Unit 24: Preparing

Sorry I'm falling a little behind on my posts. I think it's getting harder to keep up with so much going on this time of year. I'm trying my best to keep my weekly posts up to date, but weeks that are extra busy they might show up a few days later than usual.

We spent a good amount of time this past week catching up on the things that we skipped the week before, after having some days off. We are now learning about the Middle Ages.

History: This weeks unit was called "World Religions Spread." We read about Christianity in the middle ages and learned about Roman Catholics, monks, nuns, and Popes. Then we learned about the early years of Islam and Muhammad. We ended the week by learning about Charlemagne and the "Dark Ages." I think that in all of history this is the time period that I am least familiar with. Just about everything we read this week was new to me, so I'm learning along with Sis. 

We learned about the books that the monks had to hand write on animal skins before the days of printed books. We researched "Illuminated manuscripts." Which were book pages that were decorated with gold, fancy letters, initials, pictures and borders. I found a really good website for kids that tells all about them and even teaches kids how to make illuminated letters. Here is the link if anyone wants it.... 

Illuminated Letters



Sis project was to make an illuminated manuscript with the words of Psalm 1:2 written in black ink. The illuminated letter "B" was painted with gold paint and then the rest colored with crayons.

We are also still reading our viking stories.

Reading: I gave Sis the Book "The year of Miss Agnes," for her reading. This falls in the realistic or historical fiction category, which we studied earlier this year. It's about a little girl named Fredrika and her classmates in a one room school house in Alaska in 1948. The smell of fish is so strong that none of her teachers ever stay, until the year Miss Agnes arrived that would change their lives forever. For now I'm still finding her books to read each week instead of moving on to studying new genres.



Science: This week Sis worked on her model of the heart for anatomy. We painted marshmallows on toothpicks!!! These small ones represented the pulmonary veins and then she painted large ones for the ascending aorta. We will have pictures of the finished product next week. 

 
Math: Sis has been getting frustrated with math as the problems get longer and harder. However we only have two weeks of long division left. That last week the problems look really hard, but the text says beyond that students will probably just need to use a calculator! She is going to be so happy when I tell her she's done though, because she's getting to the point where she hates math time lately.

Next week we move onto Medieval Times!! It looks like there will be some fun activities.