Our Week: 14

Our life.

One week at a time.

2012.

Week 14.

This week. . .

(4.1.12 -4.7.12)

Bug eyes at the Emerald Coast Science Museum...

This musuem may look small, but it's a sure winner for an outing with my kids.  We bought a annual pass for somewhere around $40 which is a steal for a family of seven.  We go during the school days and almost have the place to ourselves so the kids can go at their own pace, don't have to wait in lines, and it's a very hands-on musuem which works well for little ones.  All five of mine enjoy our time there. 

The bubble room is probably the most popular with my kids...the girls because of their amazement with popping bubbles, and the boys because they can make lots of huge bubbles.

This week in school, week 29:

• We read about more explorers...Magellan, who was the first to sail all around the world (well, his crew anyways...he died near Australia), and Amerigo Vespucci, whom America was actually named after)
• We read about the ancient civilizationsthat lived in Central America...the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas.  While slavery has existed since Biblical times, it's still very sad to read about how Europeans "discovered" these peoples' land, took it over and made the inhabitants their slaves.  I read some of the history of our continent to the boys with tears in my eyes because it hurts my heart that people could think so much less of other human beings, who God loves just as much as he loves us all. 
• We learned all about Jupiter in Astronomy.  The kids were disappointed that there was not more activities so they made another comic strip story about Jupiter (an assignment we did for Venus) and drew lots of pictures. 
• We also rented "Deep Impact" from Netflix so we could watch the meteor-almost-hitting-the-earth part of it (which went along with last week's study about space rocks).  For movies like this, I'm thankful for the folks who came up with the Clear Play DVD player.  I hate that these good action movies have cuss words in them...otherwise they'd be fine for older-young kids.  The Clear Play DVD player mutes out the naughty words so we can enjoy movies without expanding our children's vocabulary in ways we'd prefer not too.  (It will also take violence, nudity, drug/alcohol use, etc. out of movies.  I highly recommend it!)
• Gabriel did some more fun science with water activities this week...experimenting with floating and sinking objects.

We enjoyed hot chocolate one afternoon, a treat enjoyed by wealthy Mayas.

We made pots using the slab and coil method which was used by the Mayas and Aztecs.

We made to-scale sized clay replicas of the nine planets (eight planets plus Pluto?).  Then we combined all of the clay planets except Jupiter together to see that the other planets combined were still small than Jupiter.  Then we added all of the volumes of the planets together to see just how much room was left over in Jupiter if you filled it with the other planets.  (This was not assigned, but an "I wonder..." type activity that Christopher wanted to figure out.) 

Jupiter on the left (complete with Giant Red Spot) and all the other planets combined on the right.  After we were done, Christopher decided we should have weighed the clay, but I told him he was on his own with that since we had already combined it back together.

Gabe guessing and then figuring out what will float and what won't.

This week we also:

• Caught two of these giant spiders.  The first one was in my garden and I freaked out.  I trapped it, looked it up to make sure it wasn't poisonous, found out it was just a nice wolf spider, but Chris still squished it. 
This one was in my younger boys' bedroom.  It was a lot smaller than the one from the garden, but still huge as spiders in my house go.  But I was brave.  I trapped it and threw it over the fence in the back yard.  I hope it eats a lot of bugs.

• Celebrated Passover.  Jesus-believing style.  Last year in our Creation to the Greeks year of history, we celebrated different Jewish holidays, as a Christian.  Passover was one of them, and it was really special.  We use a book called Celebrating Bibical Feasts but this year we didn't do it quite as elaborate as last year.  We scaled down some of the reading and I made a simpler dinner as well.  But it was still special, and it helps show our children the entirety of the Easter holiday. 

The symbolical Seder plate.

Ready to begin.

Matthew reading from the Haggadah.

And Christopher reading from the Haggadah.

The only thing I wonder is how people celebrate the Passover and eat warm food?  Do they bring the food out after they read the Haggadah?  Last year I probably made a mental note to keep the food warming in the oven until after we did the reading portion at the beginning, but that mental note got lost.  I'll have to make sure I make a note in the book for next year. 

We also...

Colored eggs.  Which can be quite daunting with five children.  Especially for the husband when the wife wants to take pictures the whole time.  Hahaha.  I'm so glad I have such a great husband.

And then on this beautiful Saturday morning, we went up to our church and yet again hunted plastic candy filled eggs.  Along with other fun spring time activities... 

Like hula-hooping.  (Is that a real verb?)

I love this picture.  Because I love these people.

Our pastor shared that the Walmart next door had donated about 40,000 plastic eggs about five years ago and they finally used up the last of them last year.  He asked the church body to donate candy filled eggs for the hunt this year...and they delivered.  Almost 10,000 eggs were donated and this is what all the kids' baskets looked like.  Believe me, I am all about other kids' taking home all that candy instead of mine, but all the other kids' baskets looked like this by the end as well.  It looks like we'll have a lot of candy to donate! 

Happy Spring and have a glorious Easter!  Thank God that HE HAS RISEN!