Would you care for a spot of tea?

LONDON  APRIL   2011

Well, It's not an April Fool's Joke, we landed in London on April 1st to blue sunny skies and lots of preparations for the Royal wedding at the end of the month. 

We planned this stop in London as a family trip on our way to Ethiopia, where we will be finalizing our adoption of a little boy named Kibru.

London was fantastic with kids. It's clean, very easy to get around walking or by taxi or double decker. We highly recommend it for all ages. We tried to gear our days around what the kids would enjoy most so we spent an ample amount of time in parks and not many hours in museums. We figured when they return later in life, they can see more of that. Museums will always be there.

This is one museum that we did enter, it was the Churchill War Rooms, built and occupied during WWII. They had headsets for each of us to hear the sounds, speeches, and narration of stories from the underground rooms. It was really fascinating for everyone. We haven't studied WWII yet in our scope of history but they enjoyed it and I can imagine these rooms and tour will come to mind when we do get to it in the curriculum.  

Enough time underground, back to outside, where it's Spring!

Beautiful shot of  Big Ben against the blue sky. Big Ben is actually the name of the bell inside the tower, not the Tower itself, FYI.

The novelty of squeezing into a phone booth, right in front of Big Ben.

 We walked from our hotel through two parks, past Parliament and across the river Thames to catch a ride on the London Eye. Great views of city from up there and it gave us a good introduction to the lay of land.

That ends our first day in London.

Website for Temple Building

The kids are stoked about the Greeks still and I am so glad that MFW covers them for so long at this time. This was a great time of the year to study it (feb-mar) as the weather was crummy and we got  a lot more read aloud time indoors. I think we have read every book in our library on Greek myths!

We are also reading about the lives of David and Solomon. One interesting way in which our studies impacted our real life was when we studied the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon seeking wisdom. Experts think that the Queen was likely from the northern Africa region that incorporated Egypt down to Ethiopia. Whenever we hear anything about Ethiopia, it has an impact! We are leaving for Ethiopia in a few days and we are taking with us a new knowledge that the people of Ethiopia were the recipients of God's wisdom through Solomon. Amazing.

We learned how the temple was built in silence which we thought was fascinating. No hammer or chisel was used on site out of reverance for the dwelling place of the Lord.

Click HERE for a pdf I found of the building of the temple in Jerusalem.  We looked up the verses and filled in the answers together. My kindergartener colored and my 2nd and 4th graders did the word searches and the crossword.  There are more where this one came from so we may be using these for other topics as well, like Esther coming up.

It's all Greek to me!

We just arrived in Ancient Greece after spending the first half of the year on Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel. We have loved studying about what civilization was like B.C., seeing what the people did for work, what they wore, what they ate, how they lived. But more importantly, we have really enjoyed understanding what God was doing during those times. How His word can be our guide to history and teach us about a place and time. God was present when the Egyptians built their pyramids, and more so when He loosed the plagues that released the Israelites from slavery there. 

Now we have moved onto another great civilization, Ancient Greece.

Can I just say that they Greek myths have totally captivated the young minds in my house? 

They are constantly pretending to be one of the Greek gods or goddesses and reenacting the stories. It's probably the easiest time I have ever had teaching a subject, they constantly beg for more. 

We started with the ILIAD in the Children's Homer but quickly changed to Rosemary Sutcliffe's version, Black Ships before Troy. It was more engaging for the age range that I have listening ( K-4). We sped through that in 1 week and are onto the Wanderings of Odysseus, again my Rosemary Sutcliffe instead of using the Odyssey in the Children's Homer.  

I also added a few books that MFW doesn't include.We are reading through the Percy Jackson series. I read this aloud so that I can edit a few of the language issues. The novels help to emphasize the relationships among the gods /goddesses and what a greek HERO really was. I found this website to quiz the students on the sequencing, vocabulary and comprehension portions of the story.  One amazing bonus, is that my fourth grader has written her first short story. A prequel to the Percy books, his time from pre-K to 5th grade and it's a hoot! I will publish a chapter or two at a later time.

Most importantly, we have definitely enphasized the fantasy genre of the myths and that they would essentially be equivalent to today's superheroes. That is, if we built monuments to them and worshipped them with sacrifices.  The kids understand that the myths were meant to explain natural phenomena, such as thunderstorms or the setting of the sun, which we have science to explain today. Some myths were written as pure entertainment. The gods and goddesses in the myths are temperamental, not always wise or compassionate and generally like the best and worst of all human characteristics. 

