A short blog post? Possible.
This last week we studied famous Greeks and Greek architecture. We started with Socrates and an awesome book suitable for little kids and adults picture below. One of Joshua's favorite things about Socrates (who is his favorite famous Greek) was that Socrates was critical of the Greek gods and goddesses but he was still very spiritual. In fact, he said he always felt there was a spiritual presence near him, not telling him what to do because of course he had to figure that out for himself, but still the presence would warn him of danger and keep him from doing bad things. Joshua and I thought maybe that could have been the Holy Ghost. Who knows?
Another day we read a really long book about Aristotle. Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle who, among others, taught Alexander the Great. Aristotle studied not only philosophy, but also animals and plants. While Alexander was off conquering the world he would sometimes send specimens back to Aristotle in Athens to add to the Lyceum. It was a very, very interesting book. Although kind of long for our age group. We also read another book about famous Greeks in general. This book covered astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers, doctors, etc. It was very interesting, although again, not quite for our age group. It didn't however, cover Phidias and that was too bad.
While I read the books the kids colored pictures or worked on their mini books for their lapbooks. One tab on our "famous Greek" mini book was supposed to be about Phidias, who were knew nothing about, until we read about the Parthenon. This following book was very interesting, although slightly above our age level. Actually, it may have been fine for Joshua, but it was a little much for Abigail. Maybe she just isn't as interested. In any case, we learned all about the Parthenon and the building and history of it. It was built during the Greek Persian wars and then destroyed about 50 or so years later during the Peloppenesian war. You would think something that expensive, huge, and architecturally amazing (truly, it was) would have lasted longer. The real destruction came much later when it was being used as a weapons storehouse, I think around the 1600s or so and some gun powder (?) exploded and blew the whole thing up to what we see today. Very interesting. I recommend this book to homeschoolers learning about this topic. By the way, Phidias was the main architect in charge of building the Parthenon. He also hand sculpted the statues (Elgin Marbles) up on the pediments although the reliefs and the friezes were done by others. (And now I actually know what a frieze and a relief is!)
And we built our own Parthenon.
And the kids built... whatever these are... with the extra columns.
We also learned about columns, the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian kind. But much of what we physically did had more to do with lap books and coloring and such, so for now there isn't much else to show.
For snakes we read books and then made some snakes of our own. After reading about King Cobras, Black Mambas (my favorite), Coral Snakes, Copperheads, Burmese Pythons, and Corn Snakes, we chose which snake we liked the best and made one of those -- out of paper, staples, and googly eyes. I chose a green mamba (because I don't have any black paper) and the other kids picked corn snakes because their coloring varies so much so essentially they could pick whatever color they wanted. We learned interesting things about snakes, like the difference between a venomous snake and a constrictor and which were which, we learned about the Jacobson's organ to help them decipher all those smells with their tongues, we learned some snakes have round pupils and some have slit (cat-like) pupils, and we didn't get to deep into it, but we did talk about the heat sensing pits of some snakes. Lukas was so into the snakes that he pretending he was a snake for an entire afternoon and I had to check out more snake books at the library for him for this week as well. I found it interesting that almost EVERY SINGLE BOOK said that their particular snake featured was one of the most deadliest snakes. Honestly. There has to be a snake somewhere that is just mildly deadly, right? One of my favorite lines from the Black Mamba book was that one bite from this snake will result in death %100 of the time, unless.... Yes, I could have figured that out after you already told me it was one of the most deadly snakes in the world. And invariably, after telling us what a gruesome end we would come to if ever attacked by such a snake, the book was implore with us to save the snakes for the betterment of the world and join in preserving their habitat. I will tell you right now, if I see any snake in my yard that is NOT a garter snake I am going to have it killed.
In other news, Abigail wrote and illustrated a book. It has no title, but the story goes like this. "Once there was a happy family. They had happy days. But then the mom needed to go away. She went in a car and on a plane. She was gone for a long time. But really she was gone for 3 days. Then she came back." It's nice to know Abigail missed me (and that she is so happy in our happy family having happy days).
Joshua got the idea from one of his spelling books to try to grow a carrot plant from a carrot top. We've learned that not all carrot tops will sprout carrot plants, but we are happy with our one out of 4 carrots tops that has sprouted.
Derek bribed Joshua to read an entire book of children's scripture stories before Derek's birthday in early April. Joshua gets $5 if he does it. The catch is, the book is entirely in German and Joshua can't read it to himself but he has to read it aloud to either Derek or myself. The good news is I think Joshua is already 25% done. He chose stories from the New Testament. He is a good little reader in German and English.
And in more other news, I've decided to ditch Singapore Math next year and move right to Saxon Math. I really liked the first semester of first grade but I think the introducing the concepts of multiplication and division to a first grader is kind of early. Plus there is not enough drill. I am also switching to the Handwriting without Tears series for Joshua's handwriting - which we have stopped doing for a while just because Joshua doesn't like to write. I hope after a break (summer) of handwriting he will be ready for a new start with a new book. Thirdly, I'm working on getting a group together to go to the new aquarium up in Draper when it finally opens. To pay regular price for myself, a 6, 5, 3, and 1 year old it would cost me $75!!!! But as a homeschool group, as long as I can come up with either 15 students or just 15 people (I still need to call and work out the details) I can reduce that $75 down to $20! Yea! That would be so awesome.
