Sickness Finally Arrives

Not that we wanted it to. While we were in Las Cruces, NM, visiting family for Thanksgiving, Tigger started running a 102.7 degree temperature (actually, that was Thanksgiving day). Thank goodness for 24x7 Walgreens. Later that day, Pooh finally started running a fever, too. Friday morning Tigger had 103.2, and Pooh was 102.3. They were eating well, and over-the-counter meds seemed to bring their temperatures down to "normal" so we went ahead and drove the 12 hour drive back (even though the nurse I talked to with our health care provider didn't seem to think like it was a great idea). Saturday, the boys had sniffles and coughs, but no fever. This morning, Rabbit has the fever and stuffy nose. The boys still have sniffles and coughs. Rabbit needs to get better by Wednesday, as it is her last dance class before the fall recital. They have practice/dress rehearsal again next Monday, but Monday night is the performance. Eeek!

Week 15 in CTG

This week, History covered building the Tabernacle. A hands-on activity, and worth every effort. Now, we didn't have enough scrap fabric of the right size to do all the curtains - we used fabric for the curtain that separates the Most Holy Place and Holy Place, and then we used tissue paper and packing paper for the curtains over the top. The first day, you make the Most Holy Place and the Ark of the Covenant. Here's our Ark:

The next day you make the Alter of Incense, Table for the Bread, and the Lampstand. Here they are, placed in the Holy Place:

Then, you put the curtains over the top, kind of like this (you can see the purple tissue paper, then a layer of packing paper, then yellow tissue paper, and then packing paper again):

The last two days, you make the Bronze Basin and Altar of Burnt offering, and enclose it with the Courtyard Curtains:

(I just love how it fits perfectly on our coffee table.) We didn't glue the curtains together - and we forgot to color the front curtains. Not gluing will allow us to "pack it up" easier. The pictures in Victor and in my study Bible really helped give a feel for the whole thing.

For Science we are moving into studying Sun, Moon and Stars. We go camping in the summer, so the kids have seen the night sky. It's very cold here at night now, so Rabbit and I only spent a few minutes outside. We did try to spot a couple of constellations. For "Slow Motion in the Sky" - we went out to dinner one night, and before we left, we found a constellation and made note of where it was in the sky. Then, when we came back, we saw where it "moved" to. Then, the "Galaxy in a Cup" experiment - well, we don't drink coffee. So, I used warm water and blue food coloring. Stir the water, drop in a drop of blue food coloring, and viola! spiral galaxy:

We didn't really work too hard at memorizing the planets in order. What is really cool is next summer they will be redoing our local park. They are going to do a solar system/space theme. They are going to put markers across the park to show how far each planet would be from the sun to scale! I see that we're suppose to do that next week, and we'll still try, but I think it is going to be cool that we can go over to the park and see it too. The people designing the park said that the scale they are using will just fit all the way out to poor old demoted Pluto.

In Art, we did Tertiary Colors and Coloring with line. Rabbit didn't really do a great job on Coloring With Line.

We did a little school on Monday of Thanksgiving week - memory verse test, vocabulary test, and a Math quiz, so we wouldn't have a week off and then 3 tests. Rabbit did fine on all of those. Math-U-See added in reviewing of multiplication of 2 digit numbers, and Rabbit remembered how! And, she didn't miss those on the quiz. (She reverses 42 and 24, so she always gets 6x4 and 6x7 mixed up. Those were the problems she missed on her math quiz.)

Week 14 in CTG

This week Bible and History cover The Exodus through all the laws. We talked about eating manna every day for 40 years. (What if we had to eat pop corn or Cheerios for every meal?) That would get old. We talked about why God had to give them the new laws.

(It was interesting, I found a book through the library by Gilbert Morris called By Way of the Wilderness - it is a historical fiction (with a little romance thrown in) of the account of the Exodus. It had some interesting points - true or not, I don't know. First, that the Israelites had been slaves for 400 years. They didn't know how to behave themselves without someone ruling over them. They'd rather be slaves and know what the day held, than be free and face the unknown. So, they needed someone schooled in being a leader (like Moses). Second, how Moses being a shepherd for 40 years (hmmm, weren't other great leaders, like King David, shepherds too) really helped him lead his people and care for them. Anyway, it was an interesting supplement for me to read while studying the Exodus.)

