Week 3 of school - complete!

Well, rolling through week 3 we accomplished all that we set out to do! Hooray!

Miss E and Miss A aced their spelling tests again!
Miss E did beautifully in her first lesson back in math and Mr. E and Miss A continued reviewing math facts to make sure they're solid before moving on - this next week we'll do a little bit more review and then they'll be off and running again with Mr. E hot on Miss A's heels in the realm of math!

History found us studying about the Medieval Period and monks and monasteries this week. We read quite a bit this week from our "Usborne Guide to the Middle Ages", a few more famous men of the Middle Ages including Justinian the Great, Benedict and Gregory (monks), "Caedmon's Song", "Life in a Medieval Monastery" and "Saint Patrick". In Geography, Mr. E, Miss E and Miss A finished labeling their world maps with some of the most well known mountain ranges, deserts and seas as well as labeling the Italian Peninsula in greater detail and identifying some of the major cities in Europe. Friday found us back at the kitchen craft table with paints in hand - this was a MUCH anticipated project - to finally get to paint their salt dough maps from last week! Here are a few pictures of the maps being created, painting them and the final product with labels intact and ready to show off to CKB when he got home from work that night.

Here's Mr. E creating his map:

A little paint here....


And voila!


Miss E carving her "carved head" statue for her island - she remembered reading about Easter Island (last week) and the carved head statues and thought it'd be fun to create her own!

Hmm, I wonder what that blue thing is....

Ah yes, a river! (closeup of Miss E's map/labels)


Ta-da!
Rolling something up here...

Dab, dab, dab....


And here we go!




After finishing painting their salt dough maps, the children all created a mosaic for their art project of the week. Miss E decided to do a picture of Miss Baby and Miss A and Mr. E also wanted to.

Miss A titled hers "Miss Baby After Dinner, but Before Her Bath" (note the greens in the hair and on the face - ahem - that's supposed to be baby food ;) )



Mr. A, always the unique one, wanted to do a picture of himself.


In Zoology news, we continued with Lesson 1 (this text contains 15 lessons and each contains quite a bit of new information and new terms - we are covering one lesson every 2 weeks to enable us to conduct all the experiments and take a little more time with all the new information). The children learned about the forces of thrust and drag and constructed their own gliders for an experiment. Each child made 2 gliders - 1 with a short/wide wing and 1 with a long/narrow wing. They each hypothesized about which glider design would fly farther on average and then we headed out to the backyard for the experiment. Each of the 3 older children threw each glider 10 times to gather data. Each time the gliders were thrown, the other 2 would measure the distance the glider traveled and then return the glider to the person who was throwing at the time. We have our science time in the afternoons and while we started this whole experiment, ie, glider construction, while Miss Baby was napping, it was well into the early evening and we weren't quite done - let's see 2 gliders x 3 children - each throwing each glider 10 times a piece....well, you do the math - CKB picked up dinner that night :)


Mr. E is first up to ....throw...



Then Miss A...


...and Miss E

Mr. A insisted he build a glider as well, so I whipped one up for him quickly and he joined in the fun too! Miss Baby happily watched until her tummy let me know that it was way past dinnertime and we were still outside :)



I don't have the faintest idea what is all over a few of their faces here....ahem...but it was muddy out there in some spots....hmm....the gliders are all lined up on the table...



Piano lessons went well this week also. Amongst all the "book learnin' " we did have time for some fun and Mr. E had fun creating this snack for everyone (the recipe should say that it's for 5 refrigerated biscuits - we had a can of 10 and had to make another batch of butter/sugar/cinnamon for dipping).


The proud chef shows off his creation!

And, lest you think Miss Baby has disappeared lately - here she is at lunchtime, I mean, during Culinary Cuisine 101 - waving for the camera and letting you know "I'm still here!"

And, I finally got a picture of her "skrinkle face" as we affectionately cal it - with Mr. A, it was a "stinker face", but she's too cute to be a "stinker"!


All in all, another great week! On top of a good school week, we thank God for the abundant rains we've been receiving and the COOOOOOLER temps - Fall is almost here! Fall is almost here!