Week 6… We’re ready for a break!

 

We had a great week!  Beautiful weather here in our neck of the woods too!  Here are some highlights from the week….

 

Reading

We’ve continued Anne of Green Gables on audio.  The kids are loving this story and we all get a kick out of Anne’s antics and dramatic flair.  Bryson has graduated to “Frog and Toad” level books, reading them for the most part independently. He has been enjoying his Beginning Reader Bible this week as well.   Rylan started Sword in the Tree with me this week in addition to some Magic Tree House and a Berenstain Bear Scout book.  Kylie read some planet books, a couple Joan of Arc books as well as Noblewomen and she started Matilda Bone with me.  Jayden read Three Swords for Granada, Bravo Mr. William Shakespeare and he started Shakespeare Stealer with me.

 

Other basic skills math, grammar, writing, logic, Latin, spelling are all going well for everyone.  Everybody is making huge gains in the area of writing!  Yeah!

 

In Bible this week we studied Satan.  I know, sounds weird, but we studied Jesus’ temptation last week so it led naturally into a study of who Satan is.  The kids and I had GREAT conversations and they learned many new things.  At the end of the week we talked about how with God’s strength and power we don’t have to yield to Satan’s deceptions.  We can put on our “armor of God” and go to battle!

 

History found us in Northern Africa.  We read about the gold and salt mines and Ghana smack dab in

between them, taxing the merchants going through and becoming very rich.  We read about Mali and Mansa Musa and lastly the Songhay Empire.  The kids enjoyed the mapping exercise at the end of the week where they got to draw the boundaries of each empire.  They liked seeing how each empire gained more and more land.  We also played a fun game that illustrated Ghana taxing the salt and gold that came through it.

Our “salt” and “gold”

 

  

Running from one end of the front yard to the other to deliver gold to one side

and salt to the other.

Watch out for Mom the “Tax Man!”  She will

collect 1/2 of what you are carrying.  Here’s my

“spoils” so far!

Want to avoid “Tax Man” altogether?  Then take

the “long way” around the cul de sac!  The kids

figured out a pattern they wanted to follow after a while.

 

  Waiting our turn to be the runner!

 

So, after all was said and done… they didn’t do too bad.  They gained 18 points (trying to get the lowest points possible).  I wanted to try it again, but 1/2 the kids were done so we didn’t run it again.  I wanted them to try paying the tax all the time or taking the long way all the time to compare.  Maybe we’ll try again sometime this next week.

 

In Science this week we finished up our astronomy study.  The kids completed their moon journals, which proved difficult for the younger two and just fine for the older two.  We studied Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.  The kids were very adamant that we NOT leave out Pluto.  We did read about why Pluto is no longer a planet.  That was interesting since I never really knew why.  Apparently, there are three rules a planet must follow to be a planet.

1.  It must orbit the sun.  (Pluto does)

2.  It must be circular shape.  (Pluto is)

3.  It must have a clearing around it.  (Pluto does not)

Pluto actually exists in the Kuiper Belt.  It’s a bit like an asteroid belt out past Neptune, but much larger than the asteroid belt.  The tricky part about Pluto is that there are other space objects within the Kuiper Belt that are bigger than Pluto.  So… either they need to add planets to our Solar System or they need to redefine what a planet is.  They’ve chosen to do the later.

 

Our first experiment this week showed us how distance

affects a planets period of revolution.  The further the planet

the larger the revolution.

 

  

In the second experiment we spun around a washer on a string

to simulate the speed of the planets around the sun.  Those further

out go slower and those closer in go faster.

 

And here’s our completed solar system… Pluto is WAY over on the right

a speck on the wall above the window!

We have now completed our astronomy study.  After our week break we’ll start Earth Science.  We’re all excited to start something new.  We watched Journey to the Stars today as well.  It was flooded with evolution so I don’t think it was the greatest thing we’ve watched, but it was okay.   I think the older 2 got more out of it than the younger two.  Bryson just was so confused over what was true about how the universe was created and what was not.  It’s so hard when people who perpetuate the “big bang THEORY” state it as fact.  They need to remember they haven’t proved anything.

 

I am so enjoying the Art blog I’ve been getting projects off of!  Since art is difficult for me to teach I decided I’d just find projects that look fun to me and go with it.  I’m not going to try and match up history eras or anything.  Just too hard with a subject that I do not feel comfortable with.  So… this week we did an artist mini-study on Russian born Wassily Kandinsky.  He had something we now know of as synaesthesia. A condition in which the stimulation of one sense elicits sensations in another area of the senses.  So, in essence he could “see” music and “hear” color.  One thing I read said that as a child he could actually hear his paints hissing!  We watched this YouTube slideshow that has a lot of his art work set to music.  He was also a musician, however I couldn’t find any of his music.   The kids then did paintings concentrating on mixing colors.  These are fashioned after this painting…

Squares with Concentric Circles

 

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Mom’s school thoughts for this week were centered on two things.  One, with the help of my hubby I’m revamping Rylan’s 1st grade work.  The two of us have really been struggling with school.  I figured out part way through this week that he does his individual work just fine (once he gets going), but he really drags his feet when he has to work with me.  Unfortunately, with what I chose for curriculum that is almost everything.  So, I decided to drop AAS and FLL with him.  We were almost finished with FLL1 and we were in the midst of Level 2 of AAS.  I’m going to move to Spelling Workout and Growing With Grammar for him.  These two things he can do independently.  I will just need to go over his sheets with him to make sure he understands.  We’ll start this after our break.  I have SWO, just waiting for GWG.  I’m hoping that with more independence (read CONTROL) he’ll settle in.  There will just be a couple things (reading, writing and AWANA) that he’ll need to do with me.

 

The other thing I’ve been really researching is history and science.  I already know I’ll do Elemental Science for the younger kids, but I’m trying to figure out science for Jayden.  Also… the whole history question.  I think I’ve decided I’m going to just add to Elemental Science for Jayden.  Use the WTM recommendations for Logic stage science.  And history… well, that’s still a million dollar question.  I think I’ve let go of the idea of TOG for now.  I just can’t see spending all that money right now.  I’ve decided we’ll do SOTW3, I’ll add in more for Jayden and then I think we’re going to skip SOTW4 and go back to Ancients when we finish SOTW3.  Someone on WTM gave me the great idea of getting the audio for Jayden to listen to SOTW4 and I think I will do that because I think he will enjoy it, but most likely it will be too much for the younger boys.  Ky would probably be fine, but she won’t mind going back to Ancients.  I’m interested in Truth Quest.  My bf is using it right now with her kids so when we go down to visit this week I’m going to look at that.

 

We’re taking next week off!   Yeah!!  We’re all ready for a break.  We’re going to go down to Iowa and see our very best friends for a couple days.  We’re very excited for that!   Hope you all have a great weekend!