Home School

So in Science we are studying water.  We have learned condensation, evaporation, precipitation, etc.  We have made a model Aquifer, and here we are "treating" water like a Water Treatment plant would.  We made our dirty water, then we poured it in a 2 liter bottle and Ben shook it - that was aeration.  Then we poured it into the two liter bottle wit the top cut off and put in some alum and watched "coagulation" and "sedimentation."  Then we made a filter with the bottle with the bottom cut off and put fine sand, carbon, coarse sand, fine rocks, and big rocks, and then we poured our dirty water through all of this and it came out clean -- that was "filtration."  We took the water we gathered and put it in the glass measuring cup and put some bleach in it to mimic "disinfection" or "purification."  It was a great visual and he really enjoyed doing this.  K-12 sent us all the soil, sand, and rocks.  We had to buy four 2 liter bottles and activated carbon (which I found at the pet store in the fish aisle.)  We do Science two to three times a week for an hour a day.  We were talking about water conservation and things like that.  I told him growing up in California we had to turn the water on to take a shower, get wet, turn it off while we lathered up and then turn it back on to rinse off.  Sometimes we could only water our lawns by the last digit of our address - odd numbers on these days, even numbers on the other days.  We had a well so we talked about that.  We talked about nucleur power plants needing water to keep them cool and he went on and on for about five minutes about a computer game he plays called Tech It and how there are nucleur power plants and how they can only be built by water, and if they don't keep them cool, the reactors go off, etc., etc.  So I was happy to hear that his games are imparting some knowledge also.

Joe has Mr. Constan for 7th Grade science and Mr. Constan received a $5000.00 grant which he used to buy Ipads.  Joe's class (first period) has been selected to use those iPads and see if "technology" helps bring a child's science grade up.  Joe says the media is going to follow them and Mr. Constan may follow this class to 8th grade and hopefully Mr. Constan will receive another grant so that he can buy more iPads.  In Farmington, NM (where the Special Ed teacher came from) every student had a laptop.  We have nothing like that here.  It's crazy.

Well time to get ready for our Friday home school - spelling test, vocabulary test, Literature Unit assessment, two sessions of History, One session of Science, and Spanish and oh yeah Math.