Science was a little better this week. We didn't do "The Little Guys...Again," but we read through it. We did try "The Good, the Bad, and the Tasty," but we weren't able to get any "bubbling" effect. I suspect our water may have been on the cool side. (I bake bread regularly, and use the hottest water out of the tap I can get for my sponge.) We didn't do "Floating in the Salty Sea." Rabbit said they had tried an experiment like that in Sunday School once as an object lesson, and they couldn't get it to work. We did do the "Parfait of Color" - using syrup, water, olive oil and rubbing alcohol (only 4 layers) - and that did work. I think we'll try the yeast experiment again someday, with a little bit warmer water.

Art lessons were more interesting this week. We learned about Primary and Secondary colors and filling in a color wheel. We tried mixing to get Secondary colors, and then "pure" secondary colors. It was hard to mix.

We'll be finishing up the Abeka reader we started several weeks ago. Rabbit is loving the story. We'll go back to the Pathway reader next.

Everything else is going well. Writing Strands is a bit harder for us. I'm not sure I'm doing it justice. Much of the time I'm writing and Rabbit is copying - we do discuss, but sometimes I wish she would come up with ideas. I have a friend who has IEW that I may borrow to review. Something more "formulaic" may work better for us. We'll see.

Week 13 in CTG

This week we finished out the plagues. Starting with boils and hail... well, we didn't tape red paper patches on Pharaoh and his officials. But, we had a really bad hail storm earlier this summer, so we talked about that and how the Bible said it destroyed the crops. For the plague of locusts we talked about what they are and how they can eat everything green. An interesting note in my study Bible said that the plague of darkness may have been a horrible sand storm, "darkness they can feel" was the wording. The death of the first born was very sad for Rabbit. She doesn't like sad things happening.

Science was frustrating. The first experiment - getting string/thread to melt into an ice cube so it would stick - we could NOT get it to work. We must have tried 7 or 8 times, different strings, different amounts of ice, different ice cubes. Here is one picture of our many attempts:

We did the White Powders experiment. I didn't have any aspirin, so we used vitamin C tablets instead. It was easy to see what dissolved and what didn't. Actually, the vitamin C didn't completely dissolve. We didn't do the pH indicator with the cabbage. But, I do want to go back and do it sometime in the future. We just didn't have time to make our indicator juice.

The rest of our subjects (Math, Spelling, English, Writing, Reading, Spanish) are going well. We've moved writing to Thursday and Friday, as often there is writing in English, and that would be too much for Rabbit.

I'm not sure Rabbit is totally enjoying the art lessons. They take a bit of work, and I think she would like them to be easier. We did start learning about Bach this week, so that was good.

We started Treasures of the Snow. Yet another book that is going to be awesome to read to the kids.

Week 12 in CTG

This week covers from The Burning Bush through the first five plagues in Egypt.

At first, the kids were excited to act out the plagues. Rabbit was Pharaoh, Pooh one of Pharaoh's priests/magicians, and Tigger was Moses.

However, by the end of the first day of acting out the plagues, well Rabbit was in tears about being Pharaoh, because he was the bad guy. This upset Tigger and Pooh, and well, things only went downhill from there. So, to ease tensions, I agreed to play Pharaoh for the rest of the plagues and Rabbit got to be Aaron. It went much better after that.

For the river turning into blood, I got a large cake pan, and just put about 1/4 inch of water in it. We set it on the floor, and then I dropped some red food coloring in as Moses pretended to strike the river. Very cool effect. We only made about 40 or so frogs, but did spread them out all over the living room floor. Here is our frogs piled into a heap, as described in Exodus:

We didn't do anything extra for the plagues of gnats and flies, but we did talk about how there is one rest stop in our state where we have stopped to have lunch has lots and lots and lots of flies. (My husband said, "Yep. That rest stop did have a plague of flies!") We decided it must have even been worse than that place in Egypt.

