A Desert Tortise

I have only a minute to share a couple of photos with all of you today. They are from the Nature Center the boys and I went to with their Contenders group. The boys were able to learn about and touch some of the animals that they have at the Nature Center. Unfortunately, I don't have a pictures to share with you of my oldest Sport with any of the animals just Racer since I was in his group.

The desert tortise became very friendly with Racer and myself as you can see in this photo. I don't know of he thought my sons' book was food. It made for a good picture though.

We enjoyed our visit with our animal friends and of course Racer was wanting to take the tortise home with us.

Blessings,
Amy

Our Egyptian Costumes

The kids and I were busy making Egyptian costumes during our history time today. At the end of the week we celebrate our wrapping up our studies of learning about Ancient Egypt. We are planning on serving some Egyptian food, dressings up and sharing with Daddy all their projects that they made during this unit.

The material I used for the boys costumes was originally a bed skirt that my Mom picked up for me at a thrift store. It was a great fabric style for this project and it cost next to nothing.

For Dancer's costume I used an old white t-shirt from my husbands and just added a belt and jewelry.

Have some dress up fun with your kids.

Blessings,

Amy

Egyptian Mummy

Last week the kids and I had the chance to practice our mummy wrapping skills, thanks to the idea found on Jamin's homeschool blog.

I purchased one barbie and two Ken dolls from the Thrift store in town. Dancer wanted to keep all of them but I had to explain to her that it wouldn't be possible. She was happy is settling just for the new doll clothes that they arrived in.

Since this was going to be a big project I broke it down into several days. Tuesday afternoon we prepared the body for the process of mummification. I discussed with the kids what would happen to the body before it was wrapped. We pretended to remove the organs from the dolls and Dancer needed to cut her Barbie's hair very short.

After the organs were removed and the hair was cut. We prepared the spices to preserve the body. The spices we mixed were Cinnamon, nutmeg, red wine vinegar and olive oil. The kids shook them up in a baby food jar and used paint brushes to preserve the body.

Once this was complete we put them aside until a few days later. The real mummification process took about 70 days from start to finish.








On Thursday we wrapped the dolls. To do this I used some muslin fabric scraps that I had on hand that the kids ripped up into strips and a mixture of water and flour. It was a ratio of 2:1. Two cups of water to one cup of flour.

The kids then dipped each strip in the paste, scrapped off some of the excess mixture and wrapped the dolls.


Once all the dolls were wrapped we left them to dry.


On Friday I had the kids construct and design their own tomb for their pharaoh. We used file folders that were folded and cut in a box shape.

I hope you can get inspired to try your hand at making a mummy with your kids sometime soon.

Blessings,
Amy

Great Link to Share....

I have a link to share with you today that I stumbled upon this afternoon. I was in the process of ordering my library books for the new Ancient Greece unit we begin the first week in February. The site that I found is www.mainlesson.com At this site there are hundreds of out of print books written before the mid 1920's broken down by authors and genres.

I found one written by Alfred J. Church (1829-1912) called Three Greek Children. The whole book including the table of contents are available to either read from your computer screen, print and read or read from another electronic device such as the new Amazon reading device known as Kindle. It seems that most of the books shared have strong values and virtues to instill in young kids.

I read a few paragraphs from the book mentioned above and was drawn right in. I can't wait to share it with the kids once we begin our study of Ancient Greece.

I hope you get a chance to check out the site. Now I am more intrigued about purchasing a Kindle because I know of another site that carries Henty books online too for young adult readers. Hmmmmm.....Something to consider....

Blessings,
Amy

Our Nature Study

Yesterday we tried to implement our first Nature Study. It was very informal. Remember, baby steps..... We are using Anna Comstock's book Handbook of Nature Study as a reference book for the kids to dig deeper if they choose to.

For our first try at this all of us went outside in the backyard with a sketch pad to observe nature in action. I then had the kids find something of interest observe it and make a sketch of it.

Here is Sport sketching a plum tree. He chose to lay on the pavement and not the wet grass. Notice the warm ski cap. Our weather has been warm lately but he just loves the hat that his Grandma crocheted for him.

