BugFest

I didn't get a good pic of Caleigh holding it, but you can see it in her hands in the background of this one.

Chad had to hold it before Caleigh would

Guy with bees covering his face

Our Week 9/6-9/10: Baseball, Ancient Greece, Olympics

Where did this week go? It seems like it just started and now it's Friday. We've stuck with the schedule change we made last week of me working with the kids from oldest to youngest and then having them go on to independent work while I'm working with the next one. We then do all the together subjects after lunch. Things seem to be getting done better that way.

Monday: We took the day off for Labor Day and went to a baseball game.

Tuesday: We worked more on our study of ancient Greece. We talked about the Trojan War and the kids made their own Trojan horses. Caleigh started Cursive First.

Wednesday: We learned all about the Olympics and even had our own Olympic games. Colin had a First Lego League (FLL) meeting, where they continued building the things needed for the table, settled on a team name, and decided on the body part they will be researching.

Thursday: We learned about the gods and goddesses of Greece. Caleigh had a spelling test on the section she completed this week.

Friday: Busy day today. First thing this morning, Colin took a spelling test and did math. Then we went for a walk in the park to do our art lesson. We did a nature hunt for a list of items in our art book.

Then the kids sketched some of the things they saw.

Once they finished, we went over to the playground to play with friends.
We went home for lunch and then had another FLL meeting so the boys could get more of their things built and be ready to move on to working on the robot next week.
Finally, we did history finishing up our study of ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece

We read all of the chapters in Story of the World about ancient Greece. We began with the dark ages and barbarians. Then we read about how the Greeks got an alphabet and the stories of Homer. The kids were especially interested in the Trojan horse. They made their own horses with these templates.

We learned all about the Olympic games and how they started in Greece. I posted earlier in the week about the Olympic games we did.

We compared Sparta and Athens using a Venn diagram. We read about the Greek gods and goddesses. We also read about Greece's wars with Persia and then with each other. We finished up today with Alexander the Great taking over Greece.

Notebook pages

Lapbook pieces: map with Greece colored, Venn diagram of Sparta and Athens, events from the ancient Olympics, Greek life- houses, children, entertainment, & clothing, Homer, meanings of symbols and traditions of the Olympics, Trojan horse with a flap that opens.

Some books we read:
The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus
Look What Came from Greece
The Trojan Horse: How the Greeks Won the War
The Librarian Who Measured the Earth
Daulaire's Book of Greek Myths
Metropolis Greek Town
Adventures in Ancient Greece
Hour of the Olympics
Ancient Greece and the Olympics
King Midas and the Golden Touch
Max and Ruby's Midas

Lapbook pieces from here and here.

I'm hoping we can go to a Greek festival that's happening nearby next week.

Olympic Fun

We're studying ancient Greece this week so we took a day to study the Olympics.

I used pepperoni to make the shape of the Olympic rings on a pizza for dinner, but it was hard to see the shape after it was baked. Here's the cake the kids decorated though.

M&Ms used to make the rings

We had our own Olympic games in the backyard.

Girls with our Olympic torch

Molly passing off the torch

Caleigh passing off the torch

Some events we did: javelin throw, discus throw, races, long jump, dart throw, and shot put.

Then it was time for the medals.

Olympic torch and medals.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

We took the day off from school for Labor Day since Chad was home and went to our first Durham Bulls baseball game. It was pretty hot so we didn't make it through the whole thing, but the kids had fun.

Molly said this was her favorite part

Theseus and the Minotaur

A few days ago, we read about Theseus and the Minotaur in Story of the World. The Minotaur, believed to have the head of a bull and the body of a man, lived in a labyrinth and ate human beings. He was killed by Theseus. Colin made the labyrinth from Legos.

Labyrinth with Minotaur in center

Theseus with his sword and roll of wool to help him find his way out

Here you can see the string behind him as he unrolls it

Weekly Wrap-Up: 8/30- 9/3

This was our second full week back and I've already had to make some adjustments to our schedule. I wanted us to all be starting school at the same time, but it just wasn't working. We started out trying to begin the morning with our read aloud books. Like I had hoped, the kids were much more ready to start school in the morning since our reading time is their favorite part. It seemed to be working well at first when Colin was doing review sheets for math, but as soon as he was back to regular lessons and needed me to get him started, it fell apart. It's just too hard for me to have 3 kids working on things that need me. I think I'm wasting more time going back and forth between them and confusing one because I'm talking to the other.

Colin gets up earlier than the girls so for the last couple days I decided to get him started first. We do spelling, grammar and/or writing, and math together. Then he works on his own to do math worksheets and any grammar or writing lessons he needs to complete. He's easily distracted by the girls so I feel like we're getting things done much quicker than when they're in the room with us.
Then I get Caleigh and go through the same thing with her. Once she's working on her math worksheet, I move on to Molly. By then it's usually time for lunch. After lunch, we'll do subjects that we all do together. I'm sure there will be further tweaking to this schedule as we more into the books and some lessons get longer. I'm also hoping to find a more independent math program for Colin once he finishes this one in the next few months.

History

Finished up our ancient Egypt study. You can see more about what we did here.
We started reading the SOTW chapters to go with the Greeks.

Spell to Write and Read
Colin- I decided to start Colin back at list S. We're only doing 10 words a day and we're not doing much of the extra activities since we've done many of them before and he's doing another writing and grammar program. He finished 2 lists this week and tested on them.
Caleigh- Caleigh did the consonant/vowel reference page. I started her back with A and she finished that list and tested.

