Week 12 &13

 History:

Sis and I started reading a new book for history. It is called God King. It's a historical fiction story that takes place in the biblical time period of king Hezekiah. It's about an Egyptian boy who becomes the king. In Egypt the king is considered to be a God, so he is the God King. When he flees  his country he meets two kings who are in conflict, King Hezekiah who trusts in Yahweh and Sennacherib the Assyrian. He must choose who to side with and the fate of his own country is in the balance. This fictional book brings the real bible story to life.
This is a pretty thick book so I assume that it will be several weeks before we finish this one.



Here is Sis's notebook work from both weeks:

 Sis did a history project in her notebook showing the division of the 12 tribes when they divided into Israel and Judah.

Boo started something new this week in history. Up till now we have been learning the history of the United States. Now we begin our study of the 50 states that will continue until the end of the school year. This year is not meant for her to memorize her states and capitals but just give a brief introduction to them. Each day we will add a state to her notebook. We look at a map to locate it. then Boo has her own map to color in the state we learned. She also has a worksheet for each state where she will label the capital, color the state bird and flower and stick a state flag sticker on. On the back of the page is facts about the state. We also have full color state cards that she will look at and use to color her birds and flowers correctly. here is a sample of the sheets she is doing with the flag stickers and bird cards...

We also finally get to start adding stickers to our  state sticker poster that has been hanging up all year. It is a blank map of the states and we will add colorful stickers of each state with it's name as we learn them.

Science: We are still learning about light in our science book, but we also added a second science book for Boo that goes with her history. She will also be learning about birds in science as we learn state birds in history. We started reading this book, "Birds, Nests, and Eggs Take-Along Guide." which tells all about birds and introduces her to many different kinds of birds. 

For a small project Boo made some pretend binoculars. She had fun using her real ones to look out side for birds, but it's the middle of winter so the best we did was find some nests in the dead trees.

 
For our regular science lesson all of the girls did another experiment with light. This one was really cool, yet so simple. We learned that light can not only be reflected and absorbed but can also pass through some objects. in the experiment we put a metal fork in the bottom of a clear bowl. When we looked at the fork from beneath the bowl it appeared to flip upside down and float on top of the water even though it was really still just sitting at the bottom of the pan. This is because the light is passing through the water, bouncing off the fork, reflecting off the top of the water, then passing back through the water and glass and hitting our eyes!
This is what the fork really looked like...

This is what it looked like to us from under the table looking up! No the fork isn't really floating upside down on top of the water. It is the reflection of the real fork that is being seen in the picture. cool huh?

The girls drew pictures of what happened in the experiment and Sis wrote about what we learned.

Bible: Since we are learning everything birds Boo had a whole week of Bible stories about birds. Then for week 13 we added a new name of Jesus to our list: Jesus is the Way.

Read-a-loud time: Boo and I also started reading Farmer Boy as a read aloud time together. This picture cracks me up!! Only in homeschool can you dress yourself for school when you're 7. Why not? Hahahaha!! All of the kids have been listening to this story though. We love Laura Ingals Wilder.

 Art/Poetry: We only did one painting over these 2 weeks. It was of a night time sky with a full moon and trees. Sorry I never took a picture...


Baby Bear had fun doing Play-Doh cake factory while we did school. All 3 of my girls still love to create things with Play-Doh (even Sis when her sister's are playing) so they all took turns making cakes this week during their quiet time, but I discovered this is a great way to keep Baby Bear busy while the older girls are doing their work. So, I bought the the pizza maker and ice-cream factory too too for Christmas! shhhh!

 We will be taking a couple weeks off for Christmas break and will be back after the New Year.

Week 10 & 11

Wow it's been a really long time since I've blogged. I have good intentions to really, but it is so hard to keep up during the holidays. This is a recap of two weeks even though a week long Thanksgiving break was between them.

Science: On week 10 we took a closer look at the human eye during our study of light, to find out what actually happens when light hits our eye. We learned that light passes though the cornea to the lens and is hits the retina. There rods and cones change the light into electrical energy and sends it to our brain, then we can see the object!  Our experiment was about our blind spot, the one spot on our retina that doesn't have any rods and doesn't get the message to our brain. We used this drawing by staring at only the green dot and moving the book from arms length closer to our face we eventually hit a spot where the blue dot disappeared completely! Was the dot really gone? No,the dot was in our blind spot. The light reflecting off of it was hitting the spot on our retina that couldn't send the message to our brain. This experiment was another fun one. The kids have been amazed by just about every experiment this year and they are actually remembering and learning a lot.

