WEEK 3: A Perfect Week for Ice Cream

It is still summertime here in Puerto Rico (it pretty much feels that way almost all year-round) and an ice cream party in between classes was the perfect solution to all the heat. Combine that with exploding lava lamps and you have a recipe for fun!

Scroll down to see the supplemental readings for the week, galleries of our latest photos, and our current memory verse.

BOOM!

A water bottle, some oil, vinegar and an antacid tablet is all you need to forget about the heat and have a great time outdoors! (And saves your furniture from getting stained.)

GARDEN - Pre-K and K

What a fun week! The Garden children got to play new games on the playground, enjoyed the swing, and took turns rock climbing. They are starting to look like pros in climbing. At the big park they enjoyed playing hide and seek with Mr. Jared, climbing trees and playing on the swing set.

After park time on a sunny and hot Thursday, the children had a chance to cool down and get refreshed at the ice cream bar. They picked out their flavor and toppings, yummy! Mr. Jared thinks that if it doesn’t work out at The Well Center, serving ice cream to kids is a pretty sweet backup career!

For activity time the kids cut straws using scissors and then filled pipe cleaners with the cut out pieces. They were very focused and entertained. The children also played together in the block area and did such a great job at sharing and playing as they all got a chance to chip in ideas for their construction.

Lastly, in worship we talked about Adam and Eve. We discussed that when sin entered the Garden of Eden everything changed for humanity. We highlighted that Adam blamed Eve and she blamed the serpent, but it is very important that we don’t blame others when we choose to do wrong. We need to love God by obeying his Word and his commandments to us.

SEEDS - Grades 1-6

For our third week of Science we wrapped up the chapter on the Properties of Matter. On Wednesday we reviewed luster, color, and hardness (malleability) and then introduced smell and magnetism. It was fun to see the kids’ reactions when they were trying to identify several different tea bags through their sense of smell. I think they had the most fun on Wednesday by testing different metal objects to see if they were magnetic. You can quiz them to see if they remember what needs to be present in the metal for a magnet to stick (iron). :-)

As I am sure you heard and saw, we finished our chapter on Friday by making the “lava lamps!” The kids had a “blast” dropping the alka seltzer tablets into the oil and vinegar solution and watching their colorful vinegar bubble up into the lower density oil. It was definitely a fun way to complete the week and hopefully make a lesson on density and chemical reactions memorable!

On Wednesday, in Studio the children were able to continue their work on their group posters. They are very pleased with how they are turning out. Although we took a break on Friday to join Mrs. Jenny’s Science class in a special project, we will resume and finish the posters this week.

This week, we finally got back in our time machine (a favorite thing for us to do in History class) and traveled back to the 1850’s to learn about the time of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. The British Empire was extending all over the world by this point, and while this brought the kingdom great wealth and power (as was displayed at the Crystal Palace in the Great Exhibition), it also brought a lot of problems. Conflicts in India created difficulties for the British as well as tensions with Russia in Turkey and over the area of Crimea, which is in modern day Ukraine (sound familiar?). Keep quizzing your kids about the border states and ask them what they remember as you go over the suggested readings in your books this week.

And once again, thank you all for your help and support in making our ice cream party such a hit. In addition to that celebration, we were also able to honor Kaylee for her birthday and read the book “Chrysanthemum” together. This book helped reinforce our discussion of how we use our words at the Well to build up and not to tear down.

OAKS - 7+

As we worship the Lord in our time together, we marveled at the precious gift we have in Jesus. The story, “The Ring and the Roses” from our book, reminded us that Jesus’ life was so perfect and so valuable that it was sufficient to pay the price of the sins of the entire world. To deepen this experience, read through the following passages:

BIBLE readings:

1 Peter 2:21-25
John 13:1-13
Romans 5:6-21

A Young Person’s Guide to Knowing God

“Footsteps in the Snow.” p. 39
“The Man who was Different.” p. 39
“The Ring and the Roses.” p. 43

The Oaks students helped to construct a paper model of the Crystal Palace which was a major feature in our History lessons this week. Read the “Seeds” section to learn more about what we covered in our class.

This week in Science, we wrapped up our overview of the properties of matter. We had the long awaited ship competition. It was a tight race with a tie at the end so Mrs. Vivi looked for wooden blocks and made an extra test on the ships to see which one would hold out till the end. Elisha, Joshua, and Eva’s team came out victorious. This was the STEAM challenge of the year and we hope we can include more throughout the year. On Friday, we culminated with an experiment to see density in action by working with oil, vinegar and alka seltzer. It was so much fun!

Our play “EUREKA!: Archimedes’ Big Discovery” is finally finished! The kids were so excited to get the final copy of their script and wanted to get to work staging it right away. This week we will block the scenes and integrate the props and costumes. Mark your calendars: our tentative performance date is September 15 at 3:45pm.