Sukkoth Celebration - MFW Creation to the Greeks

Sukkoth was our last biblical feast to celebrate this fall. Traditionally, a sukkoth (or booth) should be made out wood with tree branches as the roof. We took the lazy way out of this one and used our tent! For dinner, we had venison, mashed potatoes with gravy, corn, and challah bread.

The kids loved eating in the tent!

After we ate, I read some scriptures that were recommended in this book, Celebrating Biblical Feasts.

Simple Crocheted Dish Cloth

While cleaning out my craft area recently, I found a half of skein of cotton yarn and decided to use it up. I made a simple dish cloth using a double crochet stitch. Now, I think I might have to go buy more! I really need more dish clothes.

MFW Creation to the Greeks - Week 8

We've continued on with Abraham's family, covering his almost sacrifice of Isaac, Isaac marrying Rebekah, the birth of Esau and Jacob, and then Jacob deceiving his father (Genesis 22-27). The kids each wrote a summary of Abraham and Isaac, Caleb's is on top, Rebekah's is below.

We didn't do a lot with ancient Egypt this week, but we are still reading The Cat of Bubastes by G. A. Henty and are loving it!

For science, this week was about how the human eye sees, and also about reflection and absorption of light. Above is Caleb's science notebook where he drew pictures of the experiments.

All our other subjects were just normal as usual. Caleb has been doing much better at writing, and not having fits about it, which I am very thankful for.

MFW Creation to the Greeks - Week 7

In week 7, we continued reading about Abraham (Genesis 17-21) while also returning to ancient Egypt. The kids attempted to make papyrus paper using grocery bags and glue (above). We read about hieroglyphics and practiced some ancient Egyptian writing. Below is supposed to be the kids names, Caleb's is in blue.

I also started reading aloud The Cat of Bubastes by G. A. Henty. So far, we are really enjoying it. It starts with some graphic battle scenes which Caleb loves. It's written in older English, which was a bit difficult at first, but once the story got going, even Rebekah was enjoying it. Each chapter takes about 45 minutes to read, so we'll be reading this book for a few weeks.

 

MFW Creation to the Greeks - Week 6

Apparently, I didn't take very many pictures during week 6! This is the only one that I have. Here are Caleb and Rebekah playing the Royal Game of Ur, which was included in our curriculum. We've taken a small break from ancient Egypt to study Abraham and where he lived. Celebrating Sukkoth was also part of this week, but we just didn't have time, so it will be coming later. English, math, spelling, and writing have all continued this week as normal. I'll have to do a better job taking pictures!

Yom Kippur Feast - MFW Creation to the Greeks

We did not have time to celebrate Yom Kippur when it was scheduled in our curriculum, so when I realized that Sept 23rd was the real day, I decided to change our menu for the night and we celebrated Yom Kippur instead. Thankfully, the meal was simple. Rebekah helped me make Kreplach, which is pictured below. It is pie crust filled with meat, potatoes, and carrots. They were very good. The rest of our menu was simply baked potatoes, green beans, and grape juice.

After eating, we read the story of Jonah and talked about repentence. It happened to be a Wed night, so we went to church for our midweek service.

The recipe for Kreplach and more information about Yom Kippur can be found in this book, Celebrating Biblical Feasts.

MFW Creation to the Greeks - Week 5

Here's a picture of our mummy experiment. We learned about how the Egyptians dried and preserved the mummies, so we did our own experiment on bread. We started with one plain, one toasted, and one smeared with triple antibiotic cream. The first one to mold was actually the one with cream on it, but I think that was because the cream made it moister. The toasted one never molded at all.

I found a Reading Rainbow DVD about mummies that they watched, and they also played an online game that was linked to from our Usborne Ancient World book.

We also did some map work comparing the middle east today with how it was in ancient times.

Even our art was about Egypt this week. They had to draw a maze inside the pyramid. Caleb (top) understood how to make a maze, I was actually very impressed with his. Rebekah (below) didn't quite understand, but a tomb robber would definitely get lost in her pyramid!

Writing with Strands for Caleb has been going much better this week. It helps for me to scoot my chair right next to him and talk him trough each step.

We finished our read aloud, the Tanglewoods' Secret by Patricia St. John. We finished it a week ahead of schedule because we loved it so much. I highly recommend this author!

All in all, we had a good week, thanks for stopping by.

MFW Creation to Greeks - Week 4

We finally got to do our science experiment that required a bright sunny day. It seemed like it would be rainy and overcast forever! We used a magnifying glass to burn paper! Caleb especially thought it was awesome. The white computer paper did not burn for us, but the black construction paper did right away. We happened to be outside doing this when the school bus came by, so a bunch of neighbor kids came to see too! For week 4, we took a break from our Science in the Beginning and used a Usborne book about Pyramids. Below, we were testing how much easier it was to pull a heavy load when it was on rollers.

