In today’s Mystery of History lesson, we studied – you guessed it – Joseph! And to celebrate this VERY familiar Bible story, we baked a CAKE of many colors. 
Each kiddo mixed some food coloring into 1/4 of the cake batter, and we baked separate layers.
Isn’t that cool?!
Picture courtesy of Gracie-Pie-Poo
Even though I’ve seen it done before, I’m still amazed by the ability of a kindergartner to write beautifully in cursive.
It’s Caleb’s turn to learn to read. So far he has most of his single-letter phonograms under control. (I.e. He knows all the sounds the letters make, and he can recognize them in book type and cursive.) And this week, he started learning to write in cursive! It’s so exciting! (He even got the red plate for it on Monday night.)
I was nervous about teaching a lefty to write, but unnecessarily so.
Here’s a peek at the first of his written a’s and c’s…
And today he learned d’s and g’s. Here he is practicing in his saltbox (a tactile learning tool)…
It’s days like these that I am so thankful to be a part of this homeschooling adventure!
Picture taken by moi, out of the book "Usborne Book of World History"
Anyway…
We studied the Sumerians this week, and part of their culture (besides flushable potties) was the ziggurat. If you’re not familiar with these, they are basically flattened pyramids, used for idol worship (unlike pyramids, which were used as burial chambers for Egyptian pharaohs).
As reinforcement, the kiddos made models of ziggurats out of Legos.
Here is Grace’s rendition:
And Caleb’s:
Ava and Jaden wanted to get in on the Lego action, too…
Now, who can tell me the name of an important Biblical figure who lived in Mesopotamia? (Maybe all of you products-of-Christian-schools will know this one, but it was new to me! I’m loving all the Biblical insights I’m learning!)
A highlight of this week (besides learning about dinosaurs, which was a HUGE hit) was learning about the Ice Age. I never knew it was possibly a real occurrence in history. I always thought it was something the secular scientists made up. But this author claims that the conditions caused by Noah’s flood could have been the perfect precursor for an Ice Age. And I guess there are signs of it around the world.
So, in honor of the day, we left the windows open at night to get the house pretty chilly, then shut them and turned the thermostat down to 60 degrees in the morning. We all donned our winter apparel (see above). And some of us kept some or most of it on during the entire school day! See?
We also played a game (suggested in the text book) called “Belly Full of Ice,” in which the kiddos complained the whole time. Basically, they all got two ice cubes on their bare bellies, and whoever could stand it the longest was the winner. Gracie won.
After all of their schoolwork was completed for the day, I let the big kids watch the movie Ice Age. I had actually rented the sequel, but then checked the trusted Plugged In Online, and realized that the second one doesn’t just have “naughty” words (like st*pid, id*ot, etc), but it has actual CUSS words! What?! In an animated “kids’” movie?! So, we stuck with the one they’ve seen before.
Our new history curriculum is turning out to be a family favorite! The Mystery of History (MOH) is written by a homeschool mom in a storylike tone. Two things I love about it so far…There are fun reinforcement activities listed for younger, middle, and older students. That makes this curriculum very versatile. And it’s your “typical” world history interlaced with Biblical history, which makes the Bible come alive! (For example, did you know that Jesus lived just after Cleopatra? I didn’t! That is SO interesting to me! I never put those two together.) I’m hoping this curriculum will help our kiddos to grow up with a better “big picture” view of history, instead of a disjointed “secular vs. Christian” view.
Anywho…
We’re having a lot of fun with the reinforcement activities so far, so I thought I’d share some of our adventures this year.
The second lesson of the year was about Adam and Eve – their creation, their life in the garden, their work there, and their choice to sin. When we were done reading the text, we got out the PlayDoh. Each child “created” a creature that they’d never seen before, and then they had to name it an original name (just like Adam named the animals in the Garden of Eden).
Gracie with her creature, a “renaiscu”…
Caleb’s “bone-headed guy”…
Jaden and Ava also made some creatures, but apparently I only took videos of them, and I’m currently too lazy to upload them. You can imagine – Ava made a “guy” and Jaden made a “wom.”
As an aside, part of the reason the kids were SO excited about this activity is that they know mommy is not a fan of PlayDoh. (So much potential for messiness!) So we broke out the cookie sheets and kept a little more of the mess contained. Fun was had by all.
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