Unit 29 :Preparing

History: We made it to week 29 in Preparing Hearts for His Glory and we are finally in the 16th century of our overview of world history. We've come a long way since our study of the Ice Age! This week we learned about the Renaissance, the Reformation, spice routes and trade. A lot happened to change the world during this time period!

Our research this week was on Vasco Da Gamma and the Spice Route. Sis outlined the route of  Da Gamma's famous voyage on a map. He was the first to travel around the southern tip of Africa to get to India.

We read about Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, many artists and more.

Our history project called for a bunch of spices that we didn't have on hand so we did something else. One of Sis favorite parts of history was learning all about the art of the renaissance period. We learned about Michelangelo and the Sistine chapel; Rafael and his Madonna paintings; and Leonardo De Vinci painting the Last Supper and Mona Lisa. (Her first question was are we learning Ninja turtles? lol) In college I took an art course where we had to lay on the floor and paint a self portrait under a table to get a feel of what it was like for Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. It was so much fun, even for college students, so I immediately knew that's what we would do for our project. We have a tall table so it worked better to have the girls lay under chairs. I put a blanket down and some chairs in the living room. Then I just taped a piece of paper to the underside of the chair. perfect! They drew their self portraits like Michelangelo and then we painted them at the table (I decided doing the painting part upside down would be a little too messy, but they got the idea.

 

Here's Sis' portrait...

Reading: Sis started reading the book " The Wonderful Winter," aloud to me. This book takes place in 16 century London. It's about a 12 year old orphaned boy named Robin, who finds a dog and runs away from home when his mean aunt refuses to let him keep it. It ends up being the most wonderful winter full of adventures and people he meets like the William Shakespeare and the Queen herself! We've been enjoying reading about Robin's adventures with his new pet.



Math & More: We worked on figuring volume of an object this week in math. It was a nice break from all the division. Next week we move into an introduction of fractions that will prepare her for Epsilon (MUS) next year. A few weeks left and we will be done with math for the summer! We read more about the brain this week in science, but no photos to post.

It's finally starting to warm up a little here! We had a couple nice days this week, which was great considering we had a snow storm last week. On Friday we walked to the park and had a good time enjoying the fresh air. It made me anxious for summer though. I do get a bit jealous seeing all of the people south of us in shorts while we're here wearing coats. Looks like things are starting to turn for us though, so I'm hoping to have more "outside school days," coming soon.