MFW EX1850: Week One

It just so lined up this year that my three school-aged children are all in the same Bible/history/science cycle year with our MFW curriculum.  I love that we can combine so much of their work and they work on the same projects.  This week in history was some review of the New World explorers as well as learning about some that we hadn't studied at the end of last year.

After reading more about Christopher Columbus, we made boats out of foil, clay, pencils, and paper, and had our own expedition across our version of the Atlantic.

We had little sisters cheering the explorer-brothers on.

The boys made their own ships, each claiming one of Christopher's Columbus' as their own.  Gabe's didn't fare well and flipped as soon as it hit the water, which destroyed his mast.  Not so good for a sailboat.  

Christopher and Matthew provided wind for their ships and eventually made it across the pool ocean.

Matthew then found a waterfall for his ship to go over.  

Later that week as I was browsing Target, I saw this wooden ship model.  According to its box it was a pirate ship, but  I figured we could re-purpose it into the Santa Maria.  

This is Gabe when I told him to punch out the pieces.  Combining him into our history cycle has been, umm, interesting.   

Our finished project... 

I don't remember what ages this was recommended for, but most of the assembly was not done by any children.  It was a fun project to do together though.

The rest of our first week was pretty much just an intro to our school year.  We'll be starting our animals study next week, as well as our memorization of the book of James.  (Yes, the whole book...five chapters...108 verses.)  I'm not sure how that will work with all the Awana memorization once that starts up, but that's our plan.  And that's all of us, including me.  My brain is going to get a work out too.  

That was our week in schooling.  I hope your week was great!

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