How to Make an Impression

I was going to call this entry, "how to make a smore", but that would lead you astray. You see, what this entry is really about is how to make a learning experience a positive one. What we came up with (Larin and I) is that each day of the week is a kid school topic. (Our kid schools is called Storm Academy) * I should interject here that Storm Academy takes place right after Storm Salon. We begin with a song, the Pledge of allegiance, a prayer and then a low key, FUN activity. This is NOT a force the kids to sit down time. They look forward to it. So, anyway, Monday's= Musicians/ Tuesday's=Artists/ Wednesday's= Women/ Thursday's= Inventors/ Friday's= Founders. So each day of the week we FIRST learn about a person in history and do an activity that coincides. Then we learn about the human body (ABC of the Human Body- Fort Benton Library book sale 05) , then we journal it. Sounds like a lot of work right?! Nope. It's not. Each Sunday, in the daddy/daughter time, Callie tells Justin what she wants to learn about. He then gives her a list I made off wikipedia of different inventions. She picks the one she wants to learn about. Then, I print out the one page about it off wikipedia on Sat or Sun before the week to coincide with the day (takes all of 15 minutes). It just so happened that Callie wanted to learn about microwaves this week. So, today I printed off a page about Percy Spencer and how the microwave came about. Then I ad-libbed the basic story about how he stood by a machine with a chocolate bar in his pocket... (I gave them each a bar to stick in their pockets) and HIS melted! Then he grabbed a handful of popcorn! And it popped. So we did an experiment of putting different stuff in the microwave to see what happened to it. Marshmallows grow gigantic. Popcorn kernels either pop or burn. And they softened their chocolate bars. They LOVED pushing the buttons and eating the experiment. And, mom learned something new!