Molly- working on learning the phonograms

RightStart Math
Colin-most of his lessons were on decimals. He's also doing some problems each day from Challenging Word Problems.
Caleigh- She's still in the reviewing stage of a new book.
Molly- Her lessons are focusing on seeing numbers 1-10 without needing to count.

Molly using the abacus and tally sticks for math

Art
Artistic Pursuits lesson 21 that you can see more about in my Egypt post.
Artistic Pursuits lesson 2. We were supposed to go out to observe and draw sketches for the first part of this lesson. I took the kids to a lake today to do it.

Artists at work

Pictures made with watercolor crayons

Writing
Colin- Started Writing Tales again. It got skipped most of last year so we started back at the beginning. He finished the first section this week.
Molly- starting on Handwriting Without Tears, practiced letters in salt box and on chalkboard, working on the way she holds her pencil
Caleigh- she hasn't started anything yet because I wanted her to get farther into spelling before starting cursive

Grammar
Colin- since he's at the beginning of a new book, it's all review still (nouns, pronouns mostly)
Caleigh- I'm trying to get her through the repetitive stuff quickly so she did 8 lessons in 4 days

Science
We're waiting on our caterpillars to arrive so we can start our butterfly study. It's been 4 weeks since I sent for them so I'm starting to worry that there's a problem.

Extra Stuff
We went to our homeschool group's park day today. There weren't nearly as many kids there as usual. The kids played for a little while and then we went over to the lake for our art lesson.

Colin had his first official First Lego League meeting on Wednesday. They spent some time coming up with name ideas, some of which were very interesting. After a vote, some of them still weren't sure about the winning name so I think they're going to discuss it again next week to see if anyone has new ideas and hopefully agree on something. They spent the rest of their time working on putting together pieces that will be on the table.

Checking the computer to see what pieces they need

See the table full of Legos

Colin searching the bags for needed pieces

Visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what other homeschoolers have been up to this week.

Ancient Egypt

The girls haven't really participated in history with us much so I decided to do a quick study of Ancient History before we move on into the Middle Ages. We started with learning about what history and archaeology are and then talking about nomads and how they started becoming farmers. After that, we did a short unit study on ancient Egypt. I used Story of the World (SOTW) to help me divide up the topics.

Day 1
Read SOTW Ch. 2: Egyptians Lived on the Nile
Books: The Nile River, Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile
Activities: locate Egypt and Nile River on map; look here for info on life on the Nile
Lapbooks: where is Egypt, the Nile River, pharaoh

Day 2
Read SOTW Ch. 3: Hieroglyphs
Books: Hieroglyphs, The Day of Ahmed's Secret, Solve the Mystery of Ancient Egypt, started Mummies in the Morning
Lapbook: name in hieroglyphs- looked at this website and then kids drew their name

Top to bottom: Caleigh, Molly, Colin

Day 3
Read SOTW Ch. 4: Old Kingdom of Egypt (Making Mummies section)
Books: Mummies Made in Egypt, Eyewitness Books-Mummy, 100 Things You Should Know About Mummies
Lapbook: making mummies, Book of the Dead
Activities: decorate sarcophagus, take turns going through the process of making a mummy here, look through this, make apple mummies

Sarcophagus pictures

Day 4
Continue reading SOTW Ch. 4: Egyptian Pyramids section
Books: Who Built the Pyramids, Pyramid
Lapbooks: Sphinx, what would I find inside an Egyptian tomb
Activities: word search, play Seega

Day 5
Read SOTW Ch. 12: Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Ch. 13: New Kingdom of Egypt
Books: Egypt: in Spectacular Cross-Section, Adventures in Ancient Egypt, Who was King Tut? (Colin only)
Look at Tut websites here, here, and here
Activities: crossword puzzle, King Tut coloring page, online game

Colin                       Molly                    Caleigh

Day 6
Play Mehen
Lesson 21 from Artistic Pursuits book 1: Art in pyramids

Crawl through the passageway

Climb steps

Arrive in hallway of the pyramid

Our book said the drawings on the wall were of everyday life. They also drew things that they believed would help the person in the afterlife. They believed the drawings would come to life. Here are the kids' drawings.

Not really sure what's going on in Molly's picture. She said she was drawing a pyramid and it didn't look right so she did this.

Caleigh has a pyramid, mummy, flower, sun, tree, & a servant.

Colin drew a pharaoh and a TV with a Wii. He wanted to make sure he'd have the Wii in case the drawings really did come to life.

In the SOTW activity guide, they have directions for making a mummy out of a chicken. I'm just not brave enough for that. I have enough trouble touching chicken to make dinner. So we used an apple instead. I sliced the apple. We put a piece in two plastic cups. We added 1/3 cup salt and 1/3 cup baking soda to one cup making sure the apple slice was covered. Then both cups were put into our pantry. This is what we found when we checked them a week later.

The mummified apple

The uncovered apple

The kids didn't think either apple piece looked that great. We compared the two noticing that the uncovered one had mold on it and was rotting while the mummified was didn't. The mummified was shrunken and dried out and the kids could easily tell it weighed less than the other.

Free Lapbook Resources:

Ancient Egypt unit study and lapbook from Homeschool Share

 Architect of Ancient Egypt Lapbook  from Handle on the Arts

Another Ancient Egypt lapbook

Notebook pages (all of these are from HSS except the picture in the bottom right corner; it was something you could print after playing the online game I posted above):

We've had lots of pyramid building going on around here. Here's one of Colin's: