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.

Creation to the Greeks Week 3

M has been working on the books of the old Testament(she actually already knows them for the most part) reviewing last week's verses and continuing on in Genesis - Noah's descendants, Tower of Babel etc.

 We are working our way through draw & write through history as we go through  MFW's history

our Greek root word for the week

We finished listening to the biography of Vivaldi, I printed out a notebook page for her to do and some sheet music for beginners of Spring, which she was able to play without trouble.  http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_mmf_music_library/hey-kids-meet-antonio-vivaldi.htm

we practiced writing in cuneiform and made them out of cookie dough while studying Mesopotamia.  We listen to chapter 2 of story of the world while working on them.

we have been learning poetry using an evan-moore book and this week worked on couplets

 we are working our way through unit 1 of zoo 1 before we begin zoology 3 Land Animals of the 6th Day and this weeks experiment was to make 2 planes - 1 with short fat wing and 1 with long thin wing and see what flew the farthest.

 M made a shofar to be used in our  Rosh Hashanah celebration and I get to blow it to wake her up for the next 10 days as part of the holy days.

and we were able to fit in another art lesson from Artistic Pursuits, they are drawing the horse allowing the pencil to follow the lines their eyes see.  I know we covered other things this week but this is what I can recall for now

Preschool Week 3 Obedience

We  wrapped up our 3rd week of using the curriculum Character Concepts for Preschoolers.  Keely was able to tell me the definition of Obedience with out help -"doing what is expected of me, Cheerfully, Immediately, and thoroughly"  We have been working on the letter A mostly with an apple theme, so it was fitting to end our session with a field trip - the orchard wasn't open yet so we went to the farmers market to buy apples.

we then took the apples and made Grandma's recipe for Apple Cake

 our kitchen time has been a real hit around here.  I have decided to divide and conquer, which I know many of you have more than 2 kids so it's not possible.  K's on Wednesday and we usually bake and M's on Fridays and we do whatever we need as I am trying to make her proficient over all in the kitchen to really become a help to us all(on Friday morning she made soft boiled eggs for her and her sister).

we have been trying to include weekly science experiments from our Mind Blowing Science Kit, here is a sunset in a tube, but I'm not sure we got exactly the results we wanted.

for Art we are continuing on with The Way They See.  We did finger painting which I realized K has never done before - she loved it.  I always let M join in as long as her other work is done.

and last but not least I helped K make this apples and honey plate for our Rosh Hashanah celebration from M's curriculum  since it fit nicely with our apple theme

Creation to the Greeks Week 2

well we finished another week around here and things are going well.  We took Monday off for Memorial day, we went to the parade and then the kids had friends over.

we finished up on creation, study Cain and Abel and Noah's Ark.  We are continuing to read about dinosaurs and started a new read aloud - The Tanglewood's Secret

with Noah's ark M played with play doh while I did some reading and drew the arch while we were listing to part of Story of the World cd.  We read a few creation Myths this week also.  We still measured out the ark outside

 In science we are using zoology, starting with zoo1 unit 1 and then we will be moving onto zoo3 -
Land Animals of the 6th Day  We had an experiment about air pressure and how birds fly

we are also studying Vivaldi for music and  continuing on with God and the History of Art and Greek Root words.

preschool week 2

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we are continuing on with our Character Concepts for Preschoolers program, I haven't been that organized with this as I would like to be, but I have made up a grid sheet to use each week from here on out, so I hope to be more thorough and know what I need to be doing after this week.  We didn't do any projects or art or science experiments.  But we did fit in our kitchen time.  I even kicked M out of the kitchen so it really could be K's project.

o.k. not the most nutritious and we didn't use any seasonal items, but it was - use what I had and what I had time for or skip it all together.  Another thing you may notice about my preschooler is she is usually in her pajamas,  she just loves jammies and it's hard to get her to get out of them, so on most days I don't fight it till we have to go somewhere.  Not to mention she has way too many of them and she hates to wear the same set 2 nights in a row.

on another note, we have had great weather her so the girls have ate lunch outside several days this week.