Early Christmas Break

We will be taking our Christmas break now since we will be moving the first of December.  We will get back to our regular studies beginning with Creation to the Greeks Week 15 after the first of the year.

I hope to get a chance to post about our CTG weeks 13 and 14 soon.  If not, I'll be back after the first of January.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!

CTG Weeks 11-12

I recently ran across a series of CDs called Classical Kids.  I found them just in time to listen to the drama for kids called Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery during our last week's study of Vivaldi.  Next we will begin Bach and we will listen to Mr Bach Comes to Call.



Also during our study of classical music I found a site called Classics for Kids @ classicsforkids.com.  This site also has radio dramas in addition to activity sheets and kid friendly biographies.  The kids enjoyed this as well.


I purchased a set of inexpensive notebooking pages from currclick.com entitled Famous Composer Notebooking Pages produced by notebookingpages.com.  Yes, I could have just given them a sheet of paper but for some reason a pre-printed form seems to work better for us.  I like that the set gives several different notebook pages to choose from for each composer and covers most, if not all of the composers we will be studying over the next few years during our CTG studies


After our study of Tchaikovsky two years ago Beau decided he really enjoyed classical music.  Just recently he even voluntarily asked if he could listen to classical music while doing his school work.  I have gotten to where I even enjoy listening.  :)


When we studied of Moses birth we made a lapbook piece from the Ancient Egyptian section from homeschoolshare.com.



We have now started our study of the 10 plagues of Egypt.

For the plague of frogs I printed 160 frogs and we placed them all over the house.  The kids couldn't wait until their dad got home so he could find their hidden surprises.  They put them in the refrigerator, on the toilet lid, in the drinking glassed in the cabinet, in his work shirt hanging in his closet, etc. They had a blast with it.  I think they had as much fun hiding the frogs as they did taking their dad around finding them.

I didn't think to take pictures of the hidden frogs but here's a sample of a couple of left over frogs that the kids keep finding around the house and bringing to me.

We didn't reenact the flies.  I prepared black dots to tape onto the kids but they just don't like flies and didn't want to participate in that one.  So they decided to be Hebrew slaves for that plague. 

We have now completed Lesson 3 of Zoology 3.  This was another enjoyable lesson for the kids.


Since this study included bears the kids decided they wanted to watch Disney's Brother Bear.  This movie does have a lot of 'spiritual content' but my kids know and understand this as fantasy and not reality.


We also watched the Itty Bitty Kiddy DVD about Bears.



The Zoology 3 textbook suggests printing or drawing animals you are studying in each lesson and putting them on a world map.  I decided that might be too much work to find pictures for each lesson so I found a sticker book called Animal Sticker Atlas.   I purchased one for each child.  The book is broken down mostly by continent with the animal stickers in the center of the book.  At the end of each chapter the kids go through this book and look for animals that we just studied.  They then place the animal stickers in the appropriate places on the map.  They are really enjoying this activity.



We also completed the lapbook for lesson 3.  Again, I made the cover.  My kids never seem to tire of making lapbooks.

We did the experiment to show why it's better that a polar bear has black skin.  We placed two plastic bags in the sun with a thermometer under each.  One was black and one was white.  We waited about 20 minutes.  Then we checked the temperature of each.  The thermometer under the black bag read 95 degrees whereas the thermometer under the white bag read 84 degrees.  Both thermometers read 78 degrees before we placed them under the bags.  Conclusion:  Darker colors attract more heat than lighter colors.



We will finish our plague study next week.  :)

CTG Weeks 9-10

We have finished weeks 9-10.  Once again, our highlights are shown below.

While learning about Egyptian Homes the kids completed a couple more projects from our Ancient Egypt History Pockets project book.  We have really enjoyed the activities in this book.

The kids made Ancient Egyptian toys out of Crayola Model Magic.  Beau made a ball, hippo and a ring.  Roo made a spotted dog, white cat, alligator and also a ring.  The rings were their 'signet rings' which they learned about in a previous lesson.

While learning about Ancient Egyptian clothing they completed another project from our History Pocket book which was male and female paper dolls.

11/11/11 - I am editing to add that these dolls are not Negroes.  My kids are only 7 and 10 and they don't have flesh colored markers.  They were giving their paper dolls a tan!  (I received a very negative comment on this.  I doubt the comment would have been negative if they would have been left 'paper white', if there would have been a comment at all.)  Also, in the other project a couple of frames up, one child chose to use markers and the other one chose to use colored pencils.  The colored pencils have a flesh color and a brown, the markers don't.  Again, the closest available colors were used.   I apologize if this was offensive to anyone.  That was not my intent.

 

We had an Ancient Egyptian feast of dried fruits, nuts, pita bread, etc.  We ate on our finest China and at our dining room table which was a treat for everyone.  I forgot to put out the cheese and I purchased blueberry yogurt instead of plain.  <blush>  The meal was still fun and, well, different.

We also watched a few movies.  We watched the Nest Entertainment DVDs Joseph in Egypt and Joseph's Reunion and we also watched Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible: Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors

 

 

We have completed our second lesson in Zoology 3.  The kids are loving it.  As a matter of fact, they have been 'wolves' ever since and they insisted we request Alpha and Omega from Netflix again.  Not one of my favorite movies but believe it or not a lot of it was actually pretty accurate as far as wolves go.

As you can see we made an actual lapbook this time instead of just a page.  I made and printed the cover myself because the kids didn't like the cover that actually comes with the lapbook program.  It is a coloring page and they thought it would look nicer if I made one with a 'real' picture.