The plague on the livestock is the first plague where there was a distinction between the Hebrews and the Egyptians. So, we took half of our stuffed animals and put them in one corner of the room, and half in the other. After we "acted" our parts, I sent the priest to check on the livestock and report back his findings. We talked about how God protected the Hebrews from harm.

We didn't do any science experiments again this week. I think we needed a break. (As a side note, I've read ahead to next weeks experiments, and I think we will try those - they look interesting.) But, we read through them and discussed them as best we could.

The book basket list was light for this week, so I got books about the animals you might find in Egypt during that time - sheep, goats, camels, etc. Not sure that Rabbit really enjoyed those, though.

Rabbit got a little tired of our Pathway reader (we're almost done with it anyway), so we've switch to the Abeka 4th grade readers for now. We're reading Song of the Brook and enjoying it.

Rabbit is doing well with the vocabulary. Right now I'm just typing up matching quizzes for her to do by herself, but I help her with most of the steps of learning the new words.

We're already on step 13 in All About Spelling Level 3. One thing I started doing about 4 or 5 weeks ago during dictation is saying, "Sentence check," which is a hint for Rabbit to check punctuation and capitalization of her sentences. At first, I said it for every sentence. Then I started only saying it for sentences that she missed one or the other. Well, this Thursday or Friday, I didn't have to say it for a single sentence, and she didn't misspell anything on dictation that day. I am so proud of her. Slowly, I'm starting to see the spelling carry over to her writing some. Once, she knew something was spelled wrong, but she couldn't see how to spell it correctly. I am just glad she is beginning to recognize when she is making mistakes.

In Math, we finished lesson 6, and have started lesson 7. She seems to be doing fine with it, so we'll continue on.

In Writing Strands, we're working on a lesson to show how characters in a story "think." We have a story from personal experience, so it's going pretty well. Again, I'm helping a lot, but I think modeling how to do this stuff is a legitimate way to teach writing.

We didn't paint a stone, because by the time we got to a day to work on that project, we had 6 inches of snow on the ground. I told Rabbit we'd pick another day to try to do that lesson.

Star of Light was a terrific book to read. The kids loved the story and always wanted to know what was going to happen next. I'm looking forward to our last of the Patricia St. John books from the Deluxe package.

Week 10-11 in CTG

I'm just going to do some highlights from these two weeks. (We actually juts finished week 12, so I a little bit behind on my updates.)

Rabbit is doing great with the memorization in Bible. We've had some good discussions, too. Basically, these two weeks cover from Joseph interpreting the Baker and Cup Bearer's dreams to Moses fleeing from Egypt.

Reading about the ups and downs of Egyptian history has been interesting. It is easy to understand why the Egyptians would have wanted to enslave the Hebrews after the Hyksos domination.

I want to encourage anyone who thinks making costumes for acting out the 10 plagues is too much work. We kept it really simple. We used our Pharaoh's crown from earlier in the year for Pharaoh. Then, I used one old pillow case to make a shepherd's head piece, and another one to make Pharaoh's priest's leopard skin cloak thing. I used some of the pictures from Ancient World to make them. Do they look authentic? Not at all, but I think it makes acting out the plagues more fun.

Another activity was to make a clay pot. We used Crayola Model Magic for this. Way cool stuff. We loved how easy it was to work with. We did let our pot dry for about a week before anyone was allowed to touch it. Here is a picture:

We haven't really been doing any science experiments for these two weeks. Some of them we've done before, and I didn't feel like doing them again. Others, I didn't have the supplies and wasn't sure where to get the supplies.

Rabbit continues to make progress in the basics, so not much new on that front. Writing Strands 3 is a big challenge for her, but I think it is good. I'm trying not to set my expectations too high. Yes, I want her to try, but I'm not opposed to helping her as needed, especially to avoid frustration.

