Hydrangeas and Harmony: School Days Summary - the Exodus, the Tabernacle, and the Aquarium

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A Summary of December 3-21

I got the blog picture thing fixed. It took several days of work but things are back on track. In the meantime, school kept on going. We're at our official half way point! Not just because of the Christmas holiday but we've actually logged half of our required days. That's a great feeling!

Here's what we did for school:

Things that were scheduled as usual:

Math

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

Electives:

Typing

Spanish

Civics: They read about Highway Workers and Hairstylists.

Health: They did a worksheet about having a healthy lifestyle.

PA History: State Flower

My Father's World Creation to the Greeks-

We completed weeks 14, 15, and 16 which covered most of Exodus.

Bible: We finished learning the 10 Commandments from Exodus 20 and made mini books using pics from this site to help us review them. (page 1, page 2, page 3)

Science: Bass helped the younglings do several experiments including making germs,

floating an egg between salt and fresh water,

making a galaxy in a cup,

making a sort-of to scale model of the distance between the planets and sun in our galaxy,

They spent some time on a clear night star gazing on the trampoline and using the telescope and using popcorn to show the stored chemical energy in the sun.They skipped the parfait of color experiment, the stars in the umbrella thing, and the solar hot dog roaster though.

History:We spent these three weeks talking about the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their wanderings in the desert.

To help the younglings experience meal after meal of manna, we had them eat popcorn for breakfast, popcorn for morning snack, and popcorn for the first part of their lunch. That was enough for them---they were complaining already! Hmm... just like the Israelites.

We added the Exodus and the 10 commandments to our timelines. We also worked on a model of the Tabernacle. MFW included instructions and student sheets to help us do it but I had a book from a yard sale that made it a little less time intensive for us. We did a little bit each day and read about the significance of each part of the Tabernacle and how it points to Christ as we made it.

We were able to go to a local display of the biblical Tabernacle. We heard a great presentation about the Tabernacle and got to see actual-sized parts of the Tabernacle.

Going along with the Exodus time, we learned about the first North American civilizations, the Olmecs and the Chavin.

Other MFW:

Music: We finished Bach's biography while filling out a notebook page from here. The following weeks we listened to several pieces by Bach including my favorites, his Brandenburg Concertos.

Art: They did some colored pencil work learning about the color wheel (primary, secondary, tertiary colors, shading with color, and complementary colors.)

Extras:

We took advantage of Dollar Days in Baltimore to visit the aquarium and the USCG Cutter Taney.