Nonetheless, they are fascinating to read about.  

Everett loves the mythical creatures most of all, the Cerberus, the centaurs, satyrs, cyclopses, the chimera, the hydra, etc.........anything with mutliple heads and mixed up body parts!  Those Greeks sure had imaginations!

Everett's rendition of the Underworld based on the descriptions in Greek mythology.

I think he captured it pretty welll.....there is Hades on the throne, the (three-headed) dog, Cerberus as guard-dog, the cyclops with the club, and the general despair of the whole scene.

Valentines Day Party

Wouldn't want the homeschooled kids to miss out on the Valentine tradition of passing out cards, stickers, and having tons of sugar with class friends so...... we turned science club into Valentine headquarters for an hour thanks to some very generous grandparents.

Love these kids!

Novel reading with my 4th grader

Mackenzie and I decided to read something together, a novel. She reads like it's her job and half the time, I can't keep up with the latest paperback or series from the library that she has devoured. This was a little different. We decided to choose one together and to race read and discuss the book as we went along.
We chose Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh  by Robert C. O'Brien for this experiment.
This novel was published in 1971 and won the Newbery Medal in 1972. Good literature no doubt.

**Side note: I didn't realize that a chapter in the novel mentions belief in evolution as it relates to rat colonies of the past, their relatives being the prairie dogs who built elaborate underground civilizations. This is mentioned to show the reader the inspiration that the Rats of NIMH needed to build their own civilization and become less dependent on humans.

anywho....

back to Mackenzie and our reading project. Every other day or so, I made up a worksheet for her to work on new vocabulary and comprehension. We discussed the major themes of the novel and did a character studies as well.  I used some materials that I found online with a quick google search.

Now ...for the goods.
Mackenzie wrote this paragraph after reading about the relationship between Jeremy and Mrs Frisby.

"Mrs. Frisby rode on the back of Jeremy, crow, to get to the Owl's tree. Mrs. Frisby's home is going to be plowed and her son, Timothy has pneumonia and cannot get out of bed. Do you wonder why a crow is helping a mouse? Well, it is because Mrs. Frisby first helped Jeremy by freeing him when he was tangled in a string. This little act of kindness started a huge act of kindness in this story. " 


Here are samples of two comprehension worksheets that I made for this novel.
We will definitely repeat this adventure but I need a break from having to keep pace with my 4th grader while studying the text for new words and interesting plot points to quiz her on. Whew!
   
AND

 A Lesson in Reading / The Air Ducts / The Boniface Estate / Toy Tinker

Vocabulary

comradeship:

plaintive: 

dictate:

contour:

1)What supplies did the rats need to explore the ducts?

2)What was Jenner’s main concern about escaping?

3) How many mice made it out?

4)Why did ordinary rats stay away from the Rats of NIMH?

5)What was the most exciting thing about the Boniface estate?

6)What did Mrs. Frisby fear most about her mission?

7)What was the key piece of machinery that Nicodemus had invented?

8)What was THE PLAN?

9)Who in the history books inspired THE PLAN?

10)Why did the rats think to look for mountains for their new home?

11)Who was the Toy Tinker?  

Wanna play a game?

Hey Mom- do you? Right here, while you are making lunch? Yeah- right now!

Okay my son, go get it set up and I'll play with you.

BoardGame +6 yr old boy= smiles like this one.

This is a common conversation in our house when our schoolwork is finished for the day. In those early afternoon hours before any of the neighborhood children come crashing knocking and before the TV is allowed to be turned on.  It's game time!

This is called Skippity.

 Everett is contemplating his next jumping move.

Piano Recital

After a month of practicing and a busy morning playing an AYSO soccer game, the girls participated in their second recital.  They both did well. I could tell the nerves had affected Harper a little more than big sister, Mackenzie. That surprised me b/c little sister is usually grabbing the spotlight whenever she can.

They were by far the youngest ones to perform in this recital. Everett promised that he would be up there next time.......

We'll see.  

SO proud of the my girls. 

So glad we get to move on to new songs. "The Entertainer" still haunts my sleep.