Tag Archives: history

Deborah, the Hittites, Iron, & the Middle East

books

The last two weeks we have been learning about the early Judges of Israel, the Hittites, the Hyksos, the Middle East, and Metallurgy.

 

I ended up buying the book above “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe” by Theodore Gray.

If you would like to learn about the elements it is a great book! I really like the visual given for each element!

 

We also watched “Nova: Hunting the Elements” on Netflix which I highly recommend.

It gives a great intro to what the elements are and is told in such a way that the boys enjoyed it.

Popcorn helped as well…

 

Netflix also has several “How Stuff Works” episodes on metal.

We have watched the one on steel so far and it was really interesting.

 

The book above “Metal” by Claire Llewellyn gives a really good intro to metal.

We have been using Wikipedia and the free lapbook I found for most of our information on metal so we have not needed it yet though.

actionbible

To learn about the early judges of Israel we mostly used the Action Bible.

The boys really like it and it gets the story across.

 

The “Hittite Warrior” is about the time of Deborah also though so they are learning about it some from that.

The boys have really like this book, the only problem I have with it is we are learning history using Ussher’s Timeline and the book does not use that so some of the information about what is taking place at the same time is off.

I do like them to hear both sides though so this does not bother me too much.

 

A really fun source for Deborah is the “Battle at the Kishon” by the Imagination Station!

I bought it on itunes and we really enjoyed listening to it!

 

We watched a video from “Digging up the Past” about the Pyramids of Egypt to learn more about the Hyksos.

 

Also the Smithsonian Channel has several short clips about the Hittites that we enjoyed watching.

I try to find as much as I can that would give the boys a good idea of what it would be like to live during the time we are learning about.

 

I also really like these two geography games I found for the boys to play.

The one on ducksters.com you have to name the countries in the middle east and kidsgeo.com you have to place the countries that are in that continent.

My boys actually enjoyed both a lot and I am happy to be learning about them at the same time!

Geography has never been my strong suit.

iron

I found out you can buy Iron Filings from a thrifty mom‘s blog post.

I do recommend that you place the magnet into a ziplock bag before you let your children do this.

They ended up putting the iron filings on the magnet to play with and shape.

I still have not gotten all of the iron off those magnets…

total

We did the “Eating Nails for Breakfast” experiment.

Being the amazing mom I am, I had them eat a bowl before I explained what we were doing.

My oldest looked a bit sick when I said we were going to see if there was metal in what he just ate.

cereal

He was also not really happy that I was using the last of their sugary cereal to compare to the iron in total.

ironcereal

We used hot water to dissolve the cereal.

It dissolved in less than 15mins.

iron

We also extracted the iron so we could look at it under our microscope(one of my favorite school purchases).

ironincereal

micro

It was crazy to look at it that close and think you just ate it!

ironclose

silly

He was a bit grossed out.

I might have considered this payback for giving me a hard time during some of our school subjects that day if I were not an adult.

But I am an adult so of course I did not do that…

inductive

We tested metals thermal conductivity with a spoon and a hot skillet, similar experiment here.

We just placed the spoon on the hot skillet until it started to warm up, we did the same thing with one of my plastic cooking spoons to see if it was a conductor.

 

Information on Metallurgy is hard to find for young kids so I was pretty excited to find a free lapbook about metals on freehomeschooldeals.com.

We have not assembled much of the lapbook(we had never made one before this) but I am using a lot of the information that they provide.

clear

The next experiment we did was on rust.

I took it from two different experiments actually found, here and here.

ironscience

My oldest was in charge of documenting the reactions of iron filings in, water(control), water with vinegar, and water with salt.

journal

My youngest was in charge of documenting the reactions of steel wool in, water(control), water with vinegar, and water with salt.

mymom

My parents were in town for this one.

rust

We studied the rust under our microscope again.

It was incredible!

 

We will be doing a slightly different test this week using distilled water.

