Weeks 18-20

I decided to squeeze weeks 18-20 into one post because I'm so far behind on my blogging, so I'm just going to give an overview of all 3 weeks few weeks.

History: Sis is so happy to be doing Draw and Write Through History again. This year she is doing the ancient Greece and Rome book. She's learning about Greece right now in her History studies. Here are the two drawing s she did during weeks 18-20. The first is of a Greek soldier and the next was a drawing of the Parthenon in Athens. How this book works is she draws one day, colors it the next and then practices her cursive by copying a paragraph about the history related to her drawing.

Sis has learned about the Greeks, Persians, and the Golden Age of Greece these 3 weeks. In unit 20 we looked at different kinds of Greek columns like those used in building the Parthenon. For her history project Sis made a 3D paper column that was stuffed with tissue paper to make it stand. She had to choose one of the types of capitals (or column tops) that we studied for her column. She drew it, cut it out and made it 3D by stuffing it.

I decided not to post pictures of Sis' note booking pages because 3 weeks worth is too many to show them all.  Sis did start a new history book called Ancient Greece Streams of History.

 Boo is still learning about pioneers in US history.
We learned about pioneers on the Ohio river and Eli Whitney's inventing the cotton gin. We looked at how the pioneers use to make clothing from cotton. It was a lot of work! Slaves had the awful job of picking all the seed out of the cotton before it could be made into cloth. Cotton was very expensive.
A fun project that Boo and Baby bear did together was to take a cotton ball, stretch it out, and glue little black seeds made of paper to the cotton. Then we wadded it back up into a cotton ball. The next day the girls had to pick the seeds out and imagine what it was like having to pick seed for the slaves. Then we learned that Eli Whitney invented the cotton Gin, a machine that could remove seeds making production of cotton faster and affordable for everyone.

On week 20 Boo learned about Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase. We added to our timeline and also added the States of Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana to our states map. One night we ate red beans and rice for our study of Louisiana, Boo did copy work for all of her history stories. We also learned about the war of 1812. I was so happy that Boo covered this war, because in few months we are visiting a real fort used in the war of 1812 where we are going to take a tour, meet soldiers, and see a musket demonstration! Sis already knows a lot about the war of 1812. When she was younger we read the American Girl Caroline books together which take place during this war.  Finally, we listened to our national anthem, which was birthed out of the war of 1812 and we learned the story behind it.

Read-aloud:
For our daily read-aloud time Boo and I are slowly still reading through Farmer Boy. I know some people don't like this book because it's long and boring at parts, but Boo and I are really enjoying it! She begs to read it everyday.
Sis and I have been reading through a book called "Archimedes and the Door of Science," together. This is definitely NOT our favorite book that we've read, but we are learning a lot and it's not as boring as the cover looks.



Science: We finally finished learning about light in science! We moved on to the 2nd day of creation, water and sky. Our first lesson was about evaporation and condensation. We learned that many Christians (but not all) believe that the expanse mentioned in genesis on day 2 is the sky because waster evaporates and forms clouds above us. Therefore the sky separates the water beneath it from the water above it (clouds.) For our experiment we made a cloud! The instructions were to fill two glasses with water one boiling hot the other room temp. We lit two matches and dropped them into the glasses. The match dropped in the hot water let off a lot of smoke, the other did not. We covered the glass with hot water and a "cloud" formed inside the glass. We learned what steam is and why water that is hot steams.

Bible:
Boo learned 2 new names for Jesus over the past few weeks. We've had a lot of Bible stories and two verses to memorize. The first name was "Lamb of God." This one is my favorite. We learned about the first passover and why a lamb would have been important to the Jewish people. Then we compared how Jesus was like a sacrificial lamb. I always seem to see a light bulb go off when I teach this subject, like it helps them to really understand why Jesus died on the cross and what that means. Sis made a handprint lamb with her memory verse on it. She traced her hand upside down and then we glued cotton balls for our wool.

