Bridge Building

We started an exciting new science unit this week -- bridges!  I had originally planned to cover this topic with just the boys but due to a delay in resources Lily has been able to join us. Lily completed a unit on electricity at the TLA Surrey campus and as I don't have any specifics planned for her this month she's joining in.  We had so much fun on Monday that we decided to invite Justin, Simon and Sina to join us for the rest of the unit.
Lily reviewed some bridge building basics with everyone while I made playdoh --one of our building materials for today.

Lily and Justin testing the strength of their bridge

John and Sina retired to the living room for a game of chess after building part of a bridge with playdoh.

We learning about "The Amazing Arch" today and built (or began to build) bridges from two different materials.  They first made piers, beams and arches from the playdoh.  These are still drying out in the oven.  Then moved on to building a cofferdam from popsicle sticks (it didn't quite work out).  Then onto building arched bridges with cardboard and comparing the same bridge with and without abutments.

Here is the book that we're using, Bridge! Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test  Don't be deceived by the childish cover-- it covers the topic in depth!

Gabriel and Math

As we pulled out math today, Gabe started grumbling.  So I decided that it might be a good idea to find out if he just didn't want to do math or if there was some other reason that we could find a solution for.  Turns out that he's bored.  I have been aware that he can pretty much do his math without help and I haven't had to actually teach him a lesson for awhile but I've been reluctant to just jump ahead.  So I found an assessment about 25 lesson ahead of where we are and worked through it with him today.  The examples above are just two of the questions.  We worked out the problems on the white board so that I could see that he actually understood the math.  The only part of the assessment I knew he wouldn't be able to answer from memory were the multiplying by seven equations.  However, I do know that he understands multiplication and he knows how to find the answer.  Those particular facts just haven't been memorized yet.  So, following today's lesson we agreed to jump ahead in his math book (from lesson 35 to lesson 60) but that we'll need to focus on memorizing the times 7 facts.