Of course, you have to make pyramid models when you study them!

They also did a couple of history notebook pages about ancient Egypt. Our teacher's manual recommended acting out the story of King Menes, but my kids get embarrassed acting, so we just made a notebook page. Caleb's is first.

This is just a random picture of them working, I think they are doing math.  

English from the Roots up has been going very well. I'm trying to be creative about how to review and test the root words and their derivations. Below is a picture of our white board area. I gave them the definitions and they had to write the correct Greek root word. 

These pictures were from our Tashlich ceremony, which was part of Rosh Hashanah. We went to a nearby lake and took rocks, which were symbolic of our sins, and threw them in to the lake. Micah 7:19 says "You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea". I'm very glad that we took the time to do this!

I keep trying to find things for the little boys to do that will keep them busy. Here is Matthew coloring a dinosaur.

This wipe off workbook turned out to be great! Both boys like it a lot, and yes, they fight over it.

Joshua still loves animals, this is what he was doing while Matthew was using the wipe off workbook.

That's it for week 4, have a blessed day.

Rebekah Decorated Her Own Birthday Cake

My cake decorating might be coming to an end! Rebekah wanted to decorate her own cake for her recent 7th birthday. I covered it with the white icing, and wrote the letters, but she did the rest. I did "draw" a line with a knife for the first rainbow color for her to follow. Look at her flower! Daddy promised that she could decorate his next birthday cake for him!

Happy Birthday Rebekah!

Rosh Hashanah Feast - MFW Creation to the Greeks

We celebrated Rosh Hashanah this week, which is celebrating the start of the Jewish new year, the birthday of the world. Rebekah made the crown for our globe centerpiece, which symbolized that God is the King of the whole world.

We made our own shofar out of a whistle that Caleb had and a paper bag. The real shofars are rams horns, and very cool!

I made Challah bread again, but this time it had a different shape. The loaf is round to symbolize the desire for a full and round year. On the bottom of the picture, you can see some lumps that kind of look like a ladder, it should at least, which represents that our prayers are directed to God. Right in the center on the top, was a bird shape before the dough rose too much. The bird symbolizes that our prayers get lifted up to God.

Our menu was: baked fish, glazed carrots, green beans, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, and the Challah bread. We also had grape juice to drink, and apples dipped in honey (pictured in one of the above pictures). The sweetness of the honey was to symbolize the sweetness of a new year.

Dessert was honey cake. I followed the recipe that was in our book, Celebrating Biblical Feasts. Unfortunately, I had the oven a bit too high and it burned a little on the ends, but the overall flavor was good, even if it was too dry.

The real holiday is not until September 13th this year, so maybe you can plan your own celebration.

MFW Creation to the Greeks - Week 3

This week in bible and history we continued to learn about Noah and his descendants, then moved on to the Tower of Babel and Mesopotamia. In the right picture above, you can see Caleb's bible lands map that he drew. My Father's World has a neat story to tell as you illustrate it. The left side is a map of how Noah's descendants traveled after the flood.

Here is the writing from Caleb's notebook page about Noah. I required him to write 4 sentences, since he is in 4th grade. We're working on writing better sentences. Below is Rebekah's picture.

Here are the notebook pages from the Tower of Babel. The first is Caleb's, the second is Rebekah's.

The tower picture below is the back of Rebekah's notebook page above.

Next up was the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia. We looked at several books about the Sumerians, and watched a good movie about Ancient Mesopotamia that I found at the library. After learning about cuneiform writing, we made our own "clay" tablets out of cookie dough to try our hand at writing it.

They started off writing in cuneiform, but ended up just playing!

Here is Caleb's finished "tablet".

To review our Greek words, I had the idea of making a crossword puzzle for the words and some of the derivations. I found this free crossword puzzle generator and created one for the first 3 words. The kids liked doing this, so I'm sure I will do it again.

Writing Strands with Caleb went a little better this week. We only did it one day while Rebekah was at a friends house, so he had my undivided attention. It still wasn't fun for him, but we made it through with minimal crying. Below are the sentences he wrote, making them longer as he went.

A new thing this week was Spanish lessons! I ordered two of these workbooks from Amazon and we started learning numbers this week. We also watched a couple episodes of Salsa online.

Here's a glimpse of God and the History of Art. They are not huge fans of drawing. It doesn't help that I usually leave it to the end, so they tend to rush through it to be done for the day. To me, art is an extra that is not necessary, so it's hard to put it before other subjects. Next week, we will be starting to learn more about the history of Egyptian art, maybe they will like those lessons better.

Preschool time is not going well... They pretty much fight over EVERYTHING. I thought putting some trucks in a pan of beans would be fun and entertaining for them... I was wrong. They played good for about 2 minutes before fighting over the trucks, then they started throwing the beans because they were mad. Does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks for taking a peek at our week, next week will start Ancient Egypt!