Sunday, October 30, 2011

Preschool Weeks 5,6,7,8 Honesty

Honesty:  Always giving a truthful answer

we did leaf rubbings and bark rubbings


learning her letters with proverbs for preschoolers

a highlight to our last couple of weeks - K reading See and Me from her 100 easy lessons

we went to the farmers market and bought a variety of tiny pumpkins and then the girls painted them
and just a little creative play time while big sis is schooling

Creation to the Greeks Weeks 5,6,7

well I haven't gotten around to blogging lately, but school is going great and keeps up busy.  We have actually completed week 8 too, but I didn't take any pictures.  The bad thing about not updating weekly is I don't always remember what we did and when we did it.

we began memorizing the 10 commandments and M has been adding them to her stone tablets on the wall, We are on the 3rd one I think


In reading  our genre is adventure and M has been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  She made a book mark one day with a character from the book on it and then for her completion project she made a Movie poster for the book and wrote a movie review.  We are using Heart of Dakota's Drawn Into the Heart of Reading and loving it so far.  M gets to choose her books.  She is now reading the Secret Garden for historical fiction.




finishing up on the whole study of pyramids, we made crystals that were pyramid shaped.



we studied early forms of writing, made our own Rosetta Stone and then our own Egyptian wall art.



we have been loving our science Zoology 3 and have included lap-booking with this which M seems to like.  We are ditching the history pockets, she didn't care for them that much and they were really an add on for us.  For Zoology we have experiments too, this was one on camouflage.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Preschool weeks 4 & 5

 We did some time in the kitchen each week, the top one we made mini pumpkin bunt cakes, but I didn't take a picture of the finished product and below we made mini pudding cheesecakes

 K made a handprint wreath in fall colors for my front door
 for a project she has been making this prayer journal, she choose someone or something to pray for, we write it down, pray and then she draws a picture for it.

 these are candle holder pumpkins, we cut shapes out of tape and put it on the jars to make faces and then painted with orange acrylic paint and when they were dry we pulled the tape off
new this week we are starting Spanish on the computer

Creation to the Greeks Week 5

 we have been working on this mummy kit for a few days, were not done yet




 more pyramid
painting while listening to Spring by Vivaldi

Creation to the Greeks Week 4


 we added in history pockets
in our artistic pursuits we learned how color helps us identify things and did a watercolor paintin

we have spent the week studying pyramids, M made two different kinds and then using the same amount of clay saw how you can build a taller structure with less material.

in studying Egypt we talked about upper and lower Egypt becoming united and the two crowns combined and the kids acted it out.


and M finished her book on Amelia Earhart and then for her project made a 3 for 3 game board and then we played it as a family.  She absolutely loved doing this and I am really seeing her get excited about reading. 


Sunday, September 18, 2011

Rosh Hashanah Celebration


We Celebrated Rosh Hashanah this week in our studies using My Father's World and the book Celebrating Biblical Feast.
Rosh Hashanah is like the Jewish New Year and celebrates the birth of the world and is the beginning of the holy days.  If you want to know more about it, I found this site that explains it http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday2.htm
 our ceremony began with blowing of the shofar - a ram's horn trumpet(I will also be blowing this to wake the children up for the next 10 days for the 10 days of atonement) I then lit the candles and prayed.


the father prays a blessing on the wine(same as Sabbath)
and the father prays for the bread(same as Sabbath) only this time our bread is round for a round full year ahead.
we then ate our meal, I made meatloaf but traditionally they would have had fish with the head still on and we had green beans and candied carrots(the recipe was in the book so it must have been tradition)
we had apples dipped in honey - a symbol for a wish for a sweet new year
we had a new fruit ( we chose black grapes that we had never had before and are especially sweet) and M said the prayer for this one.
we ended with signing happy birthday to the world and ate honey cake M made.  When we made this it took a lot of honey almost 2 cups and then to make it worse it boiled over on M and made a huge mess all over the stove.  Also we really didn't care for it that much so I wouldn't bother with it unless you have ample supply of honey you don't mind experimenting with, I'd skip it.