This last week we studied famous Greeks and Greek architecture. We started with Socrates and an awesome book suitable for little kids and adults picture below. One of Joshua's favorite things about Socrates (who is his favorite famous Greek) was that Socrates was critical of the Greek gods and goddesses but he was still very spiritual. In fact, he said he always felt there was a spiritual presence near him, not telling him what to do because of course he had to figure that out for himself, but still the presence would warn him of danger and keep him from doing bad things. Joshua and I thought maybe that could have been the Holy Ghost. Who knows?
Another day we read a really long book about Aristotle. Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle who, among others, taught Alexander the Great. Aristotle studied not only philosophy, but also animals and plants. While Alexander was off conquering the world he would sometimes send specimens back to Aristotle in Athens to add to the Lyceum. It was a very, very interesting book. Although kind of long for our age group. We also read another book about famous Greeks in general. This book covered astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers, doctors, etc. It was very interesting, although again, not quite for our age group. It didn't however, cover Phidias and that was too bad.
While I read the books the kids colored pictures or worked on their mini books for their lapbooks. One tab on our "famous Greek" mini book was supposed to be about Phidias, who were knew nothing about, until we read about the Parthenon. This following book was very interesting, although slightly above our age level. Actually, it may have been fine for Joshua, but it was a little much for Abigail. Maybe she just isn't as interested. In any case, we learned all about the Parthenon and the building and history of it. It was built during the Greek Persian wars and then destroyed about 50 or so years later during the Peloppenesian war. You would think something that expensive, huge, and architecturally amazing (truly, it was) would have lasted longer. The real destruction came much later when it was being used as a weapons storehouse, I think around the 1600s or so and some gun powder (?) exploded and blew the whole thing up to what we see today. Very interesting. I recommend this book to homeschoolers learning about this topic. By the way, Phidias was the main architect in charge of building the Parthenon. He also hand sculpted the statues (Elgin Marbles) up on the pediments although the reliefs and the friezes were done by others. (And now I actually know what a frieze and a relief is!)
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| Awesome numbered fold out pages and a guide on the side |
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| Also, awesome photos of the actual sculptures |
And we built our own Parthenon.
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| Abigail painted on this end of the Parthenon. All I can remember is somewhere on there is a horse sitting in a chair and a person prostrating themselves behind the horse honoring Athena |
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| Joshua painting Athena and some worshippers on his pediment. |
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| In 6 easy steps you too can build your own Parthenon. |
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| Ours, however, did not look like this. |
And the kids built... whatever these are... with the extra columns.
We also learned about columns, the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian kind. But much of what we physically did had more to do with lap books and coloring and such, so for now there isn't much else to show.
For snakes we read books and then made some snakes of our own. After reading about King Cobras, Black Mambas (my favorite), Coral Snakes, Copperheads, Burmese Pythons, and Corn Snakes, we chose which snake we liked the best and made one of those -- out of paper, staples, and googly eyes. I chose a green mamba (because I don't have any black paper) and the other kids picked corn snakes because their coloring varies so much so essentially they could pick whatever color they wanted. We learned interesting things about snakes, like the difference between a venomous snake and a constrictor and which were which, we learned about the Jacobson's organ to help them decipher all those smells with their tongues, we learned some snakes have round pupils and some have slit (cat-like) pupils, and we didn't get to deep into it, but we did talk about the heat sensing pits of some snakes. Lukas was so into the snakes that he pretending he was a snake for an entire afternoon and I had to check out more snake books at the library for him for this week as well. I found it interesting that almost EVERY SINGLE BOOK said that their particular snake featured was one of the most deadliest snakes. Honestly. There has to be a snake somewhere that is just mildly deadly, right? One of my favorite lines from the Black Mamba book was that one bite from this snake will result in death %100 of the time, unless.... Yes, I could have figured that out after you already told me it was one of the most deadly snakes in the world. And invariably, after telling us what a gruesome end we would come to if ever attacked by such a snake, the book was implore with us to save the snakes for the betterment of the world and join in preserving their habitat. I will tell you right now, if I see any snake in my yard that is NOT a garter snake I am going to have it killed.
In other news, Abigail wrote and illustrated a book. It has no title, but the story goes like this. "Once there was a happy family. They had happy days. But then the mom needed to go away. She went in a car and on a plane. She was gone for a long time. But really she was gone for 3 days. Then she came back." It's nice to know Abigail missed me (and that she is so happy in our happy family having happy days).
Joshua got the idea from one of his spelling books to try to grow a carrot plant from a carrot top. We've learned that not all carrot tops will sprout carrot plants, but we are happy with our one out of 4 carrots tops that has sprouted.
Derek bribed Joshua to read an entire book of children's scripture stories before Derek's birthday in early April. Joshua gets $5 if he does it. The catch is, the book is entirely in German and Joshua can't read it to himself but he has to read it aloud to either Derek or myself. The good news is I think Joshua is already 25% done. He chose stories from the New Testament. He is a good little reader in German and English.
And in more other news, I've decided to ditch Singapore Math next year and move right to Saxon Math. I really liked the first semester of first grade but I think the introducing the concepts of multiplication and division to a first grader is kind of early. Plus there is not enough drill. I am also switching to the Handwriting without Tears series for Joshua's handwriting - which we have stopped doing for a while just because Joshua doesn't like to write. I hope after a break (summer) of handwriting he will be ready for a new start with a new book. Thirdly, I'm working on getting a group together to go to the new aquarium up in Draper when it finally opens. To pay regular price for myself, a 6, 5, 3, and 1 year old it would cost me $75!!!! But as a homeschool group, as long as I can come up with either 15 students or just 15 people (I still need to call and work out the details) I can reduce that $75 down to $20! Yea! That would be so awesome.
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