Rome and Leaves

I still have little to show for our Rome studies