Quite honestly, as challenging as it was to create some of these dishes, it was incredibly rewarding and my house smelled amazing with all the new scents.
I would highly recommend that any family that is getting bored with the usual meals try spinning Google Earth, land on a country and find a popular or traditional meal from that locale. Then, go to Pinterest and get the recipe!
It's wonderful to watch how confident she has become as she shares what she has learned using both humor and facts: which very much sums up her personality. She loves to make people laugh, and she loves to share facts.
For English, she finished "City of Ember," and has been working on her 5-paragraph report. It should be completed by the end of the week. Mathematics has been moving at a fast pace. She completed her 5th grade curriculum within the first two weeks of homeschooling, so we moved to 6th grade and she quickly mastered integers, mode/median/mean/range, graph reading, finding x. and an introduction to ratios/probability. We are currently focusing on 6th geometry, which started with a bit of a struggle, but is now coming along nicely. She's pretty excited to begin 6th grade in the fall at the neighborhood public school with all this background knowledge already within her.
We finished our social studies curriculum on Monday by visiting the civil war trails.
She still needs to complete her art project, but has until the end of the month before she needs to present it to us.
I am pretty proud of both of us. I wasn't sure how homeschooling would turn out, but I really enjoyed it, and Isabella did as well. I think I might actually miss it next year.
Since Isabella wants to be a doctor when she grows up, it made sense for me to begin introducing her to famous doctors that changed the world. It just so happens that Marco Giuliani wrote an article 9 Famous Female Doctors that Changed the World.
Day 1 was spent introducing her Dr. Jane C. Wright. After reading a summary of her background and accomplishments from Giuliani's article, Isabella then took three facts and wrote a short summary of what she felt was important and how Wright made an impact in the world. Afterwards, we watched a short video on YouTube about her.
Once the video ended, we both spent some time exploring The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) that was created by Dr. Wright.
On Day 2, we were introduced to Dr. Gertrude B. Elion. After reading about her, Isabella prepared a short verbal presentation where she explained who Dr. Elion was and her accomplishments as we sat together for dinner. Since Dr. Elion was motivated to study chemistry by the death of her grandfather, who died of cancer, we discussed how motivation can build success, and Isabella shared reasons why she was interested in becoming a doctor.
Tomorrow will be Day 3 of this topic, and we will be studying Dr. Gerty Cori. I found a slide show presentation that explains her life, the Cori cycle (which won her the Nobel Prize) as well as other amazing accomplishments. I plan to show her a model of the Cori Cycle, and help her understand the importance of this metabolic process.
Day 4 will be focused on Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig and her work in pediatric cardiology. Isabella has visited a cardiologist before and had an EKG, so this is familiar territory for her. She has also watched her brother have an echocardiogram done. I plan on sharing this lovely article written that talks about her work on Blue Baby Syndrome. Afterwards, we'll watch Doctor Ouch's Heart video. Then, for fun, I will have her try to Label the parts of a heart, and then we will find the answers together.
Day 5 of "9 Famous Females Doctors who changed the World," will be Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. I plan on sharing her Five Stages of Grief. We have all dealt with different forms of loss, so I plan on talking through each stage with her, and what they might look like. I found this beautiful website that talks a lot about grief, and provides handouts for children, teens and young adults to work through their feelings: Grief and Loss Worksheets.
Day 6 will be dedicated to Dr. Audrey Evans. This one hurts as my son had a friend who died of neuroblastoma, and that wake will forever hurt my heart. At the same time however, Dr. Evans founded the Ronald McDonald House, and Isabella volunteered there last spring with her girl scout troop for their Bronze Award. She and her troop performed music (violin/piano), song, led art activities, and served dinner to all the families.
After reading about Dr. Evans, we will look at a video Modern Hero about her life and accomplishments.
Day 7 will be Dr. Virginia Apgar. We will then look at an Apgar test and discuss why this is an important tool to use when a baby is born.
Day 8 is for Dr. Ana Aslan I'll be sharing this video with Isabella that explains the importance of her development of Gerovital H3 and what motivated her to study "life." This is similar to the motivation we talked about with Dr. Elion.
On our last day of the 9-day series, we will be looking at Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, her discovery of Nerve Growth Factor and how she founded the European Brain Research Institute in 2002. I was able to find an interview with her from 2008 that I plan on sharing with Isabella. I also found an amazing video Response of Cells to Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) that shows it in action.
Day 10 will be a review, where I will ask her to talk about one of the nine doctors and write a short report on her.
I also plan to talk about other women in history and would like to help her create a diagram 8 Famous Women showing eight famous women in different important and/or historical positions.
I am hoping this series in Women in History will help Isabella learn more about medicine, the important contributions on women in history, and, of course, girl power!
After "Planets," we moved onto learning about cell structures (animal and plant cells). I continued the unit with having her label the parts of a cell, complete some worksheets, and then complete a short 8-question quiz that I found online that asked questions regarding to the functions of each part of a cell. She passed it with 100% accuracy so I knew it was time to move on.
Isabella has been wanting to learn about the brain since we decided to homeschool her. I told her we needed to first go through the rest of her 5th grade curriculum before introducing her to the nervous system. But now that she had mastered the basics of cells, it seemed like a good time to talk about the body, especially since I have also been teaching her Health "class."
