Thursday, September 27, 2018

Module 3 Atomic Structure

In Module three, the math about wave lengths and frequency has us working with dividing scientific notation. I wanted to make sure that I had my math facts correct for that. I thought this video helped sum up the refresher that I needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbcua9twIRc


I have been following along on the tests as I've prepared for class to make sure that the material is covered appropriately. For this test, I felt that one of the questions about the Rutherford experiment was not as clear in the text as it could have been. Rutherford discovered protons - this is mentioned in the text prior to his experiment being discussed. The discussion on the experiment focused around protons being in a nucleus. The test question asked about the experiment but didn't mention nucleus only that he discovered protons.

I did contact the publisher and they gave me links to back up that Rutherford discovered protons. I'm not disputing that, I just don't like the wording of the question based on the text that was presented. I will make sure I emphasize in class today that Rutherford's EXPERIMENT is how he discovered protons.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Apologia Chemistry 3rd Edition - Note 1

This year I'm leading Chemistry at our co-op. We chose Exploring Creation through Chemistry 3rd Edition.

I have 100 minutes with my students once a week. The goal is to work on a module for two weeks together in class.

This week is our 5th meeting which means we are on week one of module 3.

(I lead Chemistry at our co-op two years ago. We used the 2nd Edition that year and we only had 50 minutes together.)

The students take tests at home, they grade at home and their parents assign the grades. I am helping to facilitate some lecture and provide a time to do the experiments together.

For the first test, most of the students did very poorly on the test including my very mathy child. The material wasn't that hard, but you definitely had to pay attention to the details. Those significant digit rules were followed to a T and probably even a little too far in my opinion. https://www.apologia.com/faqs/content/10/186/en-us/on-chemistry-module-1-test-problem-17-why-is-the-answer-rounded-to-the-tens-place.html 

As I was preparing my lecture notes for module three, I had the test open as well. I'm going to ask the publisher about question 12 on the module 13 test. The answer isn't directly stated in the text as simplistically as the question is asked. 

Module 3 Crash Course videos:
37-0 History of Atomic Theory https://youtu.be/thnDxFdkzZs
1-0 The Nucleus https://youtu.be/FSyAehMdpyI

Monday, March 14, 2016

Where I buy food

Living in a small town there are not limitless places to purchase high quality or unusual food. 

I've found some out of the norm ways to get some good quality food at good prices.

First I typically shop at Aldi. We have not converted to eating organic fruits and veggies though I am seriously considering reworking our budget to include more organic fresh fruits and veggies.

Second I like Kroger over all of the other grocery stores in town. (I don't shop at Wal-Mart.) I like their e-coupons on their app and I tend to find that they have good prices for the things that I buy.

Non-grocery stores that I buy items from: (These may be referral links.).


Zaycon Fresh. We've only purchase chicken so far, but I know that other people are happy with other meat they have purchased. The chicken breasts are so huge! With Zaycon, you order online and pick up at their designated time (usually a 30 minute window) and location which has been the Church of Christ on Hwy E. When you order you see the delivery dates that are available. I think chicken comes about once a quarter. You have to buy a 40 pound box.

Azure Standard. Azure delivers about once a month. They have lots of organic fruits and vegetables and other non-perishables. I have really liked their apples in the fall. We use route P1. The delivery is at Love's Truck Stop. You have to have a minimum order of $50 without an extra surcharge. I've definitely shared with other people before and shared on pick-up as well.

UNFI. UNFI is a warehouse that delivers in Rolla once a month. If you are interested in this option, I can give you the contact person. As it is warehouse ordering, you have to order cases of things. I have typically purchased spices from this avenue. I really like Frontier Herb spices and get those from UNFI. I will buy wheat berries from here as well as Azure Standard depending on the prices. Most recently I purchased olive oil. 

Amazon. I also use Subscribe and Save from Amazon. If you schedule five items listed under Subscribe and Save for the same date (month), then you can get 15% off each item. You can cancel any order after the first delivery. Some items may be cheaper from Azure or UNFI, but I have a small order and so I'll pay a little extra from Amazon and then it's delivered to my door! I have purchased nuts, dried fruit, popcorn, spices and different oils as well as paper towels and toilet paper from Amazon. Using Subscribe and Save, the items take about a week to arrive depending on when you schedule your group order.

