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.