School Summary - Ancient India, Explorers, and Mayan, Aztec, and Incan Empires

Part of my 4th-6th grade choir

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A Summary of March 24-April 4

We had a few more busy weeks as our co-op finished up for the spring. We participated in the annual spring concert (the younglings sang, did a dramatic reading, and some sign language; I directed two choirs.) They all did a great job!

The sign language class signing "How Deep the Father's Love"

Prepping for the concert and an additional week of co-op after the concert (a snow make-up day) ate into our at home time a little. We still kept up with our regular assignments though.
Here's what we did for the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

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

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, and Geography for both.

Tenor continued with Greek and PA History. Soprano had two weeks off from her Home Ec lessons. We'll still finish the book by the end of the year.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

We're so close to the end. We are on weeks 28-29 of MFW. As we start looking at the era of exploration, we spent a week studying India and then a week on the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan Empires of Central and South America. The Indian groups of the Americas had some really disgusting and horrific religious practices. *shudder* It reminded me of the Indiana Jones movie, Temple of Doom. I'm thinking some of those scenes were quite historically accurate.

Bible: We continued learning our passage in Philippians (Chapter 2:3-11), and read quite a bit of the book of 1 John.

Science: We completed several lessons from AIG's Our Universe. We talked about the phases and origin of the moon and then began studying the individual planets: Mercury, Venus, and Earth. We did several demonstrations and experiments including making moon phases with Oreo cookies, testing the capture theory (it's not credible), demonstrating how Mercury's lack of atmosphere affects the temperature, demonstrating how Venus' atmosphere acts like a greenhouse, making earth models (like the ECC experiment), and showing why Earth's atmosphere looks blue.

Yummy Moon Phases

Ice on an arm wrapped with a towel representing Earth's atmosphere vs. ice on bare skin representing Mercury's lack of atmosphere

Watching the temp go up in our Venus greenhouse

History: 

We spent a week reading about the history of India which is where the explorers from Europe were trying to get to. We skipped making chapatis and a sari for Soprano. We did wrap Tenor up in his snuggie to look like an Indian man's traditional dress. He didn't want me to take a picture of him though. :)

Then we had a week talking about Vespucci and Magellan which led us to the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. We drank hot chocolate like the Mayans and had popcorn like the Incas.

We also skipped making a Mayan Codex and coiled clay pots because we just ran out of time.

Other MFW: 

Music: We listened to Beethoven's Fur Elise (a recital piece of mine from years ago) and his 9th Symphony.

Art: They had a few drawing assignments. I don't know that their technique is really improving; mainly because they don't practice in between lessons. But they do art without complaint and seem to enjoy most of the lessons.

Extras:

Web:
We are really far behind on watching our web videos but they're saved in my playlist. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Africa by Schlessinger Media

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Inca by Schlessinger Media

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Maya by Schlessinger Media

Explorers of the World: Magellan by Schlessinger Media

Favorite Books: 

A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus by David Adler
Columbus by Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire