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.