture as I forgot to get the camera out on the first day, but you get the idea)...
Next we let our volcano dry for several days. This is where the size of you volcano makes a difference. The bigger the volcano = the more dough = very long time to dry. I had a friend who made a huge volcano (about 2 1/2 feet tall); very cool, but it took three weeks to dry! So after your volcano is dry, you can paint it. We opted for standard black paint, but you can use any color you like. Here's what it looked like after that...
After the paint dried(this took about 1/2 a day), we filled our bottle with 1/4 cup of baking soda, 2 Tbsp of liquid soap and some red food coloring. A funnel comes in real handy for this step, but if you don't have one or if your's has a wire mesh that won't allow baking soda through, like mine, you can always cut off the corner of a plastic bag.
At this point I would move your volcano to a place that can get messy, such as outside, the sink or the shower. Now for the fun part, add 1/2 cup of white vinegar. Do this very quickly, as the reaction begins immediately! Here's what our volcano looked like as it was exploding...
We had alot of fun with this project, from start to finish! I highly recommend doing this at least once during your homeschooling journey.

ETA: I received an email from a dear friend of mine that let me know of another option for exploding your volcano. Apparently diet soda (preferrably orange as it makes cool colored lava) and a Tbsp of sugar creates alot more fun. We're going to try this later on in the week and I'll try to post a picture of it when we do. (We tried this and it didn't work for us, but I think that it's because we had alittle baking soda at the bottom of our volcano.)

Weekly Report-Week 23

Keep on trucking seems to be the theme of our school this year. I keep expecting the burn out to hit or to hit a wall, but thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Here's what our week looked like...

Language Arts: Princess finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm this week and I'm very proud of her because this book was a bit of a stretch for her. She did great though and only complained about the length of her assignments once. Our switch to First Language Lessons and Spelling Workout is going great and I'm pleased with the decision to make the change. We also completed another week of Writing with Ease.

Math: We continued to work on multiplication and introduced multiplication within the tens and hundreds. At this point she's just doing problems like 600 x 2, but I can see that she's frustrated because she doesn't know her facts down cold. For the time being we are going to keep moving forward, but we'll see how things go next week.

Science: This week we talked about tornadoes and volcanoes. Here's our tornado...

We also made our volcano out of salt dough, which is currently drying. Next week we'll explode it, which is the part princess is really looking forward to.

History: We talked about Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages and we also looked at the African kingdoms of Ghana and Mali. We continued to work on our mapwork, coloring pages and narrations. Her notebook is really looking great!

Other: Here's the one part of school that doesn't get done as much as I would like, but I guess that's bound to happen. Princess is continuing to go to clay class. Here's a look at some of the projects she has made so far...

Education of Me: I started to read MacBeth this week. I haven't finished all that I wanted to because of all the other things that needed to be done this week, but so far I like it. But then again I love Shakespeare so I'm not surprised.

Thanks for reading about our week, if you want to read about others, go check out the weekly report over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Having a Homeschool Business

Awhile back I read this blog post over at The History of the World Blog. In it Susan Wise Bauer says,
"Cooking, I think, must be like writing. You do the same thing day, after day, after day, after day. You’d better enjoy it for itself, not for the rewards."
This is really true. There are days when you don't want to write, but you have to keep going because people are counting on you finishing what you said you would finish. It's not about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, because frankly it's not there. There's not alot of money in writing homeschool curriculum, some, but not alot. Her post got me thinking alot about why I continue to move forward with Elemental Science. Lately I've seen too many companies start up only to have to change their plans before they even have one product out. This is discouraging to me because these ladies have worthy, marketable ideas, but the nitty gritty of getting it done has become to much. I have to admit that there are days when I'm overwhelmed by the process of writing a new program, but I also enjoy the process as well. I love tapping into that part of my brain that doesn't get used as much as it did when I was a part of the academic/working world. It's a thrill to see it all come together after I've worked through the "slog".

So what is the reality of having a homeschool business? Well, the last few weeks have been very hectic for me in the Elemental Science department. Not only am I working on finishing writing Physics for the Grammar Stage, but we are also working on getting all of our books published so that we can offer them directly from us. And although my hubby helps out on the administrative side by dealing with the printer, getting the ISBN's and so many more things, I'm the one who has to have the files ready to go. This should have been an easy process since all I needed to do was finish the quizzes for each program and the files would be ready to go. Not so, I've found out! The files were ready for me, but the printer had other ideas about how the files needed to look. So after spending countless hours reformating pages numbers, changing copyright pages, redoing the covers and resizing my files; they are finally ready to go! The proof copies are on their way and I couldn't be more excited! The process really is like given birth. It's a whole lot of pain to get it done, but when you finally see your baby for the first time, it's so worth it.

