Unit 13: Preparing

This week we were able to finish our school work and get all of our Christmas decorating done! We put up our tree, village, and hung our stockings. We also started our advent calendar and welcomed our elf on the shelf back. We spent the first day of school catching up on things that we skipped last week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. It's always hard for me during the holidays. We have the freedom to take off as much time as we want for holiday breaks, but at the same time I hate skipping things so we usually end up spending extra time going back to things we missed!

History: Our history left off last week with Babylon conquering Judah and God's people going into captivity. This week's focus was what happened in Babylon and then Babylon being taken over by the Medes and Persians. We stared out looking at King Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue and what Daniel prophesied to come in the future. Sis colored and labeled a picture of the statue from his dream. The printable of the statue we used can be found here... Nebuchadnezzars dream coloring page.   
We read about the fiery furnace and Neb's golden statue he set up. We then learned that Daniel also interpreted the writing on the wall to King Belshazzar. The words came true that very night and Babylon was taken over by the Medes and Persians.We learned about King Cyrus and King Darius, the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, and finally we ended the week learning about Queen Esther( one of my favorite stories!) These units are moving through history pretty fast, but I think Sis is understanding and remembering pretty well. Our timeline really helps with that too. This week we added "Fall of Babylon and Esther becomes queen of Persia."

For Sis' history project she made her own invisible ink and used it to write the words that were written on the wall by the hand that God sent to King Belshazzar. She also made a picture of the story with invisible ink. On day 2 after it dried all 3 girls used blue food coloring and water to paint and reveal the hidden messages that Sis made.

Language: Sis had her big unit test in spelling this week. She got all 51 out of 51 words correct! I'm so proud of her!

Reading: We finished our mystery genre. Sis is flying through these reading books. According to our schedule we were suppose to be starting "mystery" this week and finishing in 3 weeks instead she is finishing it now! I decided to just let her keep going. That means we will finish our reading studies for the year very early, but I'm ok with that because there are so many books Sis wants to read for free time. This just means she'll be able to fit more in. For her end of the unit mystery project she had to make a character mask and an acrostic poem. Our mystery book was "The Doll People." So Sis chose the main character, Annabelle Doll, for her project.
 
 



 Science: We're still learning about nutrition in science. This week we learned about carbs, protein, fats, and calories. We did an experiment to see how much fat is in different foods. We put food samples on pieces of brown paper bags for two hours. After the 2 hours we looked at the paper to observe the grease spots. Peanut butter had the biggest spot (most fat) and bread had the least. Our cheese paper might have had a bigger spot, but Baby Bear snuck into the room and ate it half way through our project. Have you ever heard of the dog eating your homework? Well we have a baby sister eating our science project!

We also looked at food labels. Sis had to guess which had the most fats, carbs, protein, etc.

In math Sis is finding the area of trapezoids...I got asked the famous question "Mom why do I even have to know this?" My answer... well I don't have one. I've never in my adult life needed to know how to find the area of a trapezoid. I told her that God wants her to try her best in school even if we don't understand why sometimes. We're looking forward to next week. Tue is no school for us!!Instead I'm surprising the girls with a special holiday field trip and fun day out! I love so much that we don't have to wait until the weekends for special family outings and can avoid the holiday crowds!