IO, The Lake, Give away, and The Presidents

Image of Io.. please see link below and check out the site.. its great.

Yesterday we spent quite a bit of time learning about Jupiter.. here is what the kids said they learned:
Cat: Io is stinky and looks like green mold
Nate: If you were 12 on Earth you would be 1 on Jupiter
Kamie: Io smells like rotten eggs
Joseph: Earth has Sulfter on it too.
Taylor: Europa is made of ice.
Kaleb: 12 Earth years is 1 Jupiter year
Here is is how were are remembering some of the things from our lesson:
Io stinks like rotten eggs cause it is made of sulfer.. so we all hold our nose and yell "IIIIIIOOOOOO" it stinks
Europa is made of ice and has large cracks on it.. so we remember you need to take "Europa (YOUR ROPE-A_) with you so you can get out if you fall through the ice.
There are others but the post would be REALLY long if I shared them all :)
We looked at some great pictures on this site.. it has TONS of pictures.. the kids were really interested in seeing it.. I think Io is beautiful!
http://www.solarviews.com/span/galio.htm
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Jupiter

Today we tried to go to three different parks in town but they were all over come with school children on field trips. The kids there seemed to be having a great time but I prefer not to take my group there when it is so crowded (hard to keep up with all six with so many kids around). So.. we ended up heading out to the Lake. The kids all had a great time looking at the water and throwing rocks into it. The also gathered a collection of shells that they are going to paint later today. We saw some sea gulls, and a red tipped black bird (when I said "hey kids, look at that bird.. its black but has yellow stripes on its wings.." .. Joseph said, "Yeah mom, thats a red tipped black bird!")... which had a pretty call. We learned a lot along the way.. about the Hydroelectricity Plant and the Water Treament Plant. When we got home and during lunch i looked up the following on the internet..

(water towers) http://people.howstuffworks.com/water1.htm
(Hydroelectric plants) http://people.howstuffworks.com/hydropower-plant1.htm


We have been working for a week or so on the Presidents song. We have the song down from memory all the way through to Coolidge.. The way we are learning it is through the tune the "ten little indians" . I have been really surprised how quickly the kids are learning it.. esp little Kamie.. who LOVES to sing the song! Today we worked on getting to the end and I hope that by the end of tomorrows day we will have all of them memorized!

A friends sent me a link to a free giveaway that a homeschooling mom-blogger is doing. here is the link to that.. I sure would enjoy the microscope :)
Spunky is giving away a Benz Microscope and Apologia Biology Set this week. Click Here to get the details.http://spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2006/05/spunkys-great-giveaway.html