Hydrangeas and Harmony: School Days Summary - Ancient Egypt, Pyramids, &Mummies

Our Sukkah tent

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

A Summary of September 17-28
It's been a busy two weeks... so busy that I didn't have time to write a summary last week. I don't even remember all that was going on but our days were filled with home stuff, church stuff, and school stuff.
Here's what we did for school:

Things that were scheduled as usual:

Math

Language Arts (Grammar, Spelling, Penmanship, Reading, and Writing)

Soprano's first week of writing out a Bible verse from A Reason for Handwriting C

Soprano is absolutely loving her writing book and the paper dolls that it came with. I planned it out so that she does two lessons a week. (Creative Writing Made Easy by New Millennium Girl Books)

Tenor's writing, I think anyways, is improving drastically. He's working through Ancient History Based Writing Lessons by IEW. I made a plan to incorporate with our MFW studies so the topics sort of line up. Even without me watching the teaching DVDs yet, I can already see how well this program works. It makes sense to me. I think Tenor is starting to catch on to it too.
Tenor also started his next reading book (from Across the Centuries), From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. He'll do 3 lessons a week for reading from now on.

Electives:

Typing (Soprano had a melt-down about typing being too hard ---home row keys shooting for 10wpm--- so we had to have a chat about trying and not just giving up and having a hissy fit. Blech!)

Spanish

Civics: They read about Nurses this week.
Health: They did a worksheet about making healthy choices.
PA History: They learned how PA was the 2nd state.

Geography: They did a fun worksheet where they had to "travel" along the grid from the starting country to the ending country by only moving to listed countries that were West of the previous country. It took some thinking but they both got it.

Co-op: They each had music and gym and their elective class (Soprano-Art and Art History; Tenor-Chemistry).

My Father's World Creation to the Greeks-
We got to week 5 which continues in ancient Egypt studies adding in mummies and pyramids. There are so many great resources out there that I ended up putting the MFW grid on hold for one week just so we could read more books, watch extra videos, and do some other fun things. I'm usually a slave to the grid but I just couldn't fit it all in (at least, not without a nervous breakdown.) I really wanted the kids to enjoy it too. So we finished week 5 and then spent one week just doing the extras.

Bible: We finished memorizing the books of the Old Testament, reading key verses from each book. I had Bass print and laminate these cards at work, so the kids used them a few times to put the OT books in order.

We're a week early for this year's Jewish calendar but since it was in the curriculum, we built our Sukkah in the back yard to prepare for Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths. On Friday night, we ate out in our Sukkah and read the recommended Scriptures. We ate out there another time during the week and I think the kids were playing in it.

This Friday, we ate in our Sukkah again to finish up our celebration of the Feast of Booths. No special food but we did pour out a pitcher of water to symbolize the rain that God provides for harvest and to symbolize how He has poured out the Holy Spirit on us. Then we prayed together and roasted some seriously big marshmallows.

Science: We read about pyramids, mummies, and preservation. We buried a peeled apple and unpeeled apple, 2 baby carrots, a stone, small piece of wood, and a piece of plastic to see how they would fare. Well, this experiment didn't go as planned. Something dug up our buried container so we didn't really see what happened to the apples. The carrots remained untouched so the bunnies are not considered suspects at this time. The investigation has been closed due to lack of evidence and leads, although the squirrels remain on our list of potential perps.

Our preservation experiment with bread didn't work either so we're on round 2 of trying to make bread mold.

We also did a demonstration of how moving heavy loads is made easier depending on the surface you're moving over.

History: Lots of reading about pyramids and mummies. They also added 'pyramids' to their timeline and did a couple of notebooking pages (At the Quarry and The Middle East Today). They also did some 'excavating' on a mummy and pyramid that we bought at the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

Other MFW:

Music: They listened to "Spring" by Vivaldi and drew pictures of what the music represented to them.

Art: Drawing a maze inside a pyramid shape and then trying thick and thin and wavy lines.

Extras: Here's where we filled up this past week! I looked through dozens of blogs and pinterest boards and searched online to find these resources. So many thanks to the folks who have posted what they've used. I whittled it down to what I think fits my kids and their ages best. I list the links, and then what we actually did at each website.
Web:
www.childrensuniversity.manchester.ac.uk Interactive, informative, short games (explore ancient Egypt, Giza pyramid panorama, Egyptian timeline, ancient Egyptian gods, Egyptian number system, writing in hieroglphs, making a mummy, Egyptian jigsaws, Egyptian word search)

www.schoolsliaison.org.uk A few information things and 2 mini activities, printables too (about ancient Egypt, explore and Egyptian tomb, explore real mummies)

www.nms.ac.uk Click on 'games and adventures' or 'people of the past' to find several informational, mini games (Egyptian tomb adventure--didn't work very well, dress like an Egyptian, three pyramids, temple stores, a stela of a tale, land of the Egyptians)

www.oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/mummy.html Simulated Mummification Game

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/games/mummy_maker/index.shtml Interactive Mummy Maker

www.mummiesfilm.com/mummiesgame.htm Ancient Egyptian Jeopardy interactive game

www.discoveringegypt.com Lots of resources for all ages (Click on the 'mummification' tab for a video called "The Mummification Process" DON'T PANIC--there is no nudity shown, click on 'Pyramids and Temples', then 'Saqqara' for a video called "The Step Pyramid at Saqqara in Egypt", click on 'Free Egypt Videos' for Secrets of the Pyramid 1 and 2 and Building the Great Pyramid 1-6, click on 'Hieroglyphic Typewriter' for a fun activity)

www.brainpop.com With a 5-day free trial, we played a mummy game and a pharaoh game

www.youtube.com A Day in the Life -- Archaeologist, What is Archaeology?, Mummification Song, Magic School Bus Shows and Tells

Videos: