As I stated in my last post, getting started this year has been quite the adjustment. Not that I ever expected that it would be easy homeschooling 4 kids, but every day I find myself waking up ready to go & falling into bed every night exhausted. By the end of the first week the big yellow bus rolling down the street looks very inviting. With that said I have learned to give my homeschooling day over to God every morning taking the challenges one day at a time :) Trying to rest in his power & not rely on my own.
We are half way into our study of Ancient Egypt/Deserts for history & science . Here are some highlights.......
Building a diorama of the Nile River. Which we had planted with grass seed. Then we were to flood the Nile to water the seed. I think we may have flooded it a little too much :) But never fear I have many tupperware containers on my back patio now that the kids have planted with left over grass seed. they take pride in trimming their grass with scissors as it grows.
Creating a Desert Biome. We have had a couple sprouts grow but not able to identify which plants they are yet.
Making a mummy. This was from a kit I purchased online called Lift The Lid On Mummies.
Making an edible Nile River ( which is green because mommy couldn't find blue jello at the store:) This is made of ice cream on the bottom, jello for the water( ours has an algae issue :) , crumbled chocolate cookies for rich soil & vanilla wafers for desert sand. Gummy worms for fun !
Desert Sand Art : which turned out really cool but the pictures are on the other computer which I can't get to right now.
Fruitankhamun / a fruit version of King Tut ( Tutankhamun) which we have mummified and is currently drying out. I actually had to bake it a little because it was attracting fruit flies like crazy. Next we will wrap them in strips of linen and build a sarcophagus for each one.
Besides our projects we have checked out numerous books from the library on Egypt & deserts which we take time to read every day. These are basically our textbooks :) By far ,I think mummies have been our favorite subject to read about & do projects on.
All of our language arts is centered around the Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis, which I read aloud to the kids. I'm seriously thinking of getting the next book on CD:)The kids usually do some sort of hands on activity like coloring, playing with molding clay etc. to hold their attention while I read . Then we do writing ,spelling, vocab etc. that all is tied in with the chapter of the book.
Math has been the easiest subject. Each kid is able to do their lesson independently using the computer. The biggest challenge is rotating computer time.
Co op is a hit ! They love their classes & mom loves having the support and adult conversations. We are thinking of joining a second co op in the spring depending on our progress in our unit study at that point.
Keep the prayers coming as we continue on the journey !
Bambi
