Weekly wrap up! Its all Greek to me!

Its been another fun filled week at the Wooff house!

The week started off with another trip to story time at the library.

This week theme was hats and so Matthew and Samantha made hats for their craft.

While the younger two were busy with story time Kaitlyn read a few articles from National Geographic kids magazine and then picked out her books for the week.

I try to give Kaitlyn as much free rein as possible when it comes to the books she reads.  I may assign a history or literature book that I want but then I try to let her pick books that interest her.

I normally give her different categories and then ask her to pick a book from each category to read that week.  The categories I use are a science, a how-to book, a chapter book, a picture book, and a poetry book.

Lately Kaitlyn has been having difficulty picking out chapter books that she likes.  She is extremely picky!  This week she tried starting the Animorphs series but she hated it.

She likes picking out how-to books and she picked out a magic book and a craft book.  

Craft she made from her craft book.  It is supposed to be a teacher appreciation gift so she gave it to me since I am her teacher.

Genrally Kaitlyn really enjoys picking our her science books.  She has been on a bit of a shark kick recently and her favorite shark is the Hammerhead shark.  This week she read:

   

Eaten by a Shark was her favorite as it contained actual stories about people who were attacked by sharks!  After she read all her books she made a puppet Hammerhead and then wrote a script full of information she learned.  She presented the information to our family but refused to let me video tape it because she did not want it to appear on my blog.  She did however allow me to take a few pictures.

We also finished painting our Greek vases.  Before we painted the vases we spent some time reading about Greek Art in this book by Susie Hodge that we checked out from the library:

The kids used the book to get ideas for their pictures and color schemes.  Kaitlyn also wrote her name using traditional Greek letters.

Samantha's

Kaitlyn's Giraffe

Matthew's--he copied his from the art book 2 blacksmiths working over a fire

How do we fit it all in?  Sometimes we multitask.  While we painted our vases I played our Seeds of Worship cd.  It wasn't long before the kids were singing along.  Its moments like these that I feel so blessed to be home with my children.

In SOTW we read about the Spartans and the Athenians.  Kaitlyn did some additional reading in  The Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece.

After we finished our reading we found the cities of Sparta and Athens on a map, colored a picture of a Spartan, and then created a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the two very different cities.

After our Venn Diagram was complete each kid wrote a paragraph choosing which city they would rather live in: Sparta or Athens.

Surprise, surprise Matthew choose Sparta!  A life full of fighting, exercising, and no reading or writing sounds like a dream come true to him!

Kaitlyn choose Athens.  For her concluding sentence in her paragraph she wrote: I would like to be an Athenian because they remind me of Americans-except without cars and computers.

What a perfect comparison.

I discovered a great cartoon series on youtube.com  It is called Mythic Warriors.  Apparently at one time it was a Saturday morning cartoon.  I think it is a fun way to be exposed to more of the Greek Myths!  This week we watched two videos:
Andromeda the Warrior Princess

and Perseus and the search for Medusa's head.

In the past 7 days we have also had 2 field trips.

Our first field trip was to the city museum in St. Louis.  We were super excited that dad had the day off of work and could join us with about 50+ of our home-school friends.

We had a blast!  The kids said that it was more fun than Disney World!  I was super sore and banged up afterwards but it was worth every minute!

Our homeschool co-op also rented out a local indoor pool for a back-to-coop party!  I don't know about you but getting to swim in the middle of winter is a great treat around here!

Of course we had to include Quack the Duck in our week!

Quack the Duck is what the kids named our anatomy model

This week we covered the small and large intestine.  Here are some interesting facts that I learned while reading the booklet that came with the model:

1. The small intestine is longer than the large intestine but the large intestine is thicker.
2. A person passes gas at least 14 times a day.

The booklet also came with a super gross activity to try. It suggested to eat corn and then watch for it to come out in your poop.  However many hours it takes for it to show up is how long it takes for it to show up in your poop is how long it takes for food to pass through your digestive system.

I did not tell the kids that we had to do the experiment.  I couldn't resist, however, serving corn with our lunch.

Kaitlyn refused to eat the corn saying that I had ruined corn for life!  Matthew and Samantha ate their corn happily!

While we have super enjoyed our break from co-op I am happy to announce that next Thursday classes resume!  I can't wait for the kids to begin learning and having fun with their friends!  So be on the look out for a co-op post next week!

I See Invisible People

Do you ever try to teach someone something and end up learning yourself?  Do you ever find yourself completely transformed when you thought you were just completing a task?

It happened to me this week.


This week was a short week for us because we had a holiday on Monday and a field trip on Friday.
I had selected 2 books for us to read this week that I thought were completely unrelated to each other.  One was Happy Birthday Martin Luther King and the other was the Invisible Boy.

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King was a book we already owned and I wanted to read it because Monday was the celebration on Dr. Martin's birthday.  




I  also had decided that I wanted to start reading more picture books that dealt with character issues and so I picked The Invisible Boy off of a book list I found on Pinterest.

We borrowed it from the Library but you can buy it here.

It is a story about a boy who feels invisible because he is quiet and so he has no friends.  The boy spends a lot of time with himself until one day a new boy moves to town and they become friends.  It lead to a great discussion:

  1)Have you ever felt invisible and
  2)How can we notice the invisible people?

Its so funny because both books brought about great discussions in our home this week but it wasn't until I sat down to type up the weekly wrap-up this evening did I realize all the lessons that I had learned from these books.

What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did was to fight for a group of people who being treated as invisible.  They and the problems they were facing were pushed to the side and ignored.  Because although many people believed that a social injustice was taking place it was much easier to pretend that the whole thing was invisible.

Because sometimes it is easier to pretend a person is invisible than to take the time to get to know them.

Because sometimes noticing someone-I mean really, truly noticing someone and becoming involved in their life is messy,difficult, and time consuming.

 Because if we start noticing the invisible people around us, the outcasts, those different from us-whether its because of their skin color, gender, how much money they have, what kinds of clothes they wear,where they live, who they married, etc and we start becoming involved in their lives.  We will start eliminating every type of prejudice because we will realize in our hearts we are all pretty much the same.

When we stop looking to fulfill only our own needs but start looking to the needs of others around us and  when we stop ignoring problems in the world and pretending the problems are invisible but deciding to be the change-that is when real change happens.

I want to be the person who sees invisible people.  I want my children to see the invisible people.

Jesus was the ultimate invisible people seer.  He saw the fisherman, the tax collectors, the shepherds, the deaf, the sick, the lame, and even the dead.

He saw the man who was hidden up high in a tree.  Jesus didn't just glance at Zacchaeus and then look away, he didn't wave and smile and then go on his merry way.  He ate dinner with him. He saw him. He saved him.

  9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.


Do you see the invisible people?

I am challenging my kids to look for invisible people in every room they walk into this week.

I am challenging myself to do the same.

I don't want to just read about others who are seeing the invisible people and making a difference in their lives-I want to be the person.

It's funny because I thought that tonight I was just sitting down to write a quick blog post.  A simple weekly wrap up.  But instead I found myself being completely humbled by the topics I was typing about.  I found myself driven to my knees asking God to help me see the invisible people all around me.  Asking God to show me what I can do to let them know they are not invisible to him.

I want to see invisible people.


Will you accept the challenge too?  Will you look for the invisible people in your life?  Will you show them the love of Jesus Christ?


 

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.