Week 3 MFW - Rome to the Reformation: science, Saturnalia, and grumpy kitty

Here are a few highlights from our week...

Art

My son actually enjoyed art this week! He's all about making the cubes and 3-D figures look realistic. It's more technical and less creative, and I think he enjoys that aspect of these particular art lessons.

Writing is still a different story. I found these pictures on the internet and showed them to him and told him this is what he looks like during writing. He will at least crack a smile for 'grumpy kitty'...lol!

Bible
We are focusing on the books of the New Testament. We are reading key passages from each book to get the overall theme/message of the books, as well as who God used to author the books, and to whom the books were written. I did not realize just how many New Testament books Paul had written!


History
This is my favorite part each day. I am making so many historical as well as Biblical connections. The history I learned in public school and the history I learned in church were not from two different time periods after all...I love how I see the correlation between the two now. It is all starting to make sense in my little pea-brain :) The big connection this week was with the despised Herod, so-called 'King of the Jews' and his early beginnings.

Augustus Caesar's World has it's slow parts, but the kids and I find many parts very intriguing. I love how the history comes to life in story book format. I know this book is not written from a Christian perspective or by a Christian author, but keeping that in mind, it has helped me and my kids to make many historical Biblical connections. I remind my kids quite frequently about idol worship and idolatry, what the Bible says about that, as well as asking them critical thinking questions to keep their minds alert to these deceptions. There were some parts of the 'Cleopatra and Antony' chapter that we just skipped all together. Too much lovey-doveyness for their young minds.

We also learned about Hanukkah (and I plan to learn more of that later this year) and about Saturnalia. Saturnalia is the Roman festival honoring the god Saturn. I know that most of our modern day holidays and celebrations had various origins from pagan holidays and celebrations when the Roman Church at that time tried to get the people to focus less and less on paganism and tie them more in with Christian meanings. I also know that Christmas originally had pagan origins, but I either don't remember or never knew the origins were related to Saturnalia. In doing a little more research (on my own outside of homeschool), I read about some of the disgusting practices during Saturnalia. I know human sacrifice was prevalent back then, but it still shocks me that people used to do that and have such little regard for human life.

I know some people, even a few in my extended family, who do not participate in the normalcies of Christmas because of this or other things...and that's ok. We all have to search our own hearts and reasons for why we do or do not do things and ultimately follow where he Lord is leading us. For our family, Christmas is a time to honor Christ's birth (and yes, we know it wasn't really on Dec. 25th), glorify God for the saving life gift of His Son, and a time to rejoice with family through giving gifts.



Science
We are actually enjoying these more simplified activities as opposed to setting up and getting ready for some sort of long and drawn out experiment. 

This week, instead of using a cotton ball during the blinking/involuntary reflex activity, I sat them down in chairs, gave them safety glasses, and threw Nerf darts at them. They were totally not expecting that! They got the point and were quite surprised...LOL.

They were a little leery as to what I was up to...

The hot or cold regulator activity was fun too. I even tried this one, however, I'll not post the picture the kids took of me..ugh...I am getting old!

And last, but not least, I will leave you with a few other funny pictures we came across when I stumbled across 'grumpy kitty'. 

Mustache kitty

Fierce Kitty

Crazy kitty

Week 3 - CtG - Shofars and Rosh Hashanah

Creation to the Greeks Week 3

Here are a few highlights from our week.

Art

I know we are a bit late for Grandparent's Day, but better late than never ;) The kids skipped lesson #5 in the History of Art (it was a review anyway) to make cards for their Grandparents and Great-Granny. I'm sure they will enjoy receiving these little treasures in the mail :-D

Lesson #6

The kids had fun making their shofars. Click here for a quick and easy template for a shofar.

Here is a link to a short video demonstrating the sounds of a real shofar.

The Tanglewoods' Secret

We are a little bit ahead in reading...chapter 10, I think. Anyway, this week's reading was especially touching. My daughter has come around to this story and actually likes it now. Like I said before, it had to be God's perfect timing as we have been talking with her about these very same things. She has given her life to the Lord already, but like the story says, it is a learning process and you must be deliberate in listening for the Shepherd's voice.

Bible & History

The kiddos' hand-drawn Biblical maps.

She is such a poser! 

Had to take his picture doing something 'manly' like working out on the machine

Click here for a informative 2 minute Tower of Babel video from Answers in Genesis.

Science

We tried out Archmedes' Death Ray (as described in Genesis For Kids) over the weekend along with a few other magnifying glass experiments while on our camping trip. In case you missed it, click here.

