Lasts Weeks weekly wrap-up

We started off our week with a visit to story time at our local library.

On the way to the library we listened to our history lesson on the rise of the Greeks after the dark ages read to us by Jim Wiess.

The theme was hot chocolate.  So the kids read books and sang songs related to the theme.  One of the books was on how chocolate is made and now Matthew wants us to grow our own cacao beans and make our own chocolate!  If only!

Afterwards the kids made a hot chocolate craft while drinking hot chocolate!

While the younger two enjoyed story time Kaitlyn finished reading her book on the Trojan war

and then spent time perusing and selecting books to read the rest of the week.

After story time was over Matthew asked the librarian for a book that would show him how to make primitive weapons a topic he had recently became interested in.  She couldn't find a book with exactly that kind of information but she did find one that he said he would use to get ideas from.

After we returned home Matthew bundled(despite being only 25 degrees outside) and took his library book outside.

Please don't tell he librarian he was holding the book open with spikey balls!

He then went to work trying to make the tools and weapons he found in the book.

Matthew attempting to sharpen a stick using a rock.  He started out using his ax but he told me he realized he wouldn't have even had an ax so he switched to a rock.

Matthew spent a lot of time this week reading from that book.  I have a feeling this subject will keep him interested for a long time.  Later in the week Matthew watched the documentary :

He watched this with Jon and I cannot believe how incredibly fascinated Matthew was with it! Now in addition to making our own chocolate he wants us to forge our own swords!  Maybe it is time to find a field trip to watch a blacksmith in action!

At church Sunday Kaitlyn's class made home made playdough during the lesson and her teachers kindly sent her home with the recipe.  So on Tuesday during the kids free time Kaitlyn helped them all make their very own play-dough while I made lunch.

Isn't she such a great big sister!

We also learned about the Greek alphabet and wrote our names with it.  Many letters were exactly the same and some didn't even exist!

 

We also started making paper mache vases that eventually will be painted to look like Greek vases.

We blew up a balloon and taped it on top of a jar lid to create the shape.  No action shots here-paper mache with a 3yr old is not for the faint of heart.

Whenever I think of the highlights of the Ancient Greek culture I think of Homer's The Illiad and the Odyssey.  I found a great illustrated version of the Odyessey written in a simpler format for the kids that is 178 pages long and we started reading a chapter every afternoon.  The kids loved  how Odysseus tricked the Cyclops and were laughing out-loud as I read the chapter.  Kaitlyn thinks Odysseus is an idiot because he keeps stopping on every island that he comes across!

.    The illustrations are  a little odd to me and the kids but my husband thinks that the pictures look cool.  To each his own. We borrowd the book from the library but you could purchase the book here.

To finish off our Greek history for the week we also started reading D,Aulaire's book of Greek Myths and creating cards to represents the different God's and other characters we meet while reading the book

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 Eventually we will use these cards to create a family tree of sorts for all the Greek mythological creatures.

Mother Earth and Uranus with their children: Titanesses, Titans, Cyclops, and a 50 headed monster

Of course we also completed our usual math, phonics, reading, and grammar.

Samantha did a lot of fun stuff with some new learning tools she got for Christmas which I will blog about later.

We also studied anatomy which you can read about here and we studied Hannah which you can read about here.