One week at a time. (Okay, so three weeks this time.)
2012.
Week 15, 16 & 17.
This week. . .
(4.8.12 -5.5.12)
So things got a little busy here. We had Chris' dad and step-mom visit and then shortly after, my dad and my grandma came to visit, my dad from south Florida, and my grandma from Michigan. It was fun to have four generations in our home.
Chris went on a short TDY right before my family came and so they all three ended up flying in on the same day, and all traveling through Atlanta to boot.
And while Chris was in Virginia for this TDY, he was told that he'd be leaving for the middle east in eight days. For a month. He left the day after my grandma flew home to Michigan and the same day my dad drove back south. Oh, I'm not ready for these longer ones* again.
*And yes, I realize that to other military folks, one month is not that long. To me and my kids though, it is long enough that we will miss my husband/their daddy A LOT.
These weeks in school...
It got done here, there, and where ever and whenever we could fit it in. We really want to finish up, so we kept up with it in between doing fun things with family. My grandma enjoyed listening to our history and Bible books along with the boys so that worked well.
So, for the older boys, this was weeks 31, 32 & 33 of our school year. In these weeks, we...
- Read about several important men and women of the Reformation era...Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Anne Askew, John Calvin, John Knox...and about the new translations of the Bible that were being written so that people could read it in their own language.
- Read about William Shakespeare...and are still enjoying it! We are reading a recommended book called "The Children's Shakespeare" which has eleven plays in it written in storybook fashion, each about ten pages long. My boys bring it to me each evening to read the next one. Can you imagine children enjoying Shakespeare? It is mostly in language we can understand (hahaha) but has some words that I have to guess the meaning and try to explain it to the kids. We also made a cardstock model of the Globe Theater. We cut off an extra flap or something and it didn't work out 100% correctly, but we got the picture.
- Read more about Native North Americans. We snacked on beef jerky, sunflowers, and berries, and also used berries as ink to draw with, as the Native Americans did. We also made arrows out of straws.
- Finished up our Latin vocab words for the year! The boys are thrilled. It's not their favorite.
- Learned all about Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Keiper Belt, stars, and galaxies. Wheh! The kids put on a play about the discovery of Uranus. We made our own clouds (like on Neptune) while some friends were over and attempted to make a baking soda rocket. Note: Marshmallows will not substitute for cork when using vinegar and baking soda rocket. (What? We had to stop up the bottle opening with something!)
- Debated about whether Pluto should get to be a planet or not. Christopher and Matthew both said yes, and wrote and assignment about why.
- Made ice cream (when learning about how freezing cold Pluto is) using plastic bags, heavy cream, vanilla, powdered sugar, ice, and rock salt. It was pretty yummy, but melted really fast.
- Made an astrometer for astronomy to measure the brightness of stars. It's been cloudy every night so we haven't used it. We also poked holes in a cardboard box in the pattern of the big dipper and shined a flashlight into the box so it lit up the dark wall.
- Made big planet orbit posters. With glitter glue, which makes it even more fun.
Wow, that sounds like a ton of astronomy projects this month! We used a few that are in our Astronomy workbook that are not in the teacher's manual because the boys just want more, more, more hands-on work with astronomy.
Some pictures of our weeks...
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Some pictures of our weeks...
Making Saturns (project from the prior week)
Doing art comfortably...
Writing backwards...the way DaVinci wrote in code.
Christopher's
Matthew's
Making clouds...
(warm water in microwave, drop lit match into water, quickly cover with bag of ice)
Attempting to launch the baking soda and vinegar rocket...
(I'm guessing Leah has to go potty?)
It's a dud.
Making ice cream...
Planets orbits posters...
Christopher's not finished with his yet; he has to make it just perfect...
An astrometer is used to determine how bright a star is. Each rectangular hole has an extra layer of plastic wrap to make it harder to see dimmer stars (or something like that).
Using straws as arrows...the Native Americans used feathers for increased accuracy, so we cut the end of the straw to act like a feather.
Berries and beef jerky...snacks and writing ink.
Gabe's been working pretty hard as well. We are pretty far behind still and he still has several weeks worth of work left. Now I wish I hadn't been so easy to skip days if we just didn't get to it. Good thing he's actually one year ahead, right?
Math using animal crackers? Gabe's favorite kind of math!
This tambourine is a project from way back when Moses led the Israelites across the Red Sea and they celebrated with music and dancing.
I just found the bells recently.
Whoa. I think I'm caught up now with our school for the past three weeks. ONE more week!
(Not counting Gabe's work, which only takes a half hour at the most each day.)
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