Dancer chose to sketch our daffodils that are now in bloom. Yes, daffodils in January. Last weekend we had temperatures in the 80's here. We are in desperate need for rain around here. We appreciate the warm weather but we need Rain!!!! Sorry I didn't take a picture of our daffodils to share with you.

Here is a picture of Dancers' Nature page of the daffodil. After she sketched the daffodil we read about them in the Handbook of Nature Study book. I also had her write the Latin name for the daffodil. She also wanted to disect it.

She tried to taste the sweet nectar but was quick to spit it out. She said it was very bitter. I don't blame her. She was hoping it tasted like the honeysuckles we have growing in our yard.

As you can see we even taped down our daffodil specimen to save.

I will point out to you that Sport my oldest quickly sketched his but was not the least bit interested in researching about his plum tree. He was more interested in working of working on the project he had begun outside yesterday. Now that the rocks are all cleared he is excited to begin his clubhouse construction. Did I mention...One Step at a Time.....

Blessings,

Amy

PS. As I type this the weather report is expecting rain today. Praise God!

Our first Artist Tea

We hosted our first Artist tea. It was nothing real elaborate. In fact it was just quickly thrown together quickly with the help of the kids. I pulled out some fancy luncheon glass plates and class punch cups. My boys are not tea drinkers like my daughter and I are. Luckily I had some cranberry juice on hand. They enjoyed juice while eating crackers, salami slices and cherries.

We are currently studying Picasso and the picture of our focus today was Guitar and Mandolin. Here is a picture of it.

I had the kids pick out the colors, patterns, shapes, and lines. They pointed out that the picture looked like a face.

We also discussed the style of Cubism that Picasso used and what sets Cubism apart from other styles. It was Picasso along with another artist that first began to use the Cubism style.

After the short sharing time of the painting the kids cut out a colored copy of the painting and glued it on to a artist note booking page. You can find them here http://www.notebookingpages.com/ ; they are free to download.

Go ahead and try to host an Artist tea with your kids. You can make it as simple or elaborate as you like. Your kids will enjoy it and it is a relaxing event to add to you day.

Our new Charlotte Mason style homeschool day....

I had great reviews from the kids about our new Charlotte Mason style schedule that we implemented today. They have no idea who the idea was modeled from but by the looks of it, it wouldn't matter much. As I type a quick post from my laptop in my dining room the boys are now working like young men and shoveling rocks to clear a space to build something. Yes, they are using their free time constructively. Mind you this was only after they had snack, chores and used an hour of screen time. I'm glad to hear that at least for now they are working together outside.

Here is an idea of what our day was like today. We started school a little after 8am only because we were setting up our schooling in the TV/living room to watch the Inauguration live on television. After opening devotion and prayers for our school day and for the incoming president I had the two oldest one copy a poem neatly either in handwriting or printing while I worked with Racer my kindergartner with his printing. Next I gave each of the older two grammar pages. Dancer had one on different verb uses such as past, present and future tenses and Sport practiced subject and predicates. Keep in mind that these lessons are brief and to the point. Just the amount of time that a child is able to pay attention.

After grammar I gave them a choice for a pre writing assignment. Here is the list of choices I gave them to choose from:

1. You are an Egyptian pharaoh explain how your life is.
2. You are an Egyptian pharaoh who has passed away please describe your funeral and burial process.
3. You are an archaeologist and have stumbled upon a burial chamber that is yet to be discovered within a lost pyramid please describe your discoveries/findings.

Sport and Dancer both chose the last one and jotted down some ideas for their writing assignments this week. Next, was reading and spelling practice followed up with Math, history and an Artist tea. I will post soon with pictures of our History and Artist Tea with details of how to plan one each week in your homeschool.

Here is a quick time frame of our day if you would like this for your own reference. I do enjoy having a guide for my day but my ultimate guide right now that I am leaning on is my Lord, Jesus. His plan for my day may be totally different from one day to the next. Remember it is just a guide. Blessings, Amy

Tuesday
8:00-8:30
Bible/Devotions
8:30-9:00
Poetry Memory
9:00-9:30
Edit/Writing
9:30-10:00
Writing/spell
10:00-10:30
Math
10:30-11:00
History
11:00-11:30
Artist Tea
11:30-12:00
Lunch