Week 7 of school - complete!

Last week we managed to pull Tapestry back into the mix and even did our projects (however, they did take time over the weekend to finish them up!).

We had a pretty good week. I went back to the dr. and after a round of antibiotics feel like I'm on the mend finally - cough is still present, but is a lot better. Fever is finally gone - Praise God! I don't have a ton of energy, but am prayerful that it will return soon.

All of the children are well and I am very thankful for that.

We studied Vikings this past week and dispensed with our Zoology for the week. (no energy for both on my part). The children really enjoyed learning about the Vikings and building their Viking longhouses.

Here are quite a few pictures - you have to see them from every angle! I'll try to share a bit about each one so you'll understand their creations. I helped with the construction of the actual house, but all decorations were done by the children (hence it taking over the weekend to complete - they would still be tweaking and adding things if I'd let them, but at some point you have to say "enough!" and reclaim your table!).

Here's Miss E with her Viking longhouse:


Just starting out....


To the left is Miss Baby sitting outside on a chair...The figure "standing" is supposed to be me...we all appear to be a little jaundiced (limitations of the clay colors we had on hand!) - behind me in the house you can see the bed and small cradle for Miss Baby.


A view of the whole house and surrounding yard....


This is the...ahem...outhouse...and that's Miss E's clay figure of herself inside...why is the door open Miss E? She thought this was hysterically funny.....uh huh.


Note the thatch roof...


We used corn meal for the "sand" area where the livestock are kept - here you can see the "weiner horse" as Miss E described it to me....


Ta-da!



Here's Miss A with her Viking longhouse:

Starting off....

"outhouse" to the front right, with a lid :)

View from the side....thatch on roof...

Miss A was limited to red clay...therefore her Vikings look like they've been getting quite a bit of sun....Bed shown on left, fire immediately beside it....baby at right in cradle.



Front/side view. "Sandy" area at front left for livestock. "Shed" at front left is for the chickens.


2 red hens.....


The whole sha-bang...


Miss A with her creation...



Here's Mr. E with his Viking longhouse:

Getting started...

All done - what a plush bed Mr. A has for his Viking (his Viking was a Mario figure, but unfortunately it was left in the car on the day of picture-taking)

Thatch roof - note the hearts in the "sand/dirt" - apparently these Vikings have a lot of time on their hands and like to draw designs in the dirt of their yard (Mr. E found some small cookie cutters in the play-doh box and got creative!)


Front view - you can see the fireplace area to the back/right and the large match lying on the ground in front of it.




Mr. E - Viking longhouse creator extraordinaire...




Mr. A was not allowed to create one of his own despite his pleas - I just didn't have the time, energy, space, patience, etc. for him to participate in this project - he wasn't too upset thankfully and went off to play after watching the other children for a few minutes. He really just wanted to play with the clay and play-doh. :)

In hindsight, we did do a little bit of Zoology somewhere along the way - we mixed up a batch of "smart suet" from the recipe in our Zoology book and hung out our suet feeders. So far, we have not seen any visitors to them. Here you can see Mr. E's - he chose to put his next to the other feeders, while the girls put theirs on our lone tree (not pictured).


step 1 - melting the lard and crunchy peanut butter


final step (sorry, didn't get pics in between - the children were adding ingredients so quickly!) freeze suet in plastic bags to firm it up before placing in feeder bags (anyone need any suet? considering the fact that we're not getting any visitors to our feeders, we have enough suet for.....ever?)


Mr. E's suet feeder (interesting note - the birds would NOT go to the regular feeder as long as the suet feeder was hanging there - I took it down one day and moved it to the other soda pop feeder and then the birds started going to the one on the left again, but wouldn't go to the one on the right! I removed it completely and the birds started visiting both of the soda pop feeders again - very interesting!) Here you can see a few of our "bird friends" as Mr. A calls them!