This week in history we moved from Ancient Egypt to focus more on Mesopotamia. We had some really fun times. The notebooking is working wonders so far and makes for an enjoyable time together, though we had a couple days last week where I realized I need to rethink the amount of work we do as a group...3 hours on 3 subjects is really too much for them in one sitting. So I'm going back to History twice a week, Science 2 days and Geography 2 days...that leaves me a little flexibility...and if they want to work more on one subject than another, more power to them.
Jack's Sargon Page
God speaks to Abraham
Abraham's Family Notebooking page
Geography mapping was North America and the United states regions
Geography Foldables on Volcanoes
Jacks' Country Report Page
This is a page from the Geo Scribe Notebooking Packet
In science we are studying biomes and we covered the Savanna this week...
There is a site called Blue Planet Biomes that works really well with this particular notebook page.
Chloe's Sargon Page
Chloe's Abraham Journal Page
Lillie's U.S Regions Map Page
Chloe's Savanna Biome Page
Chloe's Savanna Animal Report
Lillie completed the History Scribe pages for the Pharoahs as an independent project.
For our study on Hammurabi, we acted out courtroom drama using some examples of Hammurabi's laws...it was a hoot, to put it lightly. I've not laughed that much at my kids in a while. I found the idea for the activity here.
Here is a lapbook element for our notebooks where the kids made up their own laws.
Lillie's Sargon Page
Lillie's Savanna Notebooking pages
We've been drawing our stories from Catherine Voss' Story bible, as well as having verse memorization punch cards. When they fill up their cards and can say all 6 verses perfectly, there is a prize in it for them...a Happy meal...which we have never bought for our kids! I know...negligence...but it's just never something we've sprung for, though they have had a Happy Meal or 2 courtesy of loving family. LOL
Week 2 has flown by! To be honest, I have really enjoyed morning group time! I used to do individual basics first thing, but found that by afternoon, no one wanted to be around each other enough to sit through group time! So, this year , I'm doing "group school" first thing and the kids really are doing well with the arrangement. They look forward to setting up their "classroom" in the living room . Oddly enough, however, they don't look forward to cleaning up their classroom when group work is done!
Yesterday, after running an early morning errand, we came home and they were begging to do their history and geography notebooks! I was shocked, pleasantly. We ended up working 3 hours on them and could only squeeze in math for all as far as the basics went before we had company to come over.
I had initially decided to do geography every day, history twice a week and science once a week, but these kids are animals and have blown through 5 weeks of work in two weeks. Not that I'm complaining! I just print up about 6 weeks worth of worksheets, notebooking templates, lapbook elements, projects and hole punch them and put them in my teacher's binder. Then we just pull them out and work through them according to what the kids want to do.
HISTORY
Story of the World : Beginnings of Egypt.
Ancient Egypt fascinates my kids! They never get enough of it.
Lillie reading one of our lessons for us!
We studied cuniform and heiroglyphs and practiced writing them in playdoh, but I didn't get any pictures...I know, shocking....
Chloe and Jack spent a good 15 minutes looking at pictures of canoptic jars..."research" for their drawings...
Chloe is such a girl! Even after "research" her canoptic jars ended up topped with pretty flowers instead of animals and pharoahs. LOL
We watched 2 episodes of a great series called Planet Egypt. We found it on YouTube and it's going along nicely with what we're studying.
There are other episodes as well, but this was the only one that didn't jump ahead of where we were at.
GEOGRAPHY
We have , so far, learned our oceans, our continents, the equator, the prime meridian, and the ring of fire. Unintentionally, our geography has branched off into earth science as well. The ring of fire prompted us to study a little about volcanoes and we also discussed where earth is in the solar system, the statistics of earth, and this nifty little interactive sun/earth/moon doohickey that I found on Pinterest that demonstrates earth's orbit around the sun and the moon's orbit around the earth. What did homeschoolers do without Pinterest?!!?!?!!!
This was an awesome short video, there were alot of good videos that were longer on You Tube, but I was just blown away (no pun intended) by this one.
Map Drills: Map in Sheet Protector with cheap stickers for easy removal and use over and over!
Map Drill Times: Lillie 1 min. 26 sec.
Jack: 1 min 8 sec.
Chloe 1 min 36 sec
Fuzzy Notebooking Elements
Watched this neat little short video about Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79....
I made up a worksheet to look up the latitude and longitude of some of the kids favorite places...this site allows you to type in any place or address and it will give you the latitude and longitude.
LIFE SCIENCE
Living/Non-Living collages
Inside and outside of mini book "Characteristics of Living Organisms".
We also studied Renewable and Non- Renewable resources and discussed the difference between a want and need. Let me tell you that was a great conversation and very interesting to see what they thought they needed.
Renewable/Non-Renewable Resources Shutter book
I just HAD to write down what Jack was saying during all of this. Notice: All he needs is love, well, a wife anyhow!
Lillie Anna's was much more subdued.
WHAT TYLER DOES...
Besides grabbing markers when your back is turned and doing a scribble and run on someone's journal page? Not much!
However, the kid loves gluing things, so I give him a big sheet of construction paper and a pile of scrap paper and cuttings , a bowl and glue, a paintbrush and he's a happy camper till the paper runs out.
He takes his art VERY seriously....
Odds and Ends
Jack did some Math Journaling to go along with his study of Place Value.
Okay, so that's week 2, in the books! It's been another nice week, praying it continues on this path for weeks to come! Tyler goes back to the orthopedic surgeon on the 20th to get another x-ray and I am praying the bone has healed! Not sure how many more minor heart attacks I can have over his antics.
