Tag Archives: homeschooling

Things they remember…

In January 2012, I wanted to read some of a children’s version of the Aenied to my boys.

Since my boys were 4 and 5yrs old and the version I had did not have pictures, I was worried about them retaining any of it.

castleMy solution was a play castle for troy and lego’s for the Trojan’s and Greek’s.

I had them act out the story while I read it.

trojanOne of the Trojan’s looking out of the city.

greeksThe Greek’s sneaking back to the city on boats.

trojanhorseAfter a failed attempt at building a trojan horse I improvised with the boys dinosaur.

When it comes to teaching my boys I have no clue what they will retain.

Some things we work really hard on and they cannot even remember it to the end of the day.

This morning my now 7 year old asked if we could get the castle out and redo the attack.

He remembered that the soldiers snuck into the city inside a horse and that one of the people’s names were Simon(Sinon).

Apparently any story I want them to remember needs to be acted out with lego’s.

Good to know.

Creation Study ~Day 3 Dry Land& Plants

materialsFor Day 3 I decided to study the earth’s core first and then plants.

We used the Big Book of Earth and Sky again for this study.

As well as “The Explosive World of Volcanoes” and “Voyage to the Volcano”.

The Magic School Bus also has an episode about volcanoes called “Blows it’s top”.

modelmagic

I had seen several people on Pinterest that made the different layers of earth using playdough or something like it.

Links here and here.

I decided to use model magic for our layers of the earth.

It was soft and easy for the boys to shape.

core hotHe burned his hand holding the core…

mantel making doneThey did a great job!

insideWe ended up only doing one layer for the core and one for the mantel.

They knew there are more layers though.

It is just hard to do them all with a limited amount of modeling dough.

If you use this and let it dry make sure that your land is pushed down into the water.

When ours dried the green started to pull up from the blue.

journeyI thought Journey to the Center of the Earth was an appropriate literature choice for our study.

We watched National Geographic’s “Down to the Earth’s Core” as well.

It has some beautiful graphics but is FULL of evolution.

Since we are studying Creation Science right now also it was not a big deal for us but might be confusing for a child that has not covered that yet.

I would also recommend “How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World” by Faith McNulty.

It is a lot of fun and really interesting way of learning about the different layers!

volcano explode eruptWe always “have” to make a baking soda eruption.

I like easy and familiar projects.

Here is an older post with a list of what you need to do this experiment.

history plants storm

Next up was plants.

I ended up going on vacation at the end of our Core study so we did not study plants for two weeks.

There is a good Magic School Bus episode about plants as well called “Gets Planted”.

experiments plants2If you put a stalk of celery in a cup of dye it will dye the veins and leaves.

I recommend a dark dye.

We tried lighter colors and could not tell.

Black seemed to work best.

We also put a bag on one of my plants so the boys could see the water coming off the plant.

list hunt seedsWe also did a simple scavenger hunt for the different parts of the plant.

We are mostly focusing on what was created each day and the verses that go with them.

Studying these subjects are hopefully helping it stick in there head a little better then just saying plants were created on Day 3.

I never knew how important the days of creation were until we started this study.

It is important to know that the sun was created right after plants.

Plants only had one day without the sun.

If these were not literal days but millions of years for each “day” then how did the plants survive?

I am teaching my kids apologetics with the days of creation!

I think no child is too young to learn Creation Science.

They hear about evolution from birth so they should hear the bible side from birth also!

Day 1 Light, Day & Night

Day 2 Atmosphere

The new table he built me!

schoolroomThis little table was just not cutting it anymore.

The boys could not both do workbooks on it at the same time without getting into fights about the other one messing them up by hitting their work.

Plus their math takes a lot of room and things kept falling to the floor.

So my awesome husband built me a new one this weekend!

panelsHe had me pick out the top I wanted at Lowes.

I chose two pine panels.

joinerThen he joined the panels together.

pocketjig legsHe used lumber he already had for the legs.

sealThen I put a couple coats of a water based sealer on it.

He attached the top when I was done sealing it.

schoolroomBefore

afterAfter!

after2It’s so nice!

tabletopI love the clean and simple look.

holderWe can actually fit the caddy he made me years ago on it!

I cannot wait to start school today and try it out!

Handy husbands are awesome!