Playing with Fire Day

Inspired by Chanukah, the kids were itching to set all kinds of things on fire. The solution: Playing with Fire Day!  They got to light matches, melt candles, burn twigs and set whiskey on fire till their heart's content. 

Besides just generally having a good experience from being given some freedom they learned a few things. Avigayil learned that when you blow on a large fire it fuels the flames - and if you want to put it out it's best to smother it. 

After multiple frustrating and failed attempts to set whiskey on fire outside, Adin and I learned that whiskey has to be warm to catch on fire. Which makes sense because you aren't actually catching a liquid on fire, rather the whiskey vapor. 

Here's a cute photo of the kids all working together:

And some videos:

Why we homeschool

If I had to sum up why we are homeschooling it's here:

40% off and Sales Tax

Yesterday we went to Old Navy to go clothes shopping for the kids. It was 40% off if we used our Banana Republic card. So we had a discussion about percentages and a brief tutorial on how to calculate them.

In order to figure out how much we were spending we also practiced rounding up.

Later in the day Zayde brought Adin to Bicycle village to check out the bike that Adin has been saving for. He called me from the store to find out how much was in his bank account and did some mental math to calculate how much more he would need to save in order to get the bike.

We then talked about the fact that he would also have to pay sales tax. So we calculated that - and he negotiated with Zayde to get him to pay for the sales tax.

This afternoon Adin was able to take his money from Chanukah and birthday savings and working as mother's helper for Mitten and buy his dream bike! I'm so happy for him.

Long Lake Hike

Aderet found this very cool caterpillar. Turns out it's a Spotted Tussock Moth.

After we got home from the hike we did some research on Teddy Roosevelt and his work to establish the National Parks. That brought us to a really quirky history cartoon called Histeria that the kids really like.

Everyone spent sometime drawing in their journals.