God is bigger than the storm...

A few songs keep running through my head while we are beginning to see the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

A Shelter in the Time of Storm

The Lord’s our Rock, in Him we hide,
A Shelter in the time of storm;
Secure whatever ill betide,
A Shelter in the time of storm.

A shade by day, defense by night,
A Shelter in the time of storm;
No fears alarm, no foes afright,
A Shelter in the time of storm.

The raging storms may round us beat,
A Shelter in the time of storm
We’ll never leave our safe retreat,
A Shelter in the time of storm.

O Rock divine, O Refuge dear,
A Shelter in the time of storm;
Be Thou our Helper ever near,
A Shelter in the time of storm.

Chorus: Oh, Jesus is a Rock in a weary land,
A weary land, a weary land;
Oh, Jesus is a Rock in a weary land,
A Shelter in the time of storm.



And God Will Take Care of You 
Be not dismayed whate’er betide,
God will take care of you;
Beneath His wings of love abide,
God will take care of you. 

Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you;
When dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.

All you may need He will provide,
God will take care of you;
Nothing you ask will be denied,
God will take care of you.

No matter what may be the test,
God will take care of you;
Lean, weary one, upon His breast,
God will take care of you.

Refrain: God will take care of you,
Through every day, o’er all the way;
He will take care of you,
God will take care of you.

Making Papyrus with Kids Tutorial

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

To get hands-on in our learning about Ancient Egypt this year, we made our own papyrus scroll.
Sort of....
Here's what we did:
I cut some brown mailing paper into two 12x12 squares.

To prep the base of your papyrus, fold one piece in half.

Then cut straight lines from the folded side towards the open end every 1 to 1.5". Do NOT cut all the way through. Stop each line about 1" from the edge.

This is what the base piece will look like after you cut straight lines all along.

Take your second piece of 12x12 paper and cut it into 1 to 1.5" strips. These you cut all the way.

You can see that the loose strips are about the same length as the base piece.

When all the strips and the base piece are cut, start weaving one strip at a time through the base. Alternate each strip's under/over pattern on the base.

I put a cup of water and a tablespoon of white glue into the base of a broiler pan and mixed it to make a decoupage.

Gently soak the papyrus in the glue mixture.

When the whole piece is saturated, lay it on freezer paper or wax paper to dry.
We added some grass blades to add texture.

Let it dry overnight and then decorate!

See more of what we did with our papyrus here.

School Days Summary -- Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph plus more Egypt

The corral moved to the school room!

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!
A Summary of October 15-19
Two more busy and full weeks have gone by. We're getting lots done but looking forward to our fall break in November.
Here's what we did for school:

Things that were scheduled as usual:

Math

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

Soprano is doing well with her cursive writing using 'A Reason for Handwriting C'. Tenor's writing, using IEW's Ancient History Based Writing Lessons, is improving each week too. I still haven't watched more than 20 minutes of the teaching DVD but it's on my to-do list.

Electives:

Typing

Spanish
I finally realized that the video set that we had gotten for Spanish does absolutely no good if you don't have the accompanying student textbook and workbook. So, that's on hold for now. Tenor will keep doing worksheets from "The Big Book of Spanish" that we have. Soprano's lessons won't change as she's finishing the second half of Switched on Schoolhouse Elementary Spanish that she began last year.

Civics: They read about Librarians this week.
Health: They did a worksheet on trying to be healthy.
Geography: We did a fun activity where the kids layered a country name on top, its capital in the middle, and its continent on the bottom. With all the country stacks glued to a background paper, it became a self-quizzing game.

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 completed weeks 8 and 9 which continues in ancient Egypt studies along with several biblical patriarchs.

Bible: We continued learning the 10 Commandments from Exodus 20. We read and notebooked about Abraham offering Isaac and Jacob's 12 sons.
Keeping all of the Bible families straight can be difficult so I made some cards with the names of Abraham's family down to his great-grandsons (Jacob's 12 sons). We practiced putting them into a family tree order. We also read about Esau selling his birthright for pottage (or lentil stew). We ate some lentil soup for dinner that night to try it out. Both kids gave it a thumbs up.
We read more about Jacob's life including his vision of the ladder reaching to Heaven, when he met and married Rachel and Leah, and then leaving Laban. Then we began reading about Joseph, one of my favorite Bible characters.

Science: Lots of air and water experiments: breaking a ruler that's held down by 2 sheets of newspaper

Trying to break the yardstick without any paper over it.

Trying to break the yardstick without any paper over it.

Broke it!

Broke the other end!

a straw drinking race and an upside-down glass of water; watching water rise in a jar

and putting out a fire with carbon dioxide

Bass did all of the science for the past 2 weeks... results: a happier Mom and experiments that work. :)

 History: We're still all about ancient Egypt. The past two weeks we made papyrus and our own paint and a seal.

(Check out this post on how we made the papyrus.) 

We made colored paint using sidewalk chalk, water, and egg whites.

They decorated their papyrus' with our homemade paint and hieroglyphic stamps.

Potato seals: a bird and the letter 'H' for horse

Using the potato to make a seal out of air-dry clay

Tenor's finished papyrus

Soprano's finished papyrus

 

We talked about Egyptian homes and the kids made 'soul houses' out of play-doh. 

Soul houses were miniature houses placed in tombs with the mummies. (See the book's left-hand page, top right corner.)

We also talked about how they had fun and games they played and began working on Ancient Egypt lapbooks.

Other MFW: 

Music: They listened to "Autumn" by Vivaldi and painted watercolor pictures of what the music represented to them.

