School Summary - Caesar Augustus Coming into Power, Roman Literature, and Arches and Aqueducts

A Summary of September 9 - 20

I feel like we have finally gotten back into the groove of school. Less whining and complaining! Our days have been pretty full trying to balance schoolwork, Tae Kwan Do, church activities, Soprano's twice-weekly vision therapy appointments, the start of co-op, and just every day life. It's funny (or ironic) that I scheduled their work this year in a simplified way too keep us from feeling too busy. It hasn't quite worked as I planned. Perhaps with better attitudes, we'll get things done a bit faster.

Here's what we did these two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

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

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, Civics, and PA History for both.

Soprano did her next Home Ec lessons (making Scrambled Eggs and French Toast) and Tenor continued learning the Greek alphabet.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation-

We are now fully entrenched in learning about ancient Rome. It still fascinates me how they went from being a republic of the people to a dictatorship. In studying history, it just reinforces the Scripture that 'there is nothing new under the sun.' The fashions might change but people really are much the same as they have always been.

Bible: We read multiple passages from the Old Testament that prophesied about the coming Messiah and then looked up the New Testament verses that showed how Jesus fulfilled them. We laughed a little when the New Testament passage straight up tells you what Jesus did and then said He did it to fulfill insert-OT-verses. Just in case you might question it. :)

Science: For MFW week 5 we continued using the Answers in Genesis Human Body to learn about the Nervous System and the brain. 

We did some response time tests to show how quickly the brain sends signals to the body and made models of the brain with Crayola Model Magic. Tenor took his model a step further and labeled more of the parts of the brain.

Soprano's brain model

Tenor's brain model

On week 6, we took a break from the Human Body to dig into arches and aqueducts as scheduled in MFW. I collected pudding boxes all year so we'd be able to make our arch. It worked really well! We also studied aqueducts and found some book basket titles to go along with our studies.

Roman Arch model with pantry supplies

History: We added Caesar Augustus to our timeline and talked about how the months of the years and days of the week were named. We also read a lot about trade and transportation in Ancient Rome.

We continued reading in Augustus Caesar's World about Herod, Augustus Caesar, Hillel, and Philo and the lighthouse.

I'm also incorporating Story of the World Volume 1 as well as Mystery of History Volume 1. However, neither of those books had readings that corresponded well.

Other MFW: 

Music: We listened to various selections by Haydn. We've had some issues with our iPod playing so it's been frustrating to actually get our music listening done. We think we've finally got all the issues figured out so in the weeks to come, we should be able to easily listen to our weekly schedule during our school day and then continue listening to various pieces by Haydn (from my extensive classical music collection) during lunch or other down time.

Art: More lessons on perspective, a lesson on drawing arches, and drawing boxes and paper bags.

Extras:

Web:

Roman Art and Architecture
A Brief History on the Arch
Roman Aqueducts
Jesus Historically Fulfilled Over 300 Prophecies... Accidentally?
Isaiah 53 Reading
Jesus Fulfilled Old Testament Prophecies
Jesus Fulfilled the Prophecies
Pax Romana
Birth of John the Baptist Part 1 and Part 2
The Christmas Story

Videos:
Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Rome

Favorite Books: 

Let's Try It Out with Bridges and Towers by Simon Seymour
Spend the Day in Ancient Rome by Linda Honan