We had a campfire BBQ with our family this weekend. Of course, Grandpa made smores.
Group:
This week we started using our Do-It-Yourself Curriculum - Fun-schooling with Minecraft. I am making this work into my curriculum plan. It's got some neat little projects and I'm hoping the kids learn how to open up their horizons to some new learning topics. This week they learned about rocks and minerals found in Ohio as one of our topics of learning. We watched this neat video about the salt mines in Cleveland.
We'll keep using them for a few weeks and see how it goes. I only wish it was spiral bound. That would have been wonderful. The kids struggled a bit with that this week. I think I will be taking them to Staples and have that done.
History: This week we start learning about the battles of the Civil War and also discussed the government structure. We continued watching the Ken Burns special on the Civil War.
Talking about the general's battle plan and how the solider's lined up.
Geography: This week we started learning about the continent of Africa. We are learning about several of the countries there and highlighting their customs. We learned about Kenya and South Africa this week. We're going to spend about a month on each continent. We'll be breaking it down by regions.
We watched videos on the Serengeti, Victoria Falls and Mt. Kilimanjaro.
We watched this also this week...
We made an international meal. We had South African Orange chicken with rice and a sweet dumpling dessert called Souskluitjies. Next week I have a few more recipes picked out, including an Ethiopian bread.
Government: We learned about the branches of government, Presidential powers, the Electoral College and how to be good citizens. Here is a good video on the Electoral College:
Art: The girls continued with their online art class. This week they finished up their Matisse projects.
Science: We read the chapters in our Sassafrass science on our senses. We learned about the different parts of the eye, ear and tongue. To go with this we set up another group dissection of a cow's eye so that we could "see" up and close the parts of the eye.
She is using the lens as a magnifying glass.
All the kids are prepping for our start with LEGO Robotics next week. So we had a few days of building creations. My OCDs were killing me because there were Legos all over the living room floor most days.
We are still working our way through our Bible study also. We are loving our study of the Great teacher, Jesus.
Individual:
Caty learned about Chocolate this week. They tried different forms of "chocolate".
Read about chocolate and we watched the American Eats video on Chocolate. It was very informative. I learned a lot about the chocolate industry in America.
Here is one of the videos we watched together one morning while eating breakfast.
She also made chocolate with the Make Your Own Chocolate Kit. She didn't care for it. But she also likes white chocolate.
The inside of the cocoa bean
As a treat, we bought a small chocolate fountain and got it out when our friends came over for the eye dissection event. Caty chose white chocolate. They had cookies and strawberries to dip in it. This was a hit today.
Lydia learned about Gabby Douglas this week. She is working on finishing her sportsmanship badge. The final thing she needed to do was learn about an athlete and how they motivated themselves. Gabby Douglas was a great read for her. We also watched her life movie. Lydia loved that!
Lydia started her next level of veterinary sciences. This week she is learning about tracking your animal's health better. She learned how to take the dog's vitals. Poor Finn has been her guinea pig. A friend of ours is going to school for veterinary sciences, so she came over and taught Lydia how to take his temperature.
She also showed her how to trim the dog's toe nails.
The boys didn't have any extra books/projects this week. They read a couple books about the Civil War. Joey likes the Chester Comix. I am going to keep buying those for future history lessons.
Lydia and Caty are in love with the new erasable pens we have. I got them a treat to start out the new school year. These were a request. I found them on Amazon, they are PilotFrixon Erasable Pens (Not an affiliate link):
We also are loosely following this book. In a week the kids are doing a class at the Apple Store on doing comic strips electronically. So they are working on making their rough outlines of them. Joey has his done, minus clipart. Now to get the others to finish.
Hope everyone had a wonderful week!! Linking up with other moms at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
This is one week! Wow! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteWow, what a great week I want to come learn at your house,
ReplyDelete