School Summary - Roman Cities and Homes, Pompeii, Antony & Cleopatra

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A Summary of August 26-September 6

Argh! The attitudes!! We've had meetings with the principal (aka Daddy) almost every afternoon. We've tried lecturing, threatening, promising rewards for good behavior... it's not been a great start to our school year. The studies have been fine; the grumbling, whining, crying, resisting, and stubbornness... not so much. Hey, just keeping it real folks. I have to keep praying and reminding myself that working through these issues is something that we're blessed to do because if they weren't at home all day then I'd never have opportunity to point them to God's Word and the Holy Spirit as their source of power to change. A whole lot of sanctification is going on over here! But we did get some official schoolwork completed too.

Here's what we did these two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

I added in Life of Fred Apples for Soprano. It's super easy but after every 7 Saxon lessons, she does one chapter which is a nice break. She likes it a lot and I think it's helping to reinforce basic math concepts for her.

Language Arts (Grammar, Spelling, Penmanship, Reading, and Writing)
Soprano's writing...yup, don't ask. It's still not happening. Maybe next week. Tenor is just moving right along without any trouble.

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, and PA History for both.

I'm really liking their Spanish curriculum so far. I ran into trouble when I realized that there wasn't an answer/teacher's guide included. I took 1 year of French in junior high and then taught myself using cassette tapes for 2 years in high school. That didn't go well. Spanish, while similar because of its Latin base, is not pronounced anything like French. (Though to be honest, my French isn't pronounced like French. LOL) So I was in trouble without a teacher's guide. However I emailed the woman who created it and she is currently working on making an answer guide to go along with the curriculum. Yea!
Soprano did her second and third Home Ec lesson and Tenor continued learning the Greek alphabet.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation-

I believe the first 13 weeks of MFW are all about Ancient Rome. It's really interesting. I'm learning so many things. There are so many parallels between their government and society and ours in America today. Makes ya' think.

Bible: We read about the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery and then began learning the books of the New Testament. Each day we added a few more books to our list and read key verses from each of the books.

Science: Using the Answers in Genesis Human Body, we learned names of the major bones in the body. To help us remember them, we wrote the names on each other with a bath crayon. We also had lessons on different types of bones and different types of joints. We did a broken bone experiment with a dry chicken bone compared to a chicken bone that had been soaking in vinegar.

Breaking the bone

Soprano got grossed out by the marrow

One broken bone (the dry one) and one slightly bent bone (the long vinegar-soaked one)

Tenor made a model joint using pencils, rubber bands, and tacks but I forgot to get a picture of it. We read about the muscular system and different types of muscles. To illustrate how muscles can be trained we did a 3-day muscle memory activity. We also talked about how God specifically designed our hands and feet to do certain tasks.

History: We read about Roman cities, how they were set up, the types of buildings, how they were decorated, and family life. To illustrate the Romans use of mosaic, the younglings each made mosaic bookmarks. We had gotten sticker mosaic craft kits ages ago and had lots of little left-over square foam sticker pieces left. They used those to create their own design on a cardstock base. (Way easier than making and painting clay tile pieces to create a mosaic.)

We continued reading in Augustus Caesar's World about Julius Caesar's death, the 2nd Triumvirate, Antony and Cleopatra's story, as well as how much Herod factored into events. I was really interested in how Herod became 'King of the Jews' which I think played into his reaction and responses when Jesus was born.

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.

We also skipped making the clay toy pig. Neither youngling was interested and our week just got too busy.

Other MFW: 

Music: Week 2 we finished listening to the story of Haydn and listened to 2 pieces from his work The Creation.

Art: More lessons on perspective in the first two weeks.

Extras:

Web:

Importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Hanukkah
Spinal Cord and Reflex Action
How Reflexes Work
Cleopatra
Viva Roma No. V

Videos:
no regular videos this week

Favorite Books: 

Living Long Ago Homes and Houses by Helen Edom
Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Pope Osborne
The Farewell Symphony by Anna Celenza (about Haydn)
Franz Joseph Haydn by Carol Greene
The Boy Who Loved Music by David Lasker (about Haydn)
Cleopatra by Diane Stanley
Exploring Your Skeleton by Pamela Bishop

Things that we didn't get to:
Dead Sea Scrolls interactive site