Our water has too many minerals and chemicals in it and was not a very good control.

steel

I hope this helped someone looking to do something similar!

This took me a lot of time to find information on so I will be glad if I saved just one person a couple hours!

I had no clue that when you try to research “metal” you get a lot of crazy painted musicians…

I did eventually get on the right track though!

Do you have a favorite experiment with metal?

We are continuing our study for the rest of this month so I would appreciate any tips!

A Land Run

makingflagsJennifer of jenslittlethings.com invited us out to her place to re-enact an Oklahoma Land Run!

She had them make flags to stake their claim and then gave a lesson on the Land Run’s in Oklahoma.

nations

jumpinMini land run.

pictures

readyReady with their flags.

flagsThis was as close to period clothing as I could get with my last minute planning.

goThey are off!

hatThey both lost their hats.

lost

ontherun

undecidedHe could not decide where to plant his flag.

hisclaim

claim

thiefApparently they listened closely about the claim disputes part of the lesson…

claimjumpThey thought trying to steal each others claim was a great idea.

lunchWe ate lunch at my oldest’s claim.

Which was really far away from everyone else.

Oh well.

My youngest pointed out that his brothers land was hotter than his land and that we should have eaten at his place because it was cooler.

Yes, I am sure your place is a lot cooler since it is a whole 10 feet away.

stateshapedShe made Oklahoma shaped cookies!

Now I need an Oklahoma cookie cutter and cookie dough, and someone to make them for me…

visitorThere was an unexpected visitor!

So cute!

It was a great day!

I have the red neck to prove it!

Or maybe that was because I was too lazy to get the sunscreen out of my vehicle.

The Trojan War, Homer, and Archaeology.

It has been a little while since I did a post on what we are learning about right now.

Not because we have stopped learning.

I was just being lazy…

shipsAfter the great success of re-enacting the Trojan War 2yrs ago, I decided to do it again.

I forgot I read to them from the “The Aeneid for boys and girls” by Alfred J. Church so I read “The Illiad for boys and girls” instead.

It was good but very long.

My voice was tired.

troyTroy looked a lot like a medieval castle, you didn’t know that?

Strange.

parisParis the trouble maker.

battleThe boys were acting out the book as I read.

There were too many pauses between battles though and the legos were so tempting…

We did not finish it.

booksIf I had it to do again, I would probably have just read from “Tales from the Odyssey” by Mary Pope Osborne (The author of the Magic Tree House Series).

My oldest actually read both of the books by himself!

I did not realize it until yesterday.

“The Trojan Horse The Fall of Troy” is a really good book to get a picture of what is going on.

insideThe inside looks like a comic book.

moviesWe have also been watching some documentaries about the Trojan War and Troy itself.

“In Search of the Trojan War” and “The Battle for Troy”, the first is really long and broken up into several parts but follows the man who found Troy, Heinrich Schliemann.

We did not finish the whole thing yet because we were watching it in the vehicle and got to our destination before it was done.

Apparently the boys got something from it though because when they brought up Heinrich Schliemann in the second video my oldest got really excited.

I have found that my boys really like knowing about things (My oldest still gets really excited when he see’s the Mona Lisa just because he read a book about it) so if I introduce a subject with an easy introduction first they are more receptive to the informative stuff.

They feel like they know those people and want to hear more about them.

showandtellsThese are some of the books we got for Archaeology.

We only read “The Magic School Bus Shows and Tells” the other was just too dry.

There is a Magic School Bus episode by the same name also.

digforcluesThis book has been my favorite introduction to Archaeology so far.

Look what happened the first time we used it three years ago!

I had found a really interesting looking online game about Archaeology and was so excited for the boys to check it out.

It did not have a way to pin it to Pinterest so I just tried to keep the site open.

Yep, I lost it and can’t find it.

So frustrating!

Here is a list of games someone else put together that you can check out though.

If you know of a site that has an “Amy Archaeologist” can you let me know?

Thanks!