RTR Week 6

This week we learned about Roman architect. We looked at arches and aqueducts. We learned that many of the Roman bridges build 2000 years ago are still in use to day! Those are some pretty well made bridges! We did a little project to see how much stronger an arched bridge is compared to a straight bridge. We used pennies as our soldiers to walk across abridge made out of index cards. First we made a straight ridge across two piles of books. Our bridge held 6 pennies before it collapsed. Then we added an index card arch to our bridge. We lost count on the number of penny soldiers that we put on top. It was even strong enough to hold some horses and chariots ( nickles and quarters.) One arch under our bridge made a tremendous difference in the amount of weight it could support.

The next day we attempted to actually build a Roman arch and failed miserably! We tried to make it out of ice-cubes because we didn't have the 15 pudding boxes it called for. Maybe we will try it again later if we can come up with the right materials.

We did find a great series on Pureflix that goes perfectly with our history lessons called Friends and Hero's. It's about a bunch of Jewish kids living in the Roman Empire and they befriend a Roman girl (niece of Tiberius) even though the Jews hated the Romans. There are 3 seasons of episodes on there, so my kids have been binge watching this show after school each day and they love it. We have seen so many things in this cartoon that we have learned about so far...just last episode they were attending a Roman play with the masks and everything we learned about last week! There was a man from Gaul, and the kids recognized it! I'm loving having a visual like an exciting cartoon to re-enforce what we're learning! I really would love to buy the whole series on DVD.

In Bible we looked at Old Testament prophesies about Jesus. Each day we had a worksheet that listed some  prophesies and our job was to look up and read the fulfillment in the New Testament. We took a long time to do these assignments, but I think the kids got a lot out of it. It was amazing to see how much of Christ's life was prophesied hundreds of years before it happened. Not only where he'd be born and what he'd do, but even details such as him riding on a donkey's colt and detailed descriptions of his death.
The girls copied their memory verses for handwriting practice.



For science we had a very simple experiment this week. We froze salt water and regular sink water and compared them. The salt water did not fully freeze. It just got slushy. We learned about the importance of having salt water in the oceans of cold regions of the earth.









Baby Bear learned the letter M this week and the number 2. We learned all about the moon. She made a moon badge to wear, did all of her worksheets, salt tray, we sang songs, and she was able to memorize all the months of the year! One book that we are using this year is Amazing Animal Alphabet. Each letter of the alphabet has an animal to learn about. The back of the book has information to learn about the animals on each page. This week was M is for Mandrill. I love that she's learning names of unusual animals rather than just M is for monkey! We discovered that Rifiki from the Lion King (one of Baby bears favorite movies) is a mandrill! Baby Bear was excited that she now knows what he is. I love this book though. It's simple, yet she's actually learning a  lot from the lessons.

Probably the most fun thing we did this week was build a spaceship with Baby Bear while learning about the moon. We already had a huge cardboard box that I have been saving, so we cut it out and all the girls helped paint it. Then they had fun playing with it.