Show & Tell: Adventures Week 2

Today we wrapped up our 2nd week of 2nd grade. Let me tell ya, this is fun stuff!

In history this week, we learned about Christopher Columbus. Here's the notebook page Hannah made for her United States notebook.


We've worked together on her notebook summaries for these first two weeks. I'll write down the 5 W's of journalism (who, what, when, where, why), and she answers each question orally while I write down her answer. Then we work together to combine the information on our paper into a sentence or two. She has done a great job with it so far and has maintained a wonderful attitude—much better than our notebook experiences last year!

We also made another map from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History that shows the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria leaving Spain and heading to San Salvador. We felt pretty darn smart when we found an error in the book. Their map shows that Columbus crossed the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic Ocean! Oops!


MeeMaw picked up a book at a garage sale last year called Animated Paper Crafts for Special Days that had a pattern for the Santa Maria, so we cut out the shapes and glued them onto paper. Turned out pretty cute, huh? Nothing "academic" about it; just a fun project and something extra to slip into the Christopher Columbus part of her United States notebook.


Speaking of fun projects, I think the highlight of our week was yesterday when we turned our pool into the Atlantic Ocean. We made three ships out of foil, clay, pencils, and paper. Then we designated one side of the pool to be Spain, and we put our carefully-crafted vessels into the water off the coast of Spain.


We added a little wind . . .


. . . and they were off! Notice the girls are in their swimsuits. Hannah was ready to jump in just in case our ships got off course or our wind current wasn't strong enough to get them there. (This really made me think about the sovereign hand of our Almighty God. I wonder how much he intervened on Columbus' journey as he protected the well-being of the ships and the crew and allowed them to find land just as the crew was ready to turn back for Spain, all so the Gospel could reach the ends of the earth.)


Finally, our ships arrived safely at the other side of the pool . . . I mean, in North America.


If our homeschool had a Rewind button, I would have had Millie waiting in North America wearing Hannah's Indian headdress. Oh, well, you can't win 'em all!

In Science this week, we studied air. The girls took turns fanning each other to see that, even though they can't see the air that's all around us, it's still there, and they can feel it when they move it around.



We also had a race where the girls used cardboard to fan a piece of paper across a finish line. We talked about how the cardboard moves the air, and the air moves the paper. I love the way these pictures show how things progressed. Hannah was in the lead to begin with.


Then Camille started gaining on her. Notice how she's checking out the competition!


Determination must have set in because her paper caught a huge gust, and suddenly she was in the lead.


In this picture, they both think they won. Look how shocked Camille looks!


And if it wasn't for this picture, they'd probably still be fighting over who the winner was.


We also took a look at an "empty" shampoo bottle to see if it was really empty. We put it underwater and saw bubbles come out to show that nothing is ever really empty; it's full of air!


Finally, in Bible, we segued from the meaning of the girls' names last week to the meaning of Jesus' name this week. We learned that His name is Greek for "the Lord saves," and we started a "names of Jesus" poster that we'll add to throughout the course of the year.


Hannah told me that she chose the colors she used for a reason. Yellow represents that Jesus is a king. Black stands for all of our sins that were put on Jesus when He died for us. Red stands for his blood when He died on the cross. Green (very dark green, but green nonetheless) tells us that he is still alive. And finally, blue reminds us that He is in heaven with God the Father. We also looked at some Old Testament prophecies and talked about how Jesus fulfilled them. Wonderful time!

All in all, another fantastic week!

You can read what others were up to this week by heading over to Kris' Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!