Unit 22: Preparing

History: This weeks history was about Roman emperors and Christianity. We continued to learn about Christians being persecuted and martyred at the hands of the Romans. We learned about the wicked Nero, Titus, the fall of Jerusalem, Aurelius, Commodus, and Constantine. We also learned about Pompeii the Roman city that was buried under lava and discovered 2,000 years later! We learned about Paul and Peter being martyred.

Sis researched a Roman Triumph, which was a Roman celebration or parade. The triumph was to honor a person who had been triumphant in conquering for Rome. We learned about the order of the prepossession and the different things that wet on at a triumph. We learned about the golden Laural wreath that the person of honor wore on his head. We watched this Youtube clip of a triumph scene from the movie Ben-Hur as an example...

Sis' project was to make a Laural wreath out of heavy paper. We made the base of the crown out of heavy card stock. The bay leaves were made out of yellow construction paper and then the edges were painted with gold paint. Boo made one too. For some reason they think wrapping themselves in a red blanket makes them look like Romans.hahaha





 We stared reading a new book together. Raider's from the Sea: Book One. Next
week we will be learning about the time of the Vikings. That should be exciting. We started the read-a-loud book this week because it's going to take a few weeks to finish. Before I even opened this book I was warned that it's a lot of kid's favorite and the end leaves you hanging. I told Sis that if she ends up loving it I will order the rest of the 5 book series for her. The main character is a 13 year old Irish girl named Bree, who is taken captive by vikings. So far the story has been very exciting and full of surprises. Every chapter leaves you hanging and Sis begs to keep reading. This has really been the highlight of our school week.

Reading: Well we finished our book on Folk Tales last week and that was the last genre that I had planned on learning this year. It was suppose to take us the entire school year but Sis is a fast reader and moved way faster than I planned. For the time being we are done studying genres and I will just be finding books for her to read aloud each week. This week she asked me if she could read the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Into the Looking glass by Lewis Carrol. I have owned it for a long time, but we've never read it. So I let her read it in her own quiet reading time this week. She said she liked it and can't believe how different it is from the animated story.


Science & Math: We moved on to learning about the cardiovascular system (Heart) this week, but we didn't do any fun experiments yet. We also had a not so fun week in math. Sis had a complete meltdown one day (the kind with tears and "I hate math!" shouts) because she couldn't get the answers to come out right! Her long division problems are getting much longer and harder now. It's been a little frustrating. She did pretty well on her test though.