Week 1 - Day 4

What a wonderful week this has been!  We've still got one more day of school this week, but it looks like tomorrow will be a light day.  Which works out great, as by Friday we're usually ready for a break.  :-)

I'm hoping I'll be able to post some pictures this weekend of our first week of school.  We didn't take any pictures the first couple days as my oldest was sick and feeling pretty miserable, but starting Wednesday we started taking pictures.

Here's a bit of a recap of our week.  Monday we started the week with prayer, saying the pledges, and taking communion.  I think I already wrote about the rest of Monday.  The highlight for the girls was filling out their passport applications.

Tuesday we learned about Ecosystems, and read about what the first ecosystem in the Garden of Eden might have been like.  We did all the basic things... spelling, handwriting, math, LA, geography and science.  For art the girls each made a John 3:16 poster.  They cut out pictures of people from around the world and pasted them onto their colored paper, then wrote the Bible verse to go along with it and pasted that on their papers, as well.  They put those posters in their geography notebooks.

Wednesday during Bible we read a book called God Speaks Numanggang, about a family who moved to Papua New Guinea 30-40 years ago to start working on a Bible translation.  That was an interesting book.  The girls' favorite activity was a nature walk we took in the park.  Each of the girls took a clipboard, blank paper, colored pencils and a magnifying glass.  We walked one of the trails at the park and they each chose something to draw.  My oldest drew a waterfall, my youngest drew a rock.  Yeah, that pretty much sums them up.  :-)   We'll try to plan a nature walk every week.

Today in science we learned about niches.  The girls really enjoyed today's activity!  We filled a large pickle jar (empty and cleaned, of course) with layers of moist soil, sand, soil, sand, and a thin layer of oats on top.  We were going to try to dig up some worms in the back, but the ground is too dry so we weren't able to find any today.  Instead we drove to the local sporting goods store and bought a dozen night crawlers.  We brought  them home and had fun dropping them into our jar.  My youngest wouldn't touch the worms, of course.  My oldest thoroughly enjoyed playing with the worms.  :-)  They each drew the jar and wrote their observations, then we covered it in dark paper and put it in my closet (a cool dark place).  Each day we'll take out the jar and see how they've mixed the layers as they tunnel down into the soil.  We'll do this for 10 days to two weeks, and when we're finished we'll set the worms free in the garden, if any survive that long.  :-)

Tomorrow looks to be a light day with just the basics.  Hopefully I'll get some pictures posted sometime this week, and next week I'll have more fun school activities to report.  :-)  We're really enjoying this new curriculum!