I have not tried Thrive Market yet though I hear good things about this website. I have also found good prices for some items from VitaCost.com in the past as they had better prices than other websites. VitaCost will generally have promotions to watch for to get a percentage off or free shipping.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

The Good Table Sauce & Crust Mix Review

The other day I realized that there was an Ibotta rebate and I had a coupon for The Good Table Sauce & Crust Mix. I checked it out in the aisle with the bread crumbs. I appreciated that they are trying to make a wholesome and convenient product.
Parmesan & Herb
The package wasn't on sale at my Kroger, but with a coupon and rebate, I thought it was worth a try. I selected the Parmesan and Herb flavor. The website features four flavors but I'm pretty sure that my store didn't have all of the flavors on the shelf. 

So the grocery store price was 2.99. I had a .75 e-coupon and Ibotta also featured a .75 rebate.

I had thawed two large boneless skinless chicken breasts that I had purchased from Zaycon Fresh. The package says that it's for 3 to 4 chicken breasts, but there were pretty big breasts so I figured two would be good. I did use most of the sauce and bread crumbs on these two very large breasts.

The package directions were very clear and I had chicken in the oven coated in a sauce and then bread crumbs very quickly. 

My family was very pleased with the smells wafting from the oven and were anxious to try it!

High remarks from the chicken lovers of the family! The comment though was that it tasted a lot like a tilapia recipe that we make from AllRecipes.com. (We will add bread crumbs to the original recipe.)

Without the great deal, I don't know that I will purchase The Good Table Sauce & Crust Mix again, at least not in Parmesan and Herb flavor. I appreciate the idea of adapting a current recipe to use with chicken. I like using the recipe because I tend to have those pantry staples on hand already.

With a coupon and rebate again, I may try another flavor. Who knows, we may even try it on fish instead of chicken!

*Referral links...some of the links are referral links that if you sign-up under those links, I may receive a bonus from that company. I was not asked or given any compensation by The Good Table for this review.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Science in the Beginning by Dr. Jay L. Wile Review

Today my 12 year old son and I finished Science in the Beginning by Jay L. Wile published by Berean Builders. www.bereanbuilders.com

The curriculum was advertised for K to 6th and my son is 6th graders so my review will be based on being at the very high end of the age range.

We really enjoyed the curriculum and I would highly recommend it for families for kids probably 2nd grade and higher but if you have younger ones as well listening is is great! The book is broken up into 90 different lessons with some that are considered challenge lessons only for older students.

Every lesson contains an experiment. I believe that the experiments are very well thought out and demonstrate the concepts being taught very well. Generally they use household items. There is a list in the book so you can be prepared for each week. We chose to do 2-3 lessons in a setting and worked on science twice a week and we finished at the beginning of February after a little bit of a rocky start in the fall. (Initially my son wanted to do this on his own, but he changed his mind.)

Every lesson has questions for students to complete in their science notebooks as well. There are three levels of questions for each lessons. Oldest students generally do the "older students" questions as well as an additional question that is applying the concept outside of the exact text of the lesson. There are simple questions for the younger students.

We really enjoyed learning about the amazing creation that God created in 6 days and all of the details that are in our wonderful creation!

A supplemental book, Helps & Hints for Science in the Beginning is available with answers to questions. This book also contains tests. The tests were not my favorite. They cover 7 lessons not including the optional lessons. We probably should have broken our schedule down more by the testing schedule and it may have worked better. I thought the tests asked some very basic questions and then some really specific questions. I don't keep grades for my son so it wasn't that big of a deal but generally he did not ace the tests with no review. A review of the lessons before the test would been a good move on my part, but we didn't do that.

Summary - I would highly recommend this science curriculum. For 6th grade, I don't think it's enough for an entire year. If we would have started this when my students were younger, I can see spending an entire year or more in one of the three books of the series and then cycling through them again when they are older.

We will start Science in the Ancient World  next week.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Links for FLL

Videos from Saturday

https://goo.gl/photos/1X1A7arDrvhi7p1T6

https://goo.gl/photos/ccGi51DePKPrKbZj6

https://goo.gl/photos/PNudvCKqstjGmf2u8

I didn't get a video of their project skit.

We are Scrapbusters! Best score of three counts.


Our giveaway is pig erasers and fast food erasers. Our problem we identified was waste from buffets and our solution was to have restaurants collect the food waste and have pig farmers pick it up!