Care of Magical Creatures
For this one, we went to the zoo and on a nature hike, and wrote down facts we learned about all the different animals. My favorite part was that there was a cool dinosaur exhibit at the zoo, and some of the dinosaurs really did look like magical creatures!
Herbology
For herbology, we studied plants (of course!) and learned a little bit about the magical process of photosynthesis! We looked up a couple videos on youtube and went over the "ingredients" in making glucose, and talked about the byproducts made from the process.
Arithmancy
We really didn't do much math at all this week. For a game in the car on the way to the zoo, we tried to come up with a bunch of different ways to make 9 and 3/4 (for platform 9 3/4), so 10 minus a fourth, or 5 plus 4 plus a half plus a fourth.
Potions
This was our combo cooking/ science experiment class. We redid some of our favorite science experiments and would pretend to do spells as we did things, like "wingardium leviosa" for the egg that gets sucked up into the bottle.
Charms
We put together our own little spellbook, then skimmed through the books looking for spells to write down. Mostly it was me just trying to get Einstein to write something at any cost. But it morphed into Einstein figuring out the most gruesome and deadly spells then running around the house firing spells at me and his sister.
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| Einstein trying to sneak out after bedtime to read |
Transfiguration
For transfiguration, we tried out some of our own magic tricks. We watched a show about a magician who goes around pranking people, and then Einstein tried to make a "self-bending straw". It was a cook trick, but his fingers weren't quite big enough to cover the hidden secret of the straw, so it didn't pan out the way he had wanted. But he still thought he was the best magician ever.
Astronomy
We learned about how the sun shines during the day, and the moon reflects the sun at nighttime, and then we pulled out a mirror and flashlight to bounce the beam off the mirror to show how that works with the sun-moon-earth. We also were out late one night, so looked up at the night sky and I taught Einstein how to distinguish another planet in our solar system from a star.
Ancient Runes
Just brushed on this one, but we looked at the latin/ greek roots of words- Harry Potter spells are full of them! And we looked at the word photosynthesis- photo meaning light and synthesis meaning to put together.
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| Not my genius idea, but what a great way to teach! |
History of Magic
This was actually Einstein's favorite this week! We talked about witch hunts throughout history, and particularly about the Salem Witch Trials- why people got accused, the methods of testing whether or not they were witches, and all of that jazz!
Defense Against the Dark Arts
I felt very clever with this one- this was our Bible study! Ya know, defense against the dark arts... I couldn't stop laughing.
Wizard Chess
We watched the clip of Harry, Ron, and Hermione playing with the giant chess set, and Einstein got to play lots of chess, to his immense pleasure!
Quidditch Practice
This was our physical fitness stuff! We did running with broomsticks (I hoped our neighbors weren't looking into our backyard!), catching a "snitch" and came up with a "lumos" game, where we would shine a flashlight on something, a wall, ceiling, or floor, and the other person had to run and slap it or throw a stuffed animal to hit it. It was super fun!
We also did "avoid the bludger" and threw water balloons at each other, and pretended to be competing in the 2nd task at the Triwizard Tournament when we went swimming, and we dove down to save our hostage (diving rings). That was probably one of my favorite parts!