A few years ago I purchased the Itty Bitty Kiddy Wildlife series for cheap.  Three of the DVDs in the series go well with our studies.  We watched The Puppy Dogs to finish up our lesson 2 study.

In this lesson we learned that a dog has a highly sensitive sense of smell but since it would be difficult to do an experiment with dogs, this lesson's experiment was to find out if humans are more influenced by their sense of smell or sight.

I prepared the experiment for the kids and their dad to try.  Both Jell-o's were from the same box of lemon gelatin.  The red just had food coloring added.  They were all sure that the red Jell-o was cherry flavored.  Their dad even thought the yellow was pineapple.   They were all  amazed at the results.

We finally got some results from our week 5 experiment from our Pyramids and mummies, Preservation project.  We covered one slice of bread with an antibacterial ointment, one slice we toasted (dried out) and one slice we left untouched.  The process was to show how mummification helps preserve a body.  It took about 5 weeks before our plain slice of bread started to decay but after the cat apparently stepped all over it and the project was rained on because I put it outside under the kitchen window so I wouldn't forget about it, we still got results and the experiment was a success.  GROSS!! 

Day 1

5 weeks later

Our Fall Activities 2011

We have had a busy but fun month of October.  We were able to participate in some really fun activities.

Early in October we went on a field trip with our homeschool group.  It was actually two field trips in one day.

Our first stop was the Bass Pro Shop.  The group had a tour guide take us through the store.  Who knew you would ever need a guide to take you through a store??  The tour guide even gave them free play at their laser shooting range for about 15-20 minutes.  The kids (and their dad) loved it!
   

Our next stop was at a huge pumpkin patch.  In addition to pumpkins, they had all kinds of other activities.  The kids participated in many of them.  Some of which are pictured below.

 Here the kids are on petal powered racers.

This was serious business.  ;)

This activity was called pillow jumping.

It was basically a giant, air filled, outside bounce house.

This activity was called Pumpkin Blasters.

The pumpkins were shot out of a cannon

like apparatus at around 100 mph!

 Here the kids are on the zip line.

Roo is in the orange shirt.

Beau is in the black.

 A few weeks later we took the kids to an annual event held at a nearby zoo.  The zoo opens their gates in the evening and allows kids to wear costumes.  There are vendors throughout the zoo handing out candy.  We enjoy this event as the kids get to collect candy, wear a costume and see the nocturnal animals when they are the most active. 

This year Roo was the Nile Princess that drew Moses from the water.  Beau was the adult version of Moses.  This fit in perfectly with our CTG studies.

Here are Roo and Beau in costume

Here the kids are posing with their cousin K,

who dressed as a 'nerd'.

 The kids observing the elephants.

Fun was had by all.

CTG Weeks 7-8

Here are the highlights of our CTG weeks 7-8. 

  

 When we were making a cartouche we used Crayola Model Magic and rubber stamps from the book and stamp set called Fun with Hieroglyphs.  (Picture from Amazon.com)  Beau decided he wanted to write a message and not stamp his name so he didn't actually make a cartouche.  Roo did both a message and her name.  Beau's message says 'Beware of Hippos and Crocs' and Roo's says 'I love dogs' followed by her 'cartouche'. 

While reading about Lot we did a lapbook piece that turned Lot's wife into salt.  That made a big impression on my kids.  It was a very good visual that brought lots of questions such as why Lot's wife might have looked back.

We also did a lapbook piece of Abraham, Sarah and Issac.  The outside was covered in stars to represent God's promise to Abraham.

Beau was having a hard time with telling the difference between Lot and Abraham when I was reading about them but it finally clicked with him when we watched the cartoon Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible: Sodom and Gomorrah from Netflix.

We also watched and enjoyed the Nest Entertainment DVD Abraham and Issac.

Our version of the tomb wall paintings included Crayola Model Magic, Fun with Egyptian Stencils by Dover, paint and blotter.  We made the 'tomb tile' from the Model Magic on the day we did the cartouche project.  After it dried we taped stencils to the 'tile' and blotted the stencil with paint.  We then let them dry and the project was done.

 

We also did the wax seal project.  We didn't make our own out of a potato but I had these small, wood decorative pieces that we used.  We also used the beeswax that we used last year during our ECC program.  I placed the wax in warm water to soften it.  While it was softening, the kids wrote notes on the inside of their 'letters'.   We then put some of the wax on the outside and pushed the wood decorative piece into the wax.  The wood stuck a little so I sprayed a little Pam cooking spray on it to make it easier to pull out of the wax.  :)

I served Lentil Soup in bread bowls after we learned how Esau sold Jacob his birthright.  The kids thought it was very good but not good enough to sell someone's birthright for it.  lol 

As I've mentioned before, our science this year is Apologia Exploring Creation with Zoology 3 - Land Animals of the Sixth Day (Zoo 3).  The kids are LOVING it!!!

In addition to the reading, we completed a lapbook page and the experiment for lesson 1.

The experiment was about animals and camouflage.  We tore up and threw in our laundry basket red, orange and green construction paper.  We then threw in M&M's, the same amount of each color.  The kids then had 2 minutes to find as many M&M's as possible.  The last picture I have posted shows our results.  I think since they were both hunting for the M&M's I should have cut the time in half.  They still enjoyed the experiment and understood the purpose.

 Our weeks 9-10 are almost complete.  Hopefully, I'll be able to post about them soon.  :)