Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

We've made it through two full weeks of homeschooling and we're still going strong! This past week, we used the story Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Aidan LOVES machinery of any kind, so I knew this one would be a hit.

Monday, we visited The Henry Ford Museum with our friends. We had a great time looking at all of the old steam-powered machinery. The museum houses the oldest known steam engine; which we thought was pretty cool. Looking at all of the old well-maintained machinery gave us an opportunity to talk about good stewardship. We also checked out lots of the hands-on exhibits. Aidan crafted his own "steam engine" out of tinker toys.

Tuesday, we talked about personification and read a little story called My Digger and Me. Aidan made up his own story about a steam shovel named Oscar.

We painted trees on Wednesday for art. We practiced making distant trees that looked like puffballs and close-up trees with branches and leaves.

Matt handled math on Thursday. He and the kids practiced drawing squares with a stencil and made little rubber band shapes on a geoboard. We also watched a video of the story and baked our own "Mike Mulligan Cake" complete with perfect square hole, dirt and steam shovel.

For science on Friday, we read What is a Gas? and watched an awesome DVD about steam power. We made pinwheels and powered them with steam from the tea kettle. They didn't spin as well as we hoped they would. I guess that's what you get with a homemade pinwheel!