I found a fantastic and short YouTube video that helps kids understand what part of the brain does what. I liked that it was a hands-on video, and Isabella was able to learn the concepts pretty quickly. I had traced the above picture of the brain diagram the night before, so I had Isabella label each part on the picture, and then write one fact or detail about each lobe.
After dinner, I made a quick power point presentation on the spinal cord using information I found on Google and Spinal Cord Lesson for Kids. I'll be sharing the power point with her tomorrow morning before my staff meeting (yes, I am working remotely while home schooling). After my power point (and hopefully before my meeting), I will show her how she can make a replica of a spinal cord using an egg carton. Once that is done, I would like to review the basics of neuron function using some colored playdoh and some other activities I found on this science homeschooling blog.
Once the basic overview of the nervous system is completed (brain, spinal cord and nerves), I am planning to return to the brain diagram and focus on each lobe with Isabella. I came across a really resourceful homeschooling blog when I was looking for a printable of The Stroop Effect. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Stroop Effect, I invite you to read the words below, and when you are done, go back and say the color you see instead of the word:
Basically, The Stroop Effect causes two conflicting signals to occur in the anterior cingulate region of the brain (between the right and left halves of the frontal portion of the brain). The Stroop Effect is a great way to show how the brain processes words and colors differently.
In any case, during my search for the printable, I came across the resourceful homeschooling blog that I linked above. The author shared several other activities that I am now planning to do to demonstrate different functions of the brain and go into more details in regards to each lobe and the neurons.
I am looking forward to some fun activities for Isabella to do!
Update: Here is Isabella's completed replica! (and we finished before my staff meeting started!)
We had planned to stay in the Entertainment District, and since I had already planned to homeschool Isabella before we had scheduled the trip, I had looked into the art galleries within walking distance.
Vincent Meessen had an exhibit at the Toronto's Power Plant (art gallery) called Blues Klair, which was based on his previous immersive film installation Ultramarine. He used the color blue to heighten the experience as he delved through the history of self-exiled African-American poet Gylan Kain, whose performances in the late 1960s were a primary influence on the development of rap.
In order to fully understand how the spoken word can be used in art, I had Isabella find an art piece and write a story based on it. First, she had to spend several minutes simply writing details of the piece, such as color, missing parts to it, number of items, etc. Then, she wrote a story based on it. Since the art piece she chose was a golden brooch, she wrote a story of a young boy who was commissioned to create it. Then, we looked back at the brooch and talked about it again, using her story. I think it really helped her understand how art can be multi-modal.
From there, we moved on to colors. How do colors create feelings in the viewer? There are a lot of videos out there that explain how colors are used in the media and art.
Isabella's favorite color is blue. So I decided to have Isabella create an art piece using color to convey a message while also using written language. Initially, Isabella wanted to do a haiku, however after some time studying a variety of different types of poems, she chose to instead to a lyrical piece. Her art project is called "A Battle for Peace." I am really looking forward to her finished piece once it is completed.
Speaking of words, and in the theme of written language, a good friend of mine suggested I write a journal to document this time period of our life.
Here's what I have so far:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
my children decided they hated my cooking and asked to order food daily.
I wanted to kill my husband for breathing.
The dogs were happy.
There is a lot of information out there about the history of Aztecs, Incas and Mayans. I introduced this topic yesterday using a fun video I found on YouTube that briefly explains the three of them, and then I shared a Venn diagram I found online that visually showed their similarities and differences. Afterwards, I had Isabella write down some interesting facts about each, and then write a question about something else she was interested in learning about.
Of course she was interested in how the Incas did brain surgery! Did you know that the Inca brain surgeons were better (more successful) at brain surgery than the doctors during the civil war?
I also shared the different calendars that each native tribe used, and shared some videos of native dances. You can find many of the ceremonial dances on YouTube. Afterwards, Isabella was told to pretend she was part of the Mayan empire and that she needed to create a poem to the Maya jaguar god asking for rain to help with their crops.
We also looked at the Mayan language and Isabella wrote a sentence using the symbols. I had suggested just one words, but she is a bit of an overachiever!
This morning, we continued the topic by talking about life during that time period, and specifically, how did they could tell what time it was. Afterwards, Isabella designed her own sundial. We then went outside to learn how to find north and south without the use of a compass, and then tested our sundial. It worked!
Later today I'll catch up on cell structures, specifically plant cells since I want to spend as much time as possible outside (it's been raining for the past couple of days) before it starts raining again!
Today we focused on science: specifically, on the structure of cells. I started the morning by doing something a bit different. I turned on the tv and served breakfast on the sofa. Isabella ate while watching 'Bill Nye The Science Guy: Cells.' Once she was done, we moved into the dining room to work on drawing an animal cell and a plant cell. I used handouts from Ecosystem for Kids to help visualize cells, and talk more in-depth about the functions of each part.
Afterwards, I shared a short video of a young scholar demonstrating an activity using Jell-O and vegetables to help understand the structure of cell. Let's Make Jello Cell Models
It was a fun activity to do, and I think Isabella had a deeper understand of cell structure once it was completed.
It's been nine weeks in lockdown and we were getting tired of the same food...the kids wanted something different. So thanks to Google E...
