The Greek Olympics and Bones

Let's start with bones. We read some books. This was an especially good one.

Then we made a skeleton using brads. The kids had fun with this. I made one for Lukas and Kaleb. We also labeled some of the major bones on our skeletons.

And Wednesday I cooked a whole chicken (that had been in our freezer maybe 2 or 3 years) in the crockpot and I salvaged the most interesting bones for inspecting (And the meat too, of course). I washed and dried the bones (in the oven at 150 degrees for I forgot how long) and put them in pairs as well as I could. We read two more bone books, located some bones in our own bodies and then played with the chicken bones. We had learned about the many layers of bones so we broke one open to see the bone marrow where red blood cells are made. We also talked about calcium and healthy bones versus unhealthy bones and osteoporosis. We submerged a few chicken bones in vinegar because I had read this would suck out the calcium and make the books rubbery by the next day (we're still waiting on the rubbery part, but the bones are definitely softer and rubberier. And one of my favorite things about bones is that they are alive and they heal themselves, so after we broke a little bone I showed how a doctor would put the bone back into place, but the bone would actually regrow and heal itself. I think that is fascinating.

bone marrow

bone in vinegar being decalcified

We also tested our (Joshua's) knowledge of the names of those bigger bones with a fun little worksheet I printed off from online.

And some of the kids celebrated bones by wearing their skeleton pajamas.

OK, Greek Olympics! We read multiple books about the Olympics, none of which I have to show you. One was from the series "You wouldn't want to be a..." and this time it was "a Greek Athlete." Another book we read that was very interesting and information was simply called something like the Ancient Greek Olympics. It went through each day of the 5 day Olympics and went into detail about Olympic origins, which was fascinating to me.  I made the kids Greek tunics to wear and then we headed up for our long overdue field trip. We went up to Midway, showed off our Ancient Greek Lapbooks, which I'll have to show in a later blogpost since I haven't taken any of the photos yet.  Up in Midway my inlaws had recorded the first day of the Sochi Olympics and the kids dressed in their tunics and watched the Olympics for the first time ever in their lives. They were all so interested and just sat their with their eyes glued to the TV. We watched mens and womens slopestyle snowboarding, mens short program figure skating, pairs figure skating, and womens moguls downhill skiing. It was really interesting. The kids loved to watch the snowboarders do those huge jumps into the air and flip around like gymnasts, and Joshua about had a heart attack when he first saw the men figure skaters throw their female partners up in their air. It was exciting to see them so excited. And then we had an ancient Greek lunch - it was almost authentic - Greek yoghurt with honey since the Greeks didn't have sugar, pita crackers (see, almost authentic), feta cheese, kalamata olives, dried figs, and sardines (to represent fish, although these were cheap sardines and next time I'm going to go for the good stuff.) I had brought grape juice as well but it was too dangerous to drink grape juice upstairs so we just skipped that part.

Eros (that's the Greek name for Cupid). I tried to get his hair to curl and get him to pose real cute with a bow and arrow with a heart stuck to the arrow but he was less excited about this than I was.

Joshua was more than happy to shoot me with the arrow of love.

Also, in Joshua's math unit for this week the book wanted us to talk about fractions - but only 1/2 and 1/4. There were about two days worth of instruction and practice, so another day we made our own pizzas. Joshua had to decide how much of each topping he would put on the pizza, either one half, one fourth, or one eighth, etc. We also talked about fractions every single day at lunch time - Joshua has one sandwich, Lukas has one half, and Abigail has three quarters, who has more, etc. So by the time we actually got to the pizza activity, this 1/2 and 1/4 business was cake. Still, it was a fun activity and Joshua and I got to do it all by ourselves since Kaleb was sleeping and the other kids were at music class learning to appreciate the classics!

half sauce, half cheese, half olives, and half red peppers - so far at least.

I made Joshua write down which topping and how much he used. It is surprising that his handwriting can be so nice and legible when he cares and so horrible and sloppy when he doesn't.

Since it is a new month we needed to redecorate our learning room window. We did hearts of course, although I haven't gotten a photo of the window yet and it's pouring rain outside so just use your imaginations.

Here is Abigail being silly.

Here is Kaleb after having thrown macaroni noodles all over the floor and in his hair.

Here is all of Lukas's beautiful blonde wavy hair that I had to cut off - because Derek said so. It really was too long and it was getting kind of crazy, although if you styled it just right it was curly and he looked like cupid.

And here is Santa and his sleigh that Joshua made - this took a long time to make and Joshua is very proud of it.