Apollo 11 Cleared For Lift-Off

Today was a pretty cool day. In Science this week, we've been learning about the moon, various missions to the moon, astronauts, space and other interesting stuff. So today, as our science project, we built a spaceship and re-enacted Apollo 11's mission to the moon. I'll let the photos tell you the story!

As I've never added photos to my blog, I still haven't figured out how the captions work. So here is what's going on:

1. Getting ready to launch.
2. Interior view of rocket. Astronaut's seat and wing controls which actually can move the wings (albeit only certain directions).
3. Interior view of control panel on front.
4. Waiting impatiently for Mission Control (mommy) to authorize launch.
5. Waiting for countdown.
6. Hatch lowered and countdown begun. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 BLASTOFF!
7. Mid-flight in space.
8. Having landed safely on the moon, our astronaut is planting the American flag on the surface.
9. Sorry about the blurriness, our astronaut is demonstrating for Mission Control's benefit, the standard of gravity on the moon. Each step is like a large giant bounce.
10. Back in the spacecraft and homeward bound, our astronaut is talking to Mission Control to execute a safe landing.

P.S. If you carefully look, you'll notice the hatch was replaced while ON the moon. The first hatch (blue laundry basket) kept falling in and beaning our astronaut on the head. So, during the mission, repairs were made and a new, better quality hatch (green laundry basket) was installed. Generally, it is a good idea to keep your astronaut conscious until he returns to earth!

What a great way to have science AND history class!

From Mission Control:
Over and Out!

Success with Ordinal Numbers

Yay!! What a great feeling. I finally feel confident that Ry has a strong grasp of ordinal numbers, at least 1st - 10th, which is all that is required so far. In looking ahead yesterday, I saw that his math curriculum begins addition and counting by tens next week. I was in a panic about starting 2 new concepts without fully grasping ordinal numbers, then pairing that with counting days of the week by using ordinal numbers....well, he was struggling. But today, it just seemed to CLICK! He whizzed through his practice worksheets (Thanks to Carla C., another homeschooling mom, for the tips on extra printable practice sheets) and finished his math page in record time. Whew! Relief. I have to say, this kid will be far ahead of where I was in Kindergarten by the end of the year. Its amazing how different education is today as compared to, well, a long time ago. :)

TTFN,
Mrs. Mom

Ordinal numbers

MATH
Have you ever thought about the difficulty of grasping ordinal numbers?? I'm sure your children have come home one day from school having a complete and total grasp of position in line numbers. AKA - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th... etc. Easy once you've got it, not so easy explaining the concept. 4th and up make sense. You match the number and add "th". Could someone explain how we got "First, Second and Third"?? Who came up with those?? Ry's logic is that they should be called "Oneth, Twoth, and Threeth." Makes sense to me! I think we're making progress though, concluding with...."I don't know why, just memorize them this way." There! That's education at its finest!!

SCIENCE

Our grapes are taking FOREVER to turn into raisins due to excessive rain and dampness. Day 6 and barely shriveled. Technically, (according to GOOGLE) it should only take 4-6 days to make raisins. Guess whoever made that estimation didn't account for Noah's flood. One basic ingredient is missing for making OUR raisins -- SUN!

Overall, school is going great. Today was a challege, as Mrs. Mom was fighting Strep Throat symptoms and Sinus Infection symptoms while teaching. Too bad there are no substitute teachers available for homeschool! :)

TTNF,
Mrs. Mom