School Days Summary - Penn Museum, Egypt, & Abraham

Soprano's cartouche

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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