Weekly Report

I'm going to give this title thing another go. It's been a while since I've given a blog post a title. I got pretty creative with this one don't ya think?

So here's how our week went.....

Bible Study ~ Our church does Bible Blast. Last Sunday they had "Fun Blast", a kick-off/introduction to the program. The kids and I went to check it out since we're still fairly new to the church and we had no idea what Bible Blast was. It seems like a neat deal and the kids really enjoyed it. For those too lazy to click on the link above, it's a parent-driven program. You do the readings as a family and the families help run the program on Sunday night. As a family you read the Bible readings, have fun going over the quiz questions, and on Sunday nights the kids go to Bible Blast. They have praise/worship, a little lesson, and then the kids are divided into groups (by age and boys/girls) to be quizzed. They can earn Bible Blast Bucks to spend at a prize table. The kids can also do memorization if they choose to.

So on Monday we started our study. We read the bible stories and went over the quiz questions. Each day during our Bible study time we reviewed the stories and I quizzed the kids.

Latin ~ Nothing much different this week.

History ~ This week we talked about ancient Egyptian polytheism and the plagues. It was really interesting to look at the plagues and match them with the Egyptian god(s) that God judged. Of course we know they aren't actual beings that God was judging but the idea that because the people worshiped these gods, the plagues were a way of God showing the people how powerless their gods were. I'm sure many saw this as the god/goddess' way of showing anger and judging them instead of God's judgement but regardless of how they viewed it, God was showing his power and judgement. I think the older girls were able to make some connection with what we've learned about ancient Egyptian life, including the fact that this is the society Moses grew up in, and how these plagues were so devastating.

We also worked on our salt dough map of Egypt and the Nile. It's quite obviously not to scale but it helped reinforce the geography of it all. Here are some pictures of the kids painting their map:

Poetry ~ A little more discussion about rhyme. The girls also practiced marking the rhyme scheme, finding internal rhyme, finding eye rhyme, and alliteration.

Science ~ They youngers had a brief lesson on plate tectonics and Pangea. Em worked on finishing up her first module and took a test on Friday.

Another pretty typical week with their individual work. Matthew LOVES math!!! He's doing a great job with it! We're also working on the vowel sounds still. One challenge we've had is when the younger two get done and go off to play. Even though we have space for everyone to spread out, it's been too noisy! I wanted to find some things to keep Matthew busy and for him to have some options. I picked up a couple things at Mardel but on Friday had a great opportunity! Sadly one of the private Christian schools in town had to close just six weeks before the new school year. An email came through Thursday evening that on Friday morning their K4 and K5 rooms would be open to homeschool families. They had some furniture for sale (I'm sort of regretting not grabbing up the record player and stack of records for $10!) but other than that, it was "take what you need". Talk about perfect timing!! I picked up:

- 4 small geoboards, rubber bands, and laminated cards with shape ideas

- Memory

- a Spiderman puzzle

- sequins, construction paper strips, a ziplock bag full of stamps

- lacing cards

- an ABC bingo game

I'm looking forward to this next week to see if having more options helps the noise level and helps keep the little man occupied.