The things that keep me busy

Since we started homeschooling this year with a few new programs, I have found myself making the most unusual grocery lists. The list below is for science, we're going to be testing acids and bases and making our own litmus paper with red cabbage and coffee filters (just writing that makes me exhausted!)

Our history program, The Story of the World, lists multiple activities for each lesson. Usually, I go through and pick out the easiest activity. I especially like when I get to tell Grant to go make something out of legos like a ziggurat or a siege tower. That keeps him busy for hours and I don't have to supervise at all. However, since we were already purchasing the red cabbage for science, I thought I'd try something a little more involved and do the "Dye something a royal purple" activity. (Again... totally exhausted! What am I thinking?) If and when this gets done, I promise to post pictures.

I was able to finally take "canned papaya" off of my shopping list. I'd been on the search for that one for a couple of weeks. It was part of our history lesson on Africa. One of the activities was to make an African feast. We didn't make the whole feast, just some fried plantains and this papaya fried rice. The kids weren't overly thrilled with it, but I liked it lots.

And finally... something that doesn't involve the kids or a history lesson! I found this sweater at the thrift store. Isn't it just so incredibly awful!!!! but it's a great color for some of those cute felted sweater projects that I have been wanting to do. Go check out Betz White's blog, I love her stuff. http://blog.betzwhite.com/

Ancient China History project

Just a couple of pictures to show you our history project for Story of the World's Ancient China lesson.

We opted to make a clay bowl in the style of the blue and white porcelain popular in China.

Julia painted glue all over it to make it shiny.

Mummy's are interesting too!

Our most recent history lesson was about making mummies. One of the possible activities listed in the workbook was to make a mummy out of a chicken. http://yhspatriot.net/~jschild/mummy.html

Yeah, well, I don't think that is going to happen... not on my kitchen counter, but the kids thought that it would be fun to turn themselves into mummies. So we mummified the little turkeys.

They learned alot about the mummification process from their history lesson and even more so from this fun game. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/launch_gms_mummy_maker.shtml
After they removed each other's brains through their noses (so much giddy laughter) and removed all their internal organs (an excellent opportunity to tickle), they "covered" each other with salt and spices. I doubt the Egyptians used parsley, but that's what Grant got out of the spice drawer. What a waste of toilet paper, but what a lot of fun! Julia thought her hair looked like the wigs that they put on mummies, so she didn't want to cover her face. Grant insisted on being wrapped from head to toe. I did open up the tissue by his nose so that he could breathe.

Julia has some amulets to provide her with safe passage to the afterworld.



Anyone who watches Scooby Doo knows that a mummy isn't a mummy unless it comes back to life and terrorizes the town.

Cave Paintings

Yesterday we did one of our first activities in the Story of the World. This was to go along with Chapter 1 The First Nomads. It was a relatively easy activity for me to set up, just a brown paper bag and a few paints. Luckily, we had a beautiful day and were able to enjoy some school time outside.

They tried using some "natural" paintbrushes like the early people might have used. Grant mostly used his fingers or a stick.

Quincy took a break between her math and science to study literature,
or maybe she was just reading a book.
Julia says, "It's two guys fighting a cougar. There's a volcano and there is a dinosaur bird in the sky. There are fireballs in the sky. There is a guy in the cave running away from the cougar. There is a plant and a dinosaur egg nest on the bottom and my hand print."
Grant's picture is of two guys chasing a mastodon with spears.

Another "school" day

Last week, as I was looking over our new school books, the kids wanted to know what we were going to learn, so I read a little from our history text "The Story of The World" and gave them some examples of the kinds of activities that we were planning to do. The first chapter of the history book is about the first nomads. One of the suggested activities is to create a "hut" that could be easily built and torn down. This captured their imagination and they couldn't wait to get started. This morning I was talking to Grant about school and he brought up the hut thing again, wanting to know when we'd get to do that. I told him that there was nothing stopping him and to feel free to get started.

Grant and Julia got started right away. Fortunately, we still have a ton of sticks/logs left in the backyard, so they had a lot of building material.
Once the basic construction was done, Julia decided to decorate.

Grant borrowed a sheet to complete the look.

They spent most of the day building it together with just a little bit of arguing.
Cool.