Week 9 in CTG

Bible

We covered from Jacob meeting Rachel to Joseph and Potiphar's wife. I wasn't quite prepared when I was reading from Victor's Journey through the Bible and the Bible, and ended up having to edit on the fly. Not sure the kids are quite ready for some of that adult stuff. The wording in the NIV is pretty mild, so it wasn't too bad, I just was taken by surprise. I almost wish there was a little note in the Bible square on the grid that said, "See notes before today's reading" with a little reminder. I know it's at the top of the column on the grid for the day, but I forgot to look.

History

We did some activities that looked at Abraham and his descendants and how they are all related to each other. Not sure how much that really helped Rabbit get the bigger picture.

We read about Egypt's Middle Kingdom, and then looked at what houses, games, and how Egyptians may have generally lived their daily lives. We did NOT build a house (an activity suggested in the manual), but we looked in detail at all the pictures. Plus, we had a book finally come in through the library that had some more pictures that Rabbit remembered applied to what we were studying, so we looked at those.

We added the 12 tribes and Joseph to our time line.

Science

Science was just a tad bit frustrating this week. One of our experiments was to fill a pan full of water, put a candle in it, light the candle and then place a jar over it. We were suppose to see two things: first, the candle going out because it used up all the oxygen in the jar, and second, the water level was suppose to rise inside the jar because the water would be taking the place of the air. We tried several different variations of the jar and pan and how much water, and just could not see it. The candle would usually go out before I could get the jar completely down in the water. So, the water in the jar would be lower than the water in the pan. Now, one time, after the candle went out, the water started rising - and we could see it - but it seemed like it was just the water back filling from in the pan.

Anyway, I want to try this experiment again. Perhaps getting a tall see-through plastic jar or cup, and cutting the bottom off straight. Set the cup in and make sure the water level is equal on both sides and then set a saucer or something on top that will close up the jar and then see if the water rises. I think our lower oxygen levels at a mile high may be the reason we weren't able to see everything the book said.

The other experiment for this week (called "Carbon Dioxide") worked great. We had a large grape juice plastic bottle to mix our solution in, and were able to blow out the candle twice with one mixture. The kids thought that was way cool.

We didn't do the weather balloon experiment as it was already too cold here, and I don't have a small thermometer or a bunch of helium balloons.

Language Arts

We are moving along in All About Spelling Level 3. There are days when I actually see Rabbit's spelling carry over into her writing, and other days, well, not so much.

Using Intermediate Language Lessons is working well. I like how it gradually works on skills and we can do it together, to make sure she understands.

Rabbit aced her Vocabulary test this week, but couldn't remember what pyrophobia meant for "extra credit," even though she is VERY pyrophobic (which made science a challenge, too).

She finished her story in Writing Strands (see my last post) and we looked at the next lesson, "Description of a Friend." She wanted it to be "Description of my Favorite Horse or Horses." Perhaps I should try to adapt it - she might enjoy it more. But, I'm not sure how. I don't know enough about horses.

Math

We finished Lesson 5 in Delta, and Rabbit got a 100% on her test. It was "flashcard" review week - which she really doesn't like all that much. I found some dice with numbers and math symbols and thought about using them for review time sometimes. But, usually I leave math review time to be "independent work."

Art and Music

We looked at Monday's Art lesson, but Rabbit felt overwhelmed by it. I didn't push - she's young for this book. Wednesday's lesson was a "Doodle" page and she had lots of fun with that.

Rabbit drew her picture for Vivaldi's Autumn this week. The directions said that the first movement was of the harvesters celebrating and then the second movement was them sleeping from drinking too much wine. So, Rabbit drew a Maypole with all the people dancing around it, and had all the dancers holding cups of wine (they kind of looked like martini glasses!) with the wine splashing out. It's amazing what they'll think of. We are enjoying the music.

Read Aloud

Of course, every day they ask for the next chapter in Star of Light. The story is wonderful. Sometimes the kids are in tears, though, worried about Hamid or Kinza and what might happen next. The kids are really connecting to the characters in this story.

It was a pretty good week, except for science. Just loving this curriculum!