My favorite part of this experiment though was when Sis said "Wow, you would never know that so much goes on inside your eye ball for you to see something. All this stuff happens in the world with light that you never think about! Science is my favorite subject."Without even realizing it the kids are getting the message. Science doesn't contradict God's word, instead it proves that creation is so complex that there has to be an intelligent  Creator.

The girls drew diagrams of the human eye and what happens when light passes though it. Sis also wrote about the experiment and what happened.









Bible: Boo added a new name to her study of the names of Jesus. This week we learned Jesus is the Giver of Living Water. We read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Boo's memory verse is John 7:37 "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." We put her verse on a drinking cup that she used every night for bedtime water. Every time she took a drink it was suppose to remind her that Jesus has living water to give her.

Sis is still using the Jeshub's Journal Bible study to study the Old Testament laws.

The girls are also still doing their detective Bible Study (using Cold-Case Christianity for Kids) with Daddy in the evenings after dinner. He bought them each a binder for their investigation. They have been enjoying this time together. 

History: Boo has asked me for weeks now "When do we learn about when we became America?" Well we finally reached it week 10! We had a brief overview of the American Revolution. We learned about the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the thirteen colonies, and the American flag. We read the books "The 4th of July Story" and  "Red, White, and Blue." 
 Boo and I used out world map to act out the British soldiers coming to fight and the American soldiers cheering in victory. Here's our little doodles we used.

Boo added a copy of the Declaration to her notebook. She also wrote a little bit about the American Flag.

 

Week 11 we learned more about the war ending and George Washington becoming president. We read a story in our American Pioneer and Patriots about the day he was sworn in.  

Sis began reading about the reign of King Saul for week 10. That week we started out looking at the story of David and Goliath and then pretty much read about the lives of David and Saul during his reign. I know Sis has known the story of David and Goliath since she was 2 and about King Saul as well. These studies on a 5th grade level really are more in depth than your basic children's Bible story. Sis is studying geography, researching ancient weapons and slings, studying and comparing Bible passages, memorizing scripture, doing written narrations. She is learning things she never knew or understood about this time period in history. 

For week 11 Sis did most of her history without me. I feel a little guilty that we have skipped the fun projects for both of these units (which was suppose to be make a slingshot and an ancient board game,) but like I said the holidays are busy so lately we've been doing the minimum.

Here is a sample of her History Notebook from both weeks. 

Poetry/ Art: After 2 weeks off of watercolor painting all of the girl's were excited to start back up. This week's painting was a fun one. We read a poem about leaves called,"Misgiving." Then we did a leaf painting.The background was made with strokes of yellow, red, and orange paint and then we placed a wrinkled up plastic bag on top of the wet paint to make the effect. It looked pretty neat. After drying overnight, we traced large leaves onto our background and painted around them with red paint. Last Sis added a verse from her poem. We were happy with the end result (sorry my picture turned out so blurry though)

For week 11 we had a painting fail. First off it was the weirdest painting assignment we've had this year. We were suppose to paint two blue skies...that's boring. We opted to paint one instead. We tried to use white crayon to resist the paint and make the sky "broken" like our poem, but it ended up not turning out quite right.

One exciting thing happened for Boo last week. She got her first penpal! Boo has been a little jealous of Sis' penpals over the last couple years. I decided she was finally old enough. I have been waiting until I was confident that she could write a letter. She's been practicing her handwriting a lot and I found another mother who was looking for a penpal for her 7 year old girl. She lives in a state very far from us, so that is a plus. I like for the girls to have penpals who live in places different from us. Boo was so excited to receive her first letter this week. Next week we will begin working on writing her first letter to her new friend.  

Over the past 3 weeks we went out of town for Thanksgiving, celebrated Baby Bears 4th birthday, went to the movies, celebrated a birthday for our now 1 year old puppy, and had an end of the season swim party at the girls swim class (see why I haven't had tome to blog!) We also finally got in the holiday spirit. Baby Bear and I took a special trip to the World's largest Christmas store. All of the girls have been watching Christmas movies after school. I only let them watch our Christmas movies once a year. That way they don't get tired of them and it makes the holiday movie time a little more special. Their favorite Christmas movie is Elf. We put up our tree and welcomed our family's "Elfie" on the shelf back.