The second name that we learned is "the vine." We learned that Jesus is like a vine and we are the branches. If we remain in him we will bear much fruit, but apart from him we can do nothing like a branch that has been cut off.

Art/Poetry: We did two poetry painting over these 3 weeks. The first was a winter scene of a tree on a snowy hill. The second was a mountain scene.

Baby Bear learned 3 new letters. We're trying hard to get her through all of them before summer, she's doing great so far and she loves doing art with her big sisters.

Week 16 & 17

Weeks 16 &17 were pretty rough. We had an unexpected death in the family with the girl's Grandpa passing, so school was a little bit hard. We skipped days here and there but managed to get most of our school work done. Even with combining weeks 16 and 17 in this post there's not a  lot to write about, because many days we struggled to even finish the basics like math spelling and language.

Bible: Boo is still learning the different names for Jesus during her bible time.  We added the name "Immanuel." to our list. We learned that the name means "God with us." Our picture was of baby Jesus, because God came to live with us as  man when he was born as baby. We learned that even after the ascension God is still always with us. We also learned the song "O Come, O Come Immanuel." Too bad this lesson didn't fall on Christmas week!
Boo and Baby Bear made  little paper people. The girl is her and the boy figure is Jesus. On that one we wrote Immanuel and explained they are holding hands bc God is with us.

Sis does daily bible reading on her own and is still working on memorizing all of Philippians chapter 2.

History: Here is Sis' history journal from the past 2 weeks. This is the one part of HOD that I am going to miss next year. I love the note booking idea and the nice pages that come all laid out for her. She knows exactly where to do her writing, journaling, copying verses, and narrations. Plus it's so much prettier than using plain white notebook paper and will make a nice keepsake for 5th grade when it's all finished. I've been throwing around the idea of making our own note booking journals when we return to My Father's World.
One of the most exciting things for her this unit was the return of Draw and Write Through History! Sis' favorite history assignments. Last year she did a different D&WTH book and loved it. The only difference is this year her drawing and writing go directly onto her note booking pages. This was her first assignment, drawing a Babylonian Garden... I love Sis' artwork when she actually tries and cares about it.

below is the finished product along with her writing assignments...

 and this is her work from week 17...

Boo took a short break from learning the states and learned about Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road. We added a picture of him to our timeline and we read about him in our history book. We also read a cute fictional story in our American Pioneers and Patriots book about what life was like for one family traveling the wilderness road. We found the cutest Daniel Boone hat and wooden gun at a specialty toy store. Boo had fun playing with them and getting to see what a real pioneer hat was like,too bad we didn't have enough money to buy them though. They were so cute though I promised the girls I will buy a racoon hats when we study US History together in a couple years.

Language: I feel like language is the one thing that we worked on most those 2 weeks. Boo is working hard on her spelling words and did really well on her tests. She also has been working hard on spelling and neatly writing her full name. She always writes her nickname when signing something because it's easy, short and what we call her. It just occurred to me though that she didn't even know how to spell her entire name! So we've spent two weeks working on that. She also learned the difference between, "two, to, and too" in her language book. The best part of language this week though was getting a new letter from her pen-pal in FL.

Sis and I have done a ton of Language because we're trying to get caught up in her book. Most of it is review this year so we have been doing 2-3 lessons at a time skimming a lot of the stuff she already knows pretty well. Her book is huge though and we have 100 lessons left to finish the book! So we're trying to speed up a bit and focus on the lessons that have new material.  

Baby Bear learned the letter "o "and the sound ah" for the short /o/.  here she is making an "o" with her hands.

Art: Our book actually had no painting scheduled for these two weeks. I'm glad because with everything else that was going on, we probably would have skipped it anyway. We did however try our hand at pottery early week 16. It was A MESS! They had fun, but I had a nightmare.We were covered in wet gooey clay and they were sloshing dirty water all over the floor.  I'm pretty sure we're never doing it again. Each of the girls got to make a small pot with the pottery wheel though. Our pots took three days to fully dry, so we didn't paint them until week 17.