What we have been up to.....

I apologize for the blogging delay. We have been busy around here. Like they say life happens. It hasn't help that a few of us have been sick around here. It just feels like the month has just flown by too quickly and my calendar just keeps filling up with baseball schedules, field trips, church commitments and etc...

Here is a quick glimpse of what we have been up to....

We went bowling with our homeschool group for some Valentine fun.

An educational field trip to JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Sport loved the space discussion and up close look at the mission rovers.

A Physics experiment on circular motion and calculating into distance. God had perfect timing with the space field trip for this one too. We got to discuss how important this is in space exploration with the movement and travel patterns of planets.

AWANA Bible verse quizzing last Saturday. This was Sport's first year participating in this. He enjoyed it very much.

He was awarded with fourth place!

Here is one last picture to share with you of the kids on one of our weekend hikes. We are hoping to return to hiking soon with the kids but will have to wait until the whole family is feeling better.

Blessings and hope to post again soon. I have some more pictures to share with you about a rather unique local castle we had a chance to tour. Until next time take care and God Bless.

Snow Play 2009

Baseball season is just beginning....

Spring training is almost in full swing in our household. Sport has begun to have practice twice a week. His opening ceremonies are at the end of this month with games beginning first week in March.

We have been so thankful for the rain but we have had a lot in just a short amount of time which can be a BIG problem. Since I wrote last we have had two large storm sytems come through with another large one expected to hit this Sunday through Tuesday. Rain has put a big hinderance on baseball practice and for Sport this is just devastating. He just wants to practice.

God has heard our cries about baseball coaches. As you may recall me sharing this last year Sport had one tough coach last year. He just made it miserable for all of us. This year Sport's coach appears to be a real gem. He is encouraging and helpful. A big difference from last year.

Practice should also begin soon for Racer. This will be his first year in T-ball. He is very excited and even more so that his Dad will be his coach. Luckily his practice is just once a week with a game on Saturday mornings.

I hope to post pictures soon of my ball playing boys real soon.

God bless,
Amy

Thank you for all your prayers we have been having steady rain since last Thursday. The storms have now past and beautiful white powder is everywhere on our local mountains. Another storm is expected later this week.

Spring flowers

There are signs of spring in our garden already. I know for those of you it may be hard to believe. Especially after hearing the ground hog forecast calling for six more weeks of winter. Here are some spring flowers to cheer all those cold spirits to all those who read my blog.

Southern California features two distinct seasons spring and yes, summer. I just love spring but it would be wonderful to have beautiful fall trees during fall and not winter as it is here in most cases.

Today in our Nature Studies I told the kids to find something of color and sketch it. Dancer chose to sketch these beautiful flowers that are now in bloom.

Sport chose to sketch our dying red bell peppers. They did not survive our freak hail storm we had a few weeks back. What we did find interesting is tiny aphids crawling on a bell pepper leaf. Those nasty little critters. We looked them up and read about them in our Nature Handbook by Comstock. They are nasty but very interesting. The kids learned that there are two different type of female aphids. Those that have wings and those without. The ones with the wings give birth to eggs and the ones without wings give birth to live aphids. Sport wasn't too sure if they could still be called an insect but maybe they should be considered a mammal. After close examination of the legs, counting six, it is definitely an insect.

I just love the small purple blossoms on the Rosemary.

Daffodils and tulips are one of my favorite flowers. Daffodils always seem so happy. Shinning for spring and reminding me of Easter that is soon to come.

Take care my friends spring will be here Real Soon!

Egyptian Lapbook

Here are the pictures from our Egyptian lapbook. The resources we used were Evan Moor's History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, homeschool helper website and homeschool share just for some paper folding tricks to display our own ideas. Our spine books that I taught from was the Bible and Ancient History: Adam to Messiah from Heart of Wisdom.

The coloring pages shown above were found in the Evan Moor book. We primarily just used this book for the Egyptian coloring pages.

A detailed map of Ancient Egypt.


We talked about the different styles of pyramids found in Ancient Egypt with a picture and description of each.


Agriculture and the Nile was a big part of our study because the Egyptians were so dependent on the Nile.


What type of jobs were there in Ancient Egypt and what were the canopic jars used for.

Tools that were used during that period in Egypt.

Picture timeline of Joseph's life from the Bible. We did talk briefly about Moses but will focus more on him in our Tabernacle unit.

Dynasty timeline which we used as copy work. We spread it out over several days.

Quick narration on Cleopatra. When I say quick, it means it hasn't been edited.

Crossword on Joseph's life. I think I found this from the Calvary Chapel kids pages.

We did talk about the 10 plagues that the Egyptians faced. We learned that each plague was referencing to a different Egyptian God that was worshiped. God is simply amazing in how he was reaching out to both the Egyptian and the Hebrews that there is only ONE GOD. All these other gods do not measure up to ME! The Great I am!

I hope these give you some ideas and inspiration for your Ancient Egyptian studies.

Enjoy,

Amy