Physics is Fun!

Last week we finished up our unit on magnetism and electricity as well as finished reading Ben and Me. The kids had a great time planning a birthday party for Ben Franklin as their final project for the book. They came up with games to play and each wrote an original song to sing for Ben. Aiden was completely thrilled to get an opportunity to write a song. He ran upstairs to the piano and started picking out a tune while Zoë and I stayed downstairs. Within a few minutes he had the tune written on grand staff paper and came down to write the words! The song starts out "Please help us again, make more contraptions Ben" and goes from there.

Now we're reading The BFG by Dahl and studying force and motion. I signed the kids up for a design contest at the Science Center as part of their SciFest 09. Tomorrow they get to go and design roller coasters and compete against other teams. We're all looking forward to that!

Aiden has decided that physics is his favorite kind of science. He thinks that any science that uses force, energy, motion, matter and lots of math (not to mention roller coasters) is the best thing in the world. I wonder if he's going to change from wanting to be an aeronautical engineer to an astrophysicist soon.

I'm really proud of both of them for working so hard on their math. They've both become very independent while doing their problems each day. All the time I spent picking out problems for them and showing them how to figure out which lesson each problem came from really seems to be paying off, and they seem to like being able to look back and answer their own questions. The key is just making sure we do math first thing in the morning!

I solved our math book issue by finding a used copy online. I wish I thought of doing things like that more often! Of course you run the risk of getting a raw deal, but it worked out perfect this time. The book looks as good a new and I saved about $30.