Weekly Report-Week 20-22

We've been busy here with friends visiting from the states and conferences to attend. Then we got back to find out that my Nana had passed away. We have managed to keep up with school, but I haven't been so good about keeping up with the blog :). Here's a look at what we've been up to...

Language Arts: Princess is doing great with reading so I have been steadily increasing her requirements. There's been a few times where she has balked, but on the whole she has risen to the challenge. We have continued to work on Writing with Ease and that is going well. We've also added back in First Language Lessons, which is much easy for me to keep up with. Good English was taking too much preparation on my part, so even though I think that it's a great foundation, it had to go in favor of what I know will get done. We've also switched to using Spelling Workout instead of Dictation Day by Day. Again my reason for this is purely because I don't have the time to prepare it properly and it wasn't getting done. We also read Kildee House together. Frankly I thought this book was boring to read aloud, but princess loved it.

Math: We wrapped up our review of addition and subtraction and entered the world of multiplication and division. We also spent some time working on making bar graph models of our word problems. It was alittle rough going for a few days, but princess seems to have gotten a handle on the models, she just doesn't want to write them out :).

Science: We've talked about storms and earthquakes and several other things that escape me at the movement. Mostly we are looking forward to next week when we'll make our own volcano!

History: We've continued to work through Story of the World and we are enjoying it. I really wish that I had ordered the activity guide this year, but alas I didn't. Next year though, I've already got it waiting.

Other: We've kept up with our artist composer studies and we've started to look at the abridged version of Hamlet.

Education of Me: I'm mostly finished with The Chaucer Storybook and so far I have enjoyed it. It should be a perfect choice for us in the logic stage.

Well, that's what we've been up to the last several weeks. Now if I could just get the baby off my sciatic nerve, things would be alot better :). Hope you've had a great January!

Story of the World Notebook

Recently I have received several questions about the history notebook I make for princess. So I thought that I would explain it in a post here as I hope that it will help many of you.


I prefer to make up our notebook ahead of time. I usually print out half a year at a time and bind it together because the whole year at once gets pretty thick :). Princess always makes her own cover as she likes to do that.
This year we bound our notebook at the top by punching two holes and inserting brad fastners, which I recommend that you tape in the back or they will pull out.


As for what's inside, I start with the notebook pages that I create.
I print one template for each chapter. Then as we read a section we add to our chapter notebook page. Sometimes princess will draw a picutre, sometimes not. Somedays I will have her copy her narration onto the page herself, sometimes I will write it for her depending on how much writing she has already done that day.



Next I add the coloring pages and the maps from the activity guide. I purchased the activity sheets as a pdf from Peace Hill Press halfway through the year, so it's been really easy to print them up and add them to the notebook. Next year, I will just copy them from the activity guide.


Then I add her copywork sheets.
I absolutely love Zane-Blouser website because you can make customized copywork sheets for free (just click on the get started button). So I take the list of copywork sentences I have, enter them in and print them out. I then put these sheets in her notebook.


Finally I add the project pages that I have created.
I count up the number of projects we have planned and print out that number of pages. Then put them in the back of her notebook.


For me I find it easier to have sections for each catagory (ie. notebook pages, maps and so on), but you could certainly arrange your notebook by SOTW chapter. It take quite a bit of effort on my part, but it makes our days go so much smoother. Princess really loves looking back at what we have studied and I'm grateful that I don't have to constantly keep track of papers to hole punch and put in her notebook. So there you have it, our SOTW notebooks.


ETA: All the pages (with the exception of the AG pages) and my plans are available for free here and at my yahoo group (link in the side bar).

Weekly Report-Week 19

Back to the grind again! We are keeping at school so that we can finish second grade by the time the baby comes. So here’s what our week looked like…

Language Arts: Princess read about Marco Polo, which she absolutely loved! I was surprised how much she got into reading a biography, good thing I’ve planned some more for this year and next. We completed another week of Writing with Ease. We also add First Language Lessons back in. So far it has been far more successful this time around. We also started a verb lapbook as princess has been asking to do more lapbooks. Math: We continued working on subtraction within 10,000. We also began work on two step word problems and how to draw a basic bar diagram to solve them. It went well, but we’ll see for sure when she has her test on Monday :).

Science: We completed our first week of Earth Science, most of which was review from our Astronomy unit. Here’s a look at her notebook page… We also attempted to make a paper mache globe, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out, as our balloon started to shrink before our paper was dry.

History: We talked about Marco Polo and his exploration of China. Princess found it all very fascinated, so now I’m really looking forward to studying Columbus with her!

Others: We started studying Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings this week and we started listening to Scarlatti as our composer. Princess also started a Clay art class which she is really enjoying. I’ll try to get a picture of what she’s doing for next week.

Education of Me: I began reading The Chaucer Storybook and so far I like it, but I haven’t got very far. Hopefully I’ll be able to read more next week!

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours.