We Are Deep In the Heart of Texas

Nomadic seasons of farming adventures with nature thrown in to include; a pinch of family, snippets of friends, counting our blessings, paying IT forward, home school, and the spicy things I decide to rant about.















Monday, March 14, 2011

Fun Schooling, A Little Bit of Rain, Texas Star Energy Refund

This weekend we experimented with different measurments of vinegar and baking soda.  What we learned is; we should wait until the wind is not a factor.  (hard to do where we live.)
In this attempt we place vinegar into the bottle first then had the baking soda stuffed in the balloon.  We noted that the vinegar / baking soda solution became cold during the mixing process.
Next we tried behind a wind block (the car), with baking soda added into the bottle with a vinegar filled balloon.  In this experiment the boys and I learned not to do this way again.  Because we could not add enough vinegar to react to the baking soda because -- a barrier is formed atop the baking soda when the two meet.  Our hypothesis --- try again on a windless day, the solution cools during the reaction, and how the experiment is set up will affect its outcome.
Hubby and I decided to start teaching stories from this Children's Bible to help give our boys some lessons in our faith that is centered in Christianity.  Later in the year, I will introduce them to lessons from the Torah, Quran, Buddhist texts,  and other 100+ faiths of the world.  Also, this will give them some sort of religious foundation to build up from so they can make the decision about which faith they will follow if any.
Now who could not use some 'found monies?'  I was doing a happy dance to finally recieve this check from the Texas Appliance Mail-In Rebate program. Wooo Hooo! Gotta love going green when it actually pays some green backs into ones' pockets. :O)

Finally, we were the recipiants of this lovely gift called rain.  Let me tell you, our ground was so hard from lack of moisture; that small cracks can be found.  I am guessing this little soaking gift from heaven will turn our grass green. 
Now this is one website I wanted to pass on to all of you.  I found it a few months back and there was not much to offer.  However, since then Bill Gates has made a large donation and others to get this website up and fully functional.   So I wanted to pass this information along to those: teaching, homeschooling, in college, or is helping out children with homework.  http://www.khanacademy.org/ 

This website has thousands of videos with lessons from 9 to 15 mins in length showing how to work math problems and other subjects.  So far there is an extensive amount of simple math, algebra, physics, finance, economics, accounting and many other subjects to be added. This website is free (accepts donations) and a parent can set up an account to monitor and track their students (children) working the problems or lessons they try.  You can not beat free especially when it is a quality program. 

Hope ya'll have a wonderful week.

7 comments:

Sharon said...

Nice chunk of change in the mail!

I do not think we will see eye to eye on the rain issue - until this summer - when we need it here. :-)

Nekkid Chicken said...

Hey Sharon, I was very happy to get that back. Basically cut the price of the new fridge down to nearly half. I am just praying for more rain since, the drought of 09 was pretty bad for us.

Going to go check out your post now.

Unknown said...

I've visited that website before. Didn't know that Bill Gates had donated money to it though. I will go back and check it out again.
Blessings
Diane

Cat said...

I wish we could send you some of the over abundance of rain we have here... Green is good, green in pocket is, um, golden? ;)

I like the different faiths thing, even if they settle on one, (or none), they will have a better idea about where others are coming from.

Cat

John Going Gently said...

you have a nice week too!
I love the way you think laterally about teaching the kids
x

Nekkid Chicken said...

Oh Yeah Diane, The website is definitely expanding. It has been great to use it when I run out of ideas or get frustrated over not being able to aptly convey certain math problems to my son. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Cat, I really wish you could too. We sorely need some rain for a few days. Thanks, the more information the boys have about religion the better choice they can make for themselves based on their system of beliefs. Just as long as they have a system of beliefs.

Thanks John, We have been quite busy around here coming up with daily lessons. I hope to teach them the most important lesson of all. THINK CRITICALLY then follow your heart to do what is best.

:O)
Mal

Jen said...

HELLO! I've missed your blog. That experiment sounded like a blast. And thanks for the site reference. I'm going to homeschool the kids this year and I'm very excited.