I love to see the Amazon boxes come in the mail I know, its an expensive habit, but I prefer to own my books than to borrow. Borrowing from the library always twists my insides. I think about stern librarians and pissy staff members who give me judgemental looks. Only place I get worse treatment is at the dentist!.

ANYWAYS, back to the Amazon fetish.

This week, the Amazon Goddess brought us several books, including this amazing workbook “Exploring the Shape of Space” by Jeffrey Weeks, an adjunct to his text “The Shape of Space”. This workbook even comes with a CD ROM with further materials!

We also got a great source book for mathematics called “Math on Call: A Mathematics Handbook”

One uses this book in the following ways:
* low key browsing (lots of nice but not irrelevant graphics)
* If stuck on a problem (how to approach a problem) parent or child can use this as a reference
* Child uses this as a reference to also build self-researching skills so that they do not feel that the parent is the only source of solution re: a block in some homeschooling activity!

We found a quickie science project at Michaels the other day called

“3 in 1 science kit – Wired” put out by the Wild Goose Company.

This has a few alligator clips, a circuit board, copper wired, an LED light, and a battery connector.

As suggested in the wired book, Q made a testing circuit with an LED light as indicator of a closed circuit. She then placed various test items in the testing loop and looked for whether the LED lit up or not. If it lit up then the test item conducted electricity!

Some of the things Q tested were:

Well water (weak positive)

Salt water (strong positive)

Milk (medium positive)

Orange Juice (VERY STRONG positive! Who could guess that huh?)

Test Paper strips with:

No water (no signal)

Well water soaked (middle strip, weak positive with leads very close to each other)

Salt water soaked (bottom strip, strong positive with leads very close to each other)

Oil (no light at all)

Ceramic (nothing)

A basil leaf (extremely weak and very close to the other lead but definitely some current)

She tested a cast iron pan and was not able to get any light at all!

A stainless steel measuring cup (VERY STRONG!)

She tried dry salt and that was conductive too, even without liquid.

This was a super cool project! A lot for the $5.95 investment

We found a quickie science project at Michaels the other day called

“3 in 1 science kit – Wired” put out by the Wild Goose Company.

This has a few alligator clips, a circuit board, copper wired, an LED light, and a battery connector.

As suggested in the wired book, Q made a testing circuit with an LED light as indicator of a closed circuit. She then placed various test items in the testing loop and looked for whether the LED lit up or not. If it lit up then the test item conducted electricity!

Some of the things Q tested were:

Well water (weak positive)

Salt water (strong positive)

Milk (medium positive)

Orange Juice (VERY STRONG positive! Who could guess that huh?)

Test Paper strips with:

No water (no signal)

Well water soaked (middle strip, weak positive with leads very close to each other)

Salt water soaked (bottom strip, strong positive with leads very close to each other)

Oil (no light at all)

Ceramic (nothing)

A basil leaf (extremely weak and very close to the other lead but definitely some current)

She tested a cast iron pan and was not able to get any light at all!

A stainless steel measuring cup (VERY STRONG!)

She tried dry salt and that was conductive too, even without liquid.

This was a super cool project! A lot for the $5.95 investment

, originally uploaded by Colla-Dickel Cats.

I had to share this shot of the most precious little kitty, Poo, who lives with a lovely family of people and cats in Brazil.

, originally uploaded by Colla-Dickel Cats.

I had to share this shot of the most precious little kitty, Poo, who lives with a lovely family of people and cats in Brazil.

Today we are starting on a workbook I found at Barnes and Noble called “History Pockets: Colonial America”

Its nice in that it has some good get-started directed exercises and will be nice as a run up to Thanksgiving. Am thinking about then taking Q to Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth Rock on the coast of MA) to do the pilgrim re-enactment thang.

Check out this image, I think I want to be a part of this! Hmm.. Maybe we will dress up for this thanksgiving!

They have a great online section called “You are the Historian” where you can explore this time period.

They also have this amazing “Educator’s Resource Pack” thats $15.04.

Other packs can be found here.

Tell me if you have found other good unbiased interactive stuff on this theme (online or off) for the 4-8th grader range!)

Emily at www.fun-with-science.com is such an inspiration! This is grassroots science education at its best. Emily and her family have designed and tested science kits for homeschoolers (hey, for anyone!) that bring together all the resources you might need to teach science.

Check out her site and explore her kits!

Just wanted to apologize for the silence here. I have been strapped to the grindstone and relief aint near. Am hoping to be able to post up some of Q’s work tomorrow.