Show & Tell: Adventures Week 3

We have another week of school successfully under our belts!

In history this week, we traveled back in time and spent the week at Jamestown with Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.

Here is the summary page Hannah made for her United States notebook.  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get it down to one page without eliminating pertinent facts.  The brown triangle at the top is her drawing of Fort James.

My Father's World didn't have any hands-on projects scheduled for history this week, and since Hannah has really been enjoying those, I scoured the internet and found a couple I thought were age-appropriate.  The first was a Jamestown & Pocahontas lapbook.  I found most of the Jamestown printables at Currclick and most of the Pocahontas printables at Homeschool Share.



This is what's under the Jamestown flap.  It includes the reasons they wanted a settlement in the New World, information about their voyage over, and hardships they faced when they arrived.



This is what's under the Pocahontas flap.  It includes information about Pocahontas' early years, as well as how she helped the settlers in Jamestown and how she saved John Smith's life.

 Our second hands-on project that I thought was age-appropriate was a paper model of Fort James, which I found at Homeschool in the Woods.

Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking, either.  When I looked at it, I thought, "Map colors, scissors, and glue.  How hard can it be?"  But after I printed it and saw how tiny everything was . . . well, let's just say it ended up being a pretty mom-intensive project!  I did all of the cutting and assembled all of the houses, and Hannah helped put up the fence and arranged all of the buildings inside of the fort.

Speaking of the arrangement of the buildings inside the fort, did you know that the church was the center of the community?  Literally?  I love the symbolism in that.

In Bible, we spent time talking about what it looks like to follow Jesus.  The girls were introduced to the phrase WWJD (nope, they had never heard that before!), and they each made a WWJD bracelet.

This morning, they also each made a Jesus suncatcher to hang in the window.

In science, we did a few more experiments with air.  At lunch one day we took our empty juice boxes and saw what happened when we changed the air pressure in the box.



First we decreased the air pressure in the juice box by sucking all the air out through the straw.  The result was that the air outside of the box pushed in on the sides, causing the box to "crush."





Then we took our mouths off the straws and the air pressure stabilized.




Finally, we increased the air pressure inside the box by blowing into the straw.  We saw that, as the air pressure increased, the air inside of the box pushed out against the sides, causing it to "puff up."

 For our second experiment, we put a ruler on the table and tapped it.  It easily fell down.

But when we laid a piece of newspaper over the ruler, we had to push much harder to make the ruler fall.  This is because air was pressing down on the large area of the newspaper and helping to hold the ruler in place.

And for our final science experiment, we filled a glass up to overflowing with water, put a piece of cardboard on top of it, and turned it over.  The water was supposed to stay inside of the cup, but this is what happened . . .

Glad we decided to do that one over the sink!  We popped in our Inquisikids:  Discover & Do DVD so we could watch "the pros" do it.  We realized they were doing it with a glass instead of a plastic cup, so we decided to try it again.  It worked!

 

So we realized that, yes, air was pushing the cardboard against the cup in both scenarios.  However, the plastic cup was actually changing shape, which broke the seal the water had made with the cup, and air was getting in, causing the cardboard to fall.

The three R's are going well.  Hannah set up a school table in her bedroom for her and Sweetie to do a math lesson.  She even declared math her favorite subject!  Whaaaaat?!  WOO HOO!!

And at some point during the course of the week, Hannah was able to get in a little handwriting practice ...

Yep, when Mama's busy building Fort James, the cleaning gets overlooked!  :)

In Tot School this week, Millie mastered the letter M.  I'm so proud of her!  We're using MFW K phonics with her this year, and she's doing far better with her lessons than I ever would have imagined!

She also had a big day on Tuesday when she made her first 10 Train!  We're also using MFW K's math for her preschool, so she's going to get a lot of practice making 10s.  She even kind of counted down before she made it to 10, like, "Mom!  We have 8!  We only need 1 . . . 2 more to have 10!"  Yesss!  She gets it!!!

I'll leave you with a few fun pictures from Monday.  We made a library run and met some friends at the splash park right next to the library.  The kids played and splashed, then we all went to Chick-Fil-A for a drink.  All that and still home by 3:30.  Ahhh . . . behold the joys of homeschooling!

Trip to the Lake

This year we chose a 4-day-a-week schedule for our homeschool. We school Monday through Thursday and take off every Friday. I think we're really going to love it! We can go to theater or ballet performances any time we want and use Friday as a make-up day if we need to. We can enjoy playing with friends after co-op when it meets and not feel like we need to rush home to "do school." We can take advantage of our Fridays to schedule some fun field trips. Plus, it's one less day for Mama to have to prep! ;)

This week we took advantage of our day off and headed to Grandma and Grandpa's for the weekend.

Ashley (my niece) just moved into their guest apartment while she's going to college, so we got to see "her place" for the first time. It's so cute and young and fun! I would move in, except I'm no longer cute or young or . . . well, I think I'm still fun! (I think?!?) We also got to meet Ashley's cat, Pop, for the first time. Hannah was in L-O-V-E, which means that poor cat didn't get much of a break while we were there!




Mom and Dad have the perfect driveway(s) for bike riding, and the girls always take advantage of it when we visit. They rode bikes on Friday . . .


. . . while Grandpa fried fish for dinner.


