Unit 4: Preparing

We're back to school after a great week long vacation. I always wonder if they will forget everything when we take a week off, but they both did pretty good remembering this time! We're still enjoying our HOD Preparing Hearts curriculum. Sis's only complaint is the amount of writing with written narrations, journaling, copywork, etc. she says it makes her hand sore...I say it's good for her especially since she says she wants to be a writer someday.

History: Sis picked back up where she left off studying the Ice Age. We're still reading through "Life in the Great Ice Age." One of her assignments this week was to do further research on the Ice Age using the internet. We found a great resource at Answers in Genesis's kids page found here Ice Age Answers.
We compared what creationists believe about the Ice Age to what evolutionists believe. We also looked more at the tower of Babel, which we believe took place between the flood and the Ice Age. 

Her history project was to make a clay map of the areas where the Ark and tower of Babel are believed to have been. We used "Crayola Model Magic." She formed the seas and rivers using a map in our book. On day 2 she labeled them with toothpick flags. Then on day 3 we filled the seas with water and added pieces of ice to represent the wall of ice during the ice age.

We also started using the book "Child's History of the World." I have mixed feelings about this book. Some parts are really good, others I totally disagree with. HOD carefully went through this text and only assigned chapters to be read that agree with creationism, so I'm glad they did that. I do like the fact that the history lessons are told in a non-textbook story format.

Sis learned to draw the tower of babel and did her copy work in her Draw and Write Through History book.
 

Reading: Sis finished reading Little Women and began reading Sara Plain and Tall for our second book in the historical fiction category. She studied character traits this week. We looked at faith, perseverance, and courage. She had to look at some of the traits of the characters in her book, and then think of examples of these traits in her own life. We also talked about writing using descriptive words that paint a picture in the mind of the reader, setting, and the time period.

Science: Science was so much fun this week! We're loving our Apologia Anatomy! We both agreed it is our favorite science curriculum we've ever tried. We finished up our unit on cells by making an edible cell out of JELLO and candy!

Then we started a new unit on the skeletal system. We learned so much about bones, not only that they hold our bodies together and protect our organs but how they produce blood cells and store nutrients that our bodies need. We learned about calcium and how to keep our bones strong. We also talked about causes of bone diseases like osteoporosis. This was particularly interesting to her because Grandma has this bone disease so it helped us to better understand it. One project we did was make a Play-Doh person and squished it to see what we would be like without bones. Then we made a second one and added toothpicks inside to help hold it together and allow it to stand on it's own like our bones do.