Homeschool Week 16: Sea, Sand, and Stars

We are enjoying our Bible stories this month.  We are using The Jesus Storybook Bible Advent Readings for our story time.  This past week we covered the stories of The Tower of Babel, Abraham and Sarah, The Offering of Isaac, Jacob Rachel and Leah, Joseph, Moses, and Crossing the Red Sea.  Our Doctrinal Drill was on God.  Our new song for the week was "O Little Town of Bethlehem".  On our last story of the week, Crossing the Red Sea, we did an activity.  I put water in a bowl and added pepper.  They then dipped their finger in dish soap and put it in the middle of the water.  The pepper separates. They loved this and ended up doing it several times.  The first time I added a little blue food coloring to the water.  The next time they insisted that I add red because it was the "Red" Sea.  ha  After that we just used plain water. 

I first gave them straws and let them blow the water to see if they could part it. 

Ben liked pouring the pepper- a lot of it! 

and it separates.  It is really cool to see.

In Language Cruz finished up his sixth storybook and took his assessment test.   He also had his first achievement test to make sure he is on target.  He did well on both.  His daily spelling tests increased from five to ten words a day.  He began a two week study focusing on letter clusters.  He has four charts of sounds that he is learning.  He has a fun song that we sing each day to help him learn them.

Cruz singing the letter cluster phonics song.  His charts are front and back.

a few of his workbook activities

In grammar he learned to find the subject of a sentence and continued practicing punctuation.

circling the subject

I had put periods at the end of each sentence and then he turned them all into exclamation marks.  He likes to read them with expression. ha

Is the sentence asking or telling?

Ben is making his way through the alphabet.  This week we focused on letter G. 

matching magnetic letters to our cookie sheet chart

writing the letter Gg

Saying his verse for letter G:  1 John 4:8 God is love.

He had a full week of lessons on classification.  He learned about things you would find in a toy store, clothing store, furniture store, and grocery store.  In one of his activities he had to cut pictures from magazines to glue on the store page that we were learning about each day.

He loves to cut.

In Math Cruz focused on making the number 10.  

cutting out triangles to review math facts

Ben's math lessons focused on number 11 and counting to 30.

counting apples on the tree

counting rabbits

drawing the correct amount of triangles beside each number

Our History lessons were on the Liberty Bell and Betsy Ross.

the Liberty Bell

 (just a little more colorful than the original)

We learned about the first American flag.  Our story told about Betsy Ross making the five point star.  Our activity had us making some of our own.  I found an online tutorial that showed us how to fold the paper and only make one cut to form our star.  Once he caught on Cruz really enjoyed this.  He said "we're just like Betsy". ha

He was just a little bit impressed with himself.

I asked him what he wanted to do with the stars once we made them.  He came up with an idea to decorate them.  I let him choose the supplies and give the instructions.  Art can get messy but I like letting him be in charge and make his ideas come to life.  He chose to glue yarn and turn them into ornaments for his tree.

our five pointed star ornaments

We learned about the State of Maine.

In Science our topic was sedimentary rocks.  Our first activity was called "Cleaning Muddy Water".  It helped us see how sand and sedimentary rock can be used for filtering water.  We first watched several YouTube videos on unclean drinking water.  My boys are very familiar with this from growing up here.

Cruz examining our jar of dirty water.

pretending to drink it

we made a filter using a 2 liter Coke bottle, sand, and crushed rocks

pouring in the dirty water to let it filter

The water would still have to be boiled or treated before drinking it.  The sand and rocks just helps filter out any dirt or debris.

doing it again with water from our tap

I love doing these hands on experiments with my boys.  I don't expect them at this age to grasp every concept.  To me it's more about the fun of learning and exploring new things.  They love science!

Another activity we did was called "Painting With Sand".  We mixed sand with paint and they made a picture.

Cruz's sand painting shaped like a turtle

Our last activity of the week was making a sandstone.  We mixed two cups of sand with 1/2 cup of glue.  We pressed it into a loaf pan lined with plastic wrap.  Once formed we sat it out in the sun to dry. 

measuring sand

measuring glue

mixing it all together

our sandstone drying in the sun

In Health we learned about the importance of taking care of our teeth.  We watched several YouTube videos about teeth, how to properly brush them, and on tooth decay.  We also learned about dentists and their role in helping us have healthy teeth.  We did an activity called "Apple Decay Test". 

we used two apples for the experiment

the boys bit into one of the apples leaving broken skin on it

We sat the two apples in the window for a few days and kept observing them.  They noticed how the broken skin caused a brown or decayed spot.  We compared this to teeth that are not taken care of properly.

In Art they drew a baby bunny.

They also enjoyed coloring some sheets that were given to them by our recent guests. 

It amazes me how they can be so active yet sit so still and work on something tedious like these sheets. 

Cruz colored the first two and Ben colored the Christmas gift one on the end. 

Whew!  It was a full week but most certainly a fun one.  Have I mentioned lately just how much I love homeschooling my boys?  Oh what a joy it is!