Tenor's watercolor of the coming storm.

Soprano's painting of a dancer.

Art: Crosshatching and some Egyptian art lessons: copying a picture using a grid system and drawing an Egyptian person.

Extras: 

Making mummy hotdogs for dinner. I used canned crossiant dough (like Pillsbury crescent rolls). After unrolling and putting two biscuits together, I cut the dough into strips and wrapped it around the hotdog. Cook according to the biscuit directions. To dress them up, I added eyeballs with mustard.

Yummy mummy

Web:

Jacob's Ladder video

Videos:

no videos this week

Favorite Books:

Seeker of Knowledge by James Rumford
Everything Ancient Egypt by Crispin Boyer

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland

Joseph by Brian Wildsmith
Solve the Mystery: Hieroglyphs by Sean Callery

Linking up at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com
and 2 ladybugs and a lizard

Super Easy, Super Cheap Bathtub and Shower Cleaner

I'm popping in to share a super easy and super cheap DIY cleaner. To clean my bathtub and shower, I make a paste out of about 1/2 cup of baking soda and 1 tablespoon of Dawn dish-washing liquid.

Just mix the two ingredients to make a paste and scrub your shower and tub with a cleaning cloth. 

Rinse well after scrubbing. 

The mixture cuts through soap scum and hard water and leaves everything sparkly clean and smelling fresh.

To make the scrubbing easier, I use a dish-scrubber wand.

Like I said, super easy and super cheap!

(Sorry no before/after pics of my shower. When I asked Soprano if I should put pics of our dirty shower online, she emphatically said that it would not be a good idea! HaHa Yeah.... it was that bad!)

School Days Summary - Penn Museum, Egypt, & Abraham

Soprano's cartouche

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!
A Summary of October 1-12
I just looked at our attendance calendar and realized we've already put in more than 45 days of school. Cool, right? It's getting to the point where we're really into the everyday routine of school. Keeping things interesting and fresh is starting to get a little harder. Battling a whopper of a cold and sinus infection all last week didn't help things. But we made it through!
Here's what we did for school:

Things that were scheduled as usual:

Math

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

They both are doing great with their Rod and Staff Spelling. They do so well that I'm surprised that I come across random spelling mistakes in their other work. It's so minor that I'm not going to pursue it just yet. Soprano finished her first reading book this year ('The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' from Across the Centuries). Now that both kids have read the book, I can't wait to watch the movie with them. She'll start her next book, 'Stone Fox', next week.

Electives:

Typing

Spanish

Civics: They read about members of our Military this week.
Health: They did a worksheet on their personal health.
PA History: They learned about PA's state bird.

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 completed week 6 and week 7 which continues in ancient Egypt studies continuing with pyramids and learning about hieroglyphics.

Bible: We reviewed the books of the Old Testament and started learning the 10 Commandments from Exodus 20. We found out that there is a Jewish Messianic congregation that meets near us. They held an open house event to celebrate Sukkoth so we went to visit. It was very interesting. A completely different style of worship than we are used to even though some of the songs were familiar. We also got to see the Sukkot (hut/booth) that they had constructed in the field behind their meeting place. They decorated the posts with fresh flowers and laid leafy branches all over the top.

Science: Our 2nd attempt at the bread preservation experiment didn't work either. I think I might be science experiment impaired. We finished filling out the experiment sheets anyway just writing what was supposed to happen.

The unmoldy bread - Argh!

Our crystal growing experiment is still in process but to be honest, I don't have high hopes that this one will work either. 

Bass took over and did some air demonstrations with the kids, which worked just fine. Hmm....

 

History: We started the 2 weeks with a visit to the Penn Museum. They had amazing exhibits of ancient civilizations including Egypt, Irag (Ur and Sumer), Israel, and China.

We read about Abraham and how he was called out of Ur (modern day Iraq). We also learned more about ancient Egypt, focusing on pyramids and hieroglyphics. They each drew their own cartouche. Tenor also took some time to create a model Sphinx (a $0.50 clearance find at Michael's craft store) and a model of a pyramid (a book I found at a yard sale.)

Other MFW: 

Music: They listened to "Summer" by Vivaldi and painted watercolor pictures of what the music represented to them.

Art: Shading and overlapping objects, then creating their own 'Rosetta' stones.

Tenor's 'Rosetta' stone

They also participated in our church's annual art exhibition held during our Fall Fest event. This year's theme was God's Creation. (Very fitting for us since we started our school year studying Creation.) Tenor was psyched to join in but had no idea what to create. I suggested origami, which he loves. So he made origami pieces to represent each day of creation.

 

Soprano seeing that Tenor was participating wanted to do something to. She decided to draw a picture of the garden of Eden on Day 6 (so she could draw horses and a dinosaur.)

Extras: 

Web:

Harran Turkey travel video (where Abraham traveled to after Ur)
Ancient Mesopotamia History
Ancient Mesopotamia Montage
Make your own cartouche

Videos:

A&E Mysteries of the Bible: Abraham, One Man, One God (on Netflix)
Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs Imax (on Netflix)

The Story of Abraham (the Old Testament Bible Stories for Children)

Favorite Books:

A Drop of Water by Walter Wick

Hieroglyphs from A to Z by Peter Der Manuelian

Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs by Gail Gibbons

Egyptology by Emily Sands

Air is All Around You by Franklyn Branley
Wet All Over by Patricia Relf (Magic School Bus book)

We've had another 2 good weeks of good learning! I just can't believe how fast the days are flying by. 

Linking up at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com
and 2 ladybugs and a lizard