National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day

Tomorrow, Thursday, August 4th, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.

This is according to the email I just got from my neighborhood co-op. And it's perfect because we are doing the Maths of Practical Life block and we are on Weight. And for Weight I like to have us bake, among other things. And I like to have us practice the metric system. And I have a great chocolate chip cookie recipe in metric AND the ingredient list for it perfectly matches

All in Just One Cookie

So I suggest this for tomorrow, if you're looking for a recipe to celebrate this holiday. It's a great book, if you like books in the "romp around the world" style. And I found the mining of baking soda in Wyoming very interesting! So even adults may learn a thing or two.

Yesterday was The Maths of Practical Life: Temperature. It looked like this:

• introducing a new educational board game, Qwirkle

• continuing with math facts, creative writing, and memorizing our poem of the week
• folding and cutting the paper for our handmade main lesson books (Accordion with Tunnel, page 26)

• drafting the text for our main lesson books
• continuing to practice reading the clock and elapsed time problems
• wet on wet watercolor painting - Little Yellow and Little Blue - soak the paper first for a minute or so, then lay down on your painting board and wipe with a clean sponge to push any air bubbles out - paint along with your child to introduce the painting but stop yours halfway and let him finish his using his own vision - outgoing happy swirling twirling yellow plays in the center of the paper - timid little blue creeps along the edge of the playground and comes closer and closer to little yellow but never quite talks to him - paint a yellow circle in the middle then bring the blue from the edges toward the middle - the blue should stop right before it touches the yellow
• add today's weather to the weather tree from All Year Round

• main lesson story inspired by chapter 18 of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

• follow-up work including Celsius vs. Fahrenheit, reading a thermometer, boiling some water in a kettle to make tea and seeing if it is really 100 degrees (GET AN ALCOHOL THERMOMETER), Thermometer page and science experiments Heat Transfer 1, 2, and 3 from NEED Energy Works curriculum (PDF)

Follow Up Ideas for Homeschool / Home

more of the science experiments in the NEED packet if you like them
(just to be clear, we didn't do any lessons on or study of Heat, just used the experiments to practice reading a thermometer)

there's a nice Thermometer Stamp for $5.50 at Montessori Services

practice reading the temperature each day at noon when you do your weather tree, writing it on the kitchen calendar

make sun tea and see how hot the water gets as the jar sits in the sun

make chocolate pudding, which has to boil in order to "pud"

Chocolate Pudding

In medium saucepan combine

1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup baking cocoa
2 T cornstarch

Whisk in 2 cups of milk and 1 egg, lightly beaten. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil. Boil for one minute. Remove from heat. Flavor to taste with 1/4 tsp vanilla extract and/or 1/4 tsp almond extract. Serve warm.