We did not do the 'Light from Unexpected Sources' experiment because we happened to do this and more like it over the summer. We put the wintergreen candies in our mouths though instead of using pliers. It was pretty cool! You have to do this experiment in a pitch black room in order to see the effects though. We went into the bathroom at night, all stood in front of the mirror, put our wintergreen lifesavers in our mouths and crunched them up with our mouths open. Our mouths sparked with every crunch!

You can try this same experiment with plastic unused rubber bands as well. Go into a dark room, hold each side of the rubber band with each hand, and quickly stretch. Once you stretch them, they won't work for a while, so be sure to have plenty of un-stretched rubber bands on hand. The more you stretch at once, the brighter the light will be. The kids really liked this one too! 

Another short video from Bill Nye about refraction.




Rosh Hashanah

I think this feast went a lot better than the Sabbath feast. We also had a special guest with us :-) 'S' is not home schooling with us this year and happened to be over for a sleepover, so that made things extra special for the kids.

'A' helped set the table.

Notice the 'place cards'. She wanted to make sure each guest knew exactly where to sit ;)

Everyone chowing down and enjoying each others company :)

Honey Cakes

If you have not done this feast yet and plan to make honey cake, I suggest dividing the recipe in half. I ended up with 3 of these, so 2 went into the freezer for later.

We ended the evening by watching a snazzy Rosh Hashanah video based around the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah.

This post has been linked up with 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard

MFW-ECC - Week 3 - North America

 The excitement is building...just one more week before we leave the United States and head to Mexico ;)

Some of the highlights from this week were...

Nature Walk 


We could have done our nature walk in our yard in the morning, but 'yours truly' had the bright idea of heading to the park that afternoon. *FAIL* It was only 107 degrees that afternoon and after being there only 5 minutes, we had gone through every bit of our water. 10 minutes later and the kids were zapped and their poor little faces were splotchy red. Our nature "walk" ended up being more of a nature "glance" and we high-tailed it outta there to Sonic to catch the last few minutes of happy hour :)

Global Art

Because the Wee Sing song for the week was a Native American one, we opted to do the sand paintings and the kids *loved* it. 

A drew a picture of she and her brother. J drew a picture of a baseball game/field. S drew an hour glass and various shapes/designs.

If you would like to do this project, you'll need:

white cardstock, paint brushes in various sizes, glue, cup of water (to add to the glue), paper plate, & colored sand

We got the colored sand from Hobby Lobby for about $6. MUCH easier than trying to color it yourself. Maybe I took some of the fun out of it, but due to time constraints, this was the best choice for us. (This sand was originally $10, but we used a 40% off coupon.) Inside the box were 12 different sand colors, and of course, between all the kiddos, they had to use EVERY color. We used very little and had a ton left over, so we are saving it for another global art project or 2 in the future that calls for sand as well.

Some things we have changed or have done differently...

Hero Tales

This book has become our new 'read aloud'. The kiddos were not really getting into "Kingdom Tales", so we shelved that book for now.

I have talked to a few people who have had some difficulty with this book. I have a 2nd grader who is doing ECC with two 4th graders, so from the first time I introduced this book, I have simplified things and only focused on the necessary. 

Typically, I'll at least read the opening paragraph of each section. Then, we focus mainly on the bold orange words contained in that section. We may or may not do the green and blue areas depending on difficulty and/or time. Or, we may opt to simplify those areas and only touch on a few key things.

{Just to give you an example, on Tuesday, I read the opening paragraph on page 39 down to the orange word 'forest'. Then I skipped down and mentioned the layers of the forest and briefly described those (emergent, canopy, understory, shrub layer, herb layer, and floor) while I drew along on our large dry-erase board. [Another idea could be to show internet pics of the different layers...there are lots of good ones out there.] Then, we discussed a few of the animals, birds, and insects that might live in each layer. [If you live near a forest (or lots of trees) another idea would be to go on an 'extra' nature walk and see first-hand what animals you could find living in those sections...document by taking pictures, drawing pictures, or simply talk as you walk.) We skipped the 'tree anatomy' and the 'taking it further' sections. 

We also skipped the United States worksheet on Wednesday and had the kiddos put together a United States puzzle instead.

I seem to be 'skipping' a lot here lately, but if I can find an alternative to doing yet another worksheet or workbook page, I'm gonna go with that option first. And if I feel an area has already been adequately covered and discussed, then we'll cut out the worksheets that seem redundant.


If you missed our highlights from Week 2, you can check them out here. 




This post has been linked up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers