Week 7

It's fall time! Time for fall crafts and activities. The most fun thing we did this week in school was paint pumpkins. We usually paint instead of carving because it's much easier for the kids and less messy. They enjoy painting their pumpkins though and I enjoy not having to touch gooey pumpkin insides! Boo and Sis painted faces of their Beanie Boo stuffed animals on their pumpkins. I'm not really sure what Baby Bear painted on hers but she had fun.

 

History: This week Sis read about the Israelite's time in the desert after leaving Egypt. She studied the 40 years of wandering, the giving of the 10 commandments, the 12 spies who went into Cannan, the bronze serpent and mostly focused on God's people rebelling against him. She also learned about the priestly garments like that the High Priest Aaron wore, specifically the Ephod and breastplate. Her project was to make a breastplate with the 12 gemstones that represented the tribes of Israel. We were suppose to make the stones out of homemade clay, but we simplified it and just made stones with paint and markers then glued them on construction paper. Sis also tried her best to copy the inscriptions that were written on each stone in Hebrew.



 Here is a picture of this weeks notebook pages...

Boo is still learning about pioneers and Indians. This week we learned about the first pioneers in Michigan, which happens to be our state so we were excited! We read a story about how Detroit began. We learned about the Indians introducing canoes to the pioneers and how they rode them down the rivers to the Great lakes. We also learned the names of the great lakes and remembered times that we have visited these beautiful lakes that surround our home state. Just for fun here's a picture of a recent trip we took to beautiful lake Michigan. We imagined what it would have been like seeing pioneers riding canoes here.

Bible: 
 Boo is still learning names of Jesus. For the past 2 weeks she has been learning that Jesus is the "Bread of Life." All of our bible stories have related to bread in some way. This week we learned how God used the widow to provide bread for Elijah. She did a craft, which was making a napkin holder shaped like 2 slices of bread with her memory verse on the front. she traced her bread shape onto both sides of a cardboard box. then cut ot out and covered it with a brown paper bag. We haven't bought any napkins for it yet. The plan though is to fill it up and put it on the dinner table like we did with her "Light of the World," candle to remind us that Jesus is the bread of life.

Language: Boo started poem memorization in her Language Lesson book. I have a confession, I always skipped this part when Sis was little because it's always seemed pointless to me. What is the point in memorizing and reciting a poem about a bee? My thought has always been that I would rather my kids be memorizing scripture if they're going to put something permanently in their brain to be able to recite. However, after reading about the benefits of children memorizing well written language I decided to give it a try. Maybe this will help her to be able to form well written sentences and understand language better. I guess it can't hurt. So Boo memorized her first poem called, "Who Has Seen the Wind."
Sis is working on writing more complex sentences in her Writing Stands curriculum. She is taking short sentences and adding to them to make them sound more interesting. She is also learning tips on how to be a better writer. Sis wants to write like Mom, when she grows up so this part of her schooling is important to her. I am enjoying her curriculum too, because I am also learning. One of the tips she learned is never use exclamation points in your writing!!!! (that was on purpose.) The words you choose in your sentence should be strong enough that you don't need an exclamation point to let your reader know it's exciting. Exclamation points makes your work look amateurish. I have never learned that in the writing courses I've taken.

Art: This week's poetry painting was perfect because it was about fall time and it also happened to go well with Boo's wind poem that she's learning. Sis' poem was called, "Gathering Leaves." We all painted pictures of a tree with fall colored leaves (yes it does seem like we paint a tree every week) this one was a little different, because we used crumbled paper towels dipped in paint to make the leaves.

For some reason this is our last poetry painting for a couple weeks. I don't know why but there is no painting scheduled next week, so it looks like we have a little break. Maybe we will come up with some fun fall activities to do for art instead.