Millie never gets too far away when Grandpa is frying fish!


It was insanely hot . . .


. . . but still good to be outside relaxing and enjoying each other's company.


On Saturday morning, we went to visit my grandpa, which is always a bittersweet experience. This time, fortunately, it was more on the sweet side! He just turned 92 years old and he's suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers, but he remembered my name this time without being told! I wish my girls had the chance to know the grandpa I remember from my childhood—the one who fished and hunted, the one who barbecued chicken when we came for a visit, the one who swished the water for you before you got in the bathtub so you would have lots of bubbles and no hot spots or cold spots—but I'm still grateful that they've had a chance to know him and not just hear stories about him.


And before we left, Hannah found a walking stick, which none of us had ever seen in person before.


At first she mistook it for a Daddy Long Legs, but then she saw the body and realized it was something else. I'll never know how she managed to see it while she was playing outside, but I guess that's why she's the one studying entomology in 4-H next year and not me!

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!

Don't Flip Out!

Hannah loves to create things. Hand her some cardstock and scissors, and there's no telling what she'll come up with. Today she was sitting at the table, creating away while I was on the computer. She came up behind me and said, "Mom, how do you like them?"

So I turned around and looked down, and then I saw them.


I had that feeling that only a mom can have when you look at something like that that your child made and somehow feel proud, as if she's the most clever person you know. And honestly some days I think she is.

Still don't know what they are? Here, this will help.



Oh, but it gets better. Let me show you the entire ensemble.


And what's more, there are two of them!


They call themselves "Fashion Girls." In fact, you may have heard them in Wal-Mart earlier today. The same conversation, over and over and over again. It went something like this: "On 3, Millie. Ready? 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . ." Then they both yelled, "FASHION GIRLS!" as they threw their arms in the air and then wrapped their hot pink scarves around their bright yellow t-shirts.

So if you ever notice "Fashion Girls" in your clothing labels in 20 years, you can tell everyone, "I knew them back when . . . ."

Show & Tell: Adventures Week 1

Here they are . . . my big 4-year-old and my even bigger 7-year-old on their very first day of school!


This week we successfully completed our first week of 2nd grade. And what a wonderful week it was!

We started out by taking a closer look at the pledge of allegiance to see what we actually mean when we say it. Hannah did something unexpected that made this old homeschooling mama very proud! As we went through the pledge, we would stop and talk about any unfamiliar words or phrases. But before we would move on to the next word, she would go back to the very beginning and restate the whole thing using the new, more familiar words or phrases we had just talked about. So by the time we made it to the end, this is how her pledge of allegiance sounded:

I promise to be loyal to the flag of the United States of America and to the government run by the people for which it stands, one country under God, that cannot be divided, with freedom and fairness for all.

We worked throughout the day to make a red, white, and blue snack to kick off our study of America.


We served it after dinner that night, and it was delicious! Well worth the effort it took to make it!


We colored and labeled two maps this week. The first was a map of the United States with our four neighbors labeled: Mexico, Canada, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. The next day we labeled all of the continents on a map of the world to see where the United States was in the grand scheme of things.


Notice how Millie chose to sit in with us for this activity? And would you believe she colored that entire map?!


In history, we studied the Vikings. Here's the Viking notebook page Hannah made to add to her United States notebook.


One of our book basket books was a Viking arts & crafts book, and we followed the directions in it to make a paper mache Viking helmet and a pizza box Viking shield. We tried to get the girls to pose as fierce Viking warriors for this picture, but from the pajamas on their bodies to the grins on their faces, you can see there's not a fierce bone in these Vikings' bodies!


I picked up a neat little resource over the summer called Interactive 3-D Maps: American History , and it happened to have a Viking map in it that we made. It showed the route Erik the Red took from Iceland to Greenland and the route Leif Ericsson took from Greenland to Newfoundland. The girls both had fun making it, but Millie has stopped to play with it every time she has walked by the counter.


In science, we looked at what science is and what, exactly, a scientist does. In a nutshell, they ask questions, come up with theories, conduct experiments, and observe their results. Then we conducted a simple experiment to go through this scientific process. Our experiment was to see if adding salt to water would help things to float in it. The results were pretty obvious!



Our Bible study this year is looking at the names of Jesus. This week, we emphasized that every name has a meaning, and we learned the meanings of the girls' names.

Hannah = Favor, grace
Elizabeth = My God is a vow.
Camille = Pure, chaste
Renee = Born again

One of Hannah's friends gave her a silk screen t-shirt designer for her birthday, and she has been asking every single day if she can "pleeeeease make a t-shirt today." I figured this was a great opportunity to let the girls make some shirts and just add their names to them. That way every time they get their shirts out to wear them, they'll remember what their names mean. (Well, in theory, anyway.) I think they turned out really cute!


We also made a dozen sugar cookies, and one night for dinner we put everyone's name on a cookie. We had eight cookies left over, so we made another message to hopefully segue us into next week's Bible lessons.


And this final picture . . . well, it doesn't have anything at all to do with school. It's just a picture of Millie that's so stinkin' cute I had to include it somewhere. Oh, wait . . . she's wearing red, white, and blue. Does that count?!


All in all, this was a wonderful first week, and I'd say without a doubt we're off to a great start!