more work than I anticipated! This is our first family dog and something my kids have dreamed about their whole lives. So aside from all the work, I figured just the excitement of a puppy being in the house would be too much to focus on school anyway. We were able to take the kids for a day at the waterpark on our break (with free passes we were given.yay!)After our long break it was a little hard getting the kids back into the swing of things. We had to do a little reviewing to make sure everyone was on track with where we left off.
History: The title of this week's unit was "The Christians are Persecuted." Sis continued learning about the early church and stories from the book of Acts. We learned about James being martyred, Peter's escape from prison, Paul and Barnabas preaching the gospel and all the hardships they faced, and finally John's vision while he was exiled to the island of Patmos. We also finished reading Fountain of Life this week. I liked the book, but it seems like we've been reading it forever! I'm glad to be done.
One of Sis's assignments was to research Roman mosaic art. Every week this school year Sis has had one research topic. She's been learning how to use the internet (with supervision of course) to do research, something that will be necessary for future college research papers. After she reads and learns more about her topic, she answers oral questions so I can see what she learned. While doing our research we found a website with a game where you can make your own mosaic picture online. HERE... The girls took turns playing with it and creating different patterns and pictures. This is an example of one Sis was working on.
Our History project was to make a mosaic picture of a cross with clouds and sun-rays behind it. All the girls wanted to make one. First, we drew our pictures on black construction paper. Then we used scraps of paper, magazines, and construction paper to cut small tiles. We glued them to our picture to make our mosaics. We worked on these a little each day, because this was a three day project. They had fun though and even Baby Bear learned something. On day 3 She said "Momma is it time to finish my mosaic?" I about fell over that she knew the correct word!
Reading: Sis started learning about Folk Tales this week. We learned about the different kinds of folk tales and what makes them folk tales. For our genre kickoff activity Sis wrote her own folk tale. She decided to write a pourquoi tale, which is a fictional short story that explains why something in nature is the way it is. Her story was called "Why Zebras Have Stripes," It was about a horse who got caught in a storm and struck by a lightning bolt that left a white stripe on the horse. More and more stripes appeared until it was no longer even a horse. It was cute. I think she did really good on this assignment. The folk tale we read together was " A Penny's Worth of Character." This is an old story that teaches a lesson on honesty. It's about a boy who disobeys his mother and deceives a store owner to get candy. I liked this one because it's one of those stories that sticks. It's one I hope she remembers when she's ever tempted to be dishonest.
Science: In anatomy we finished up our unit on blood. We learned about blood types this week and what the different types mean. also the Rh factor that makes the blood type a positive or negative. Then we concluded with an experiment that I thought Sis was going to object to...finding her own blood type using an at home blood typing test. None of my kids are ever calm about needles, so I thought she would refuse to do this project. I was surprised that after I explained it to her she actually wanted to do it! The kit was fairly easy to use. It came with the device to prick her finger and everything. It ended up bleeding more than we expected, but she was a good sport about it and said it didn't hurt. The results of her test were AB negative. You can see on the card that the blood clotted in both circle A and B showing that she has both A&B antigens present. The 3rd circle has no clots meaning that it is a negative for Rh. She was so brave about the blood and all, who knows maybe she'll end up being a doctor or nurse someday.
One more thing that happened last week...most of our next year curriculum came in the mail. I love seeing that UPS truck pull up everyday when it's curriculum week! I still haven't ordered everything yet because I'm still deciding on a few things. I'm sure I will be blogging about it all later, but here's a sneak peak of what we have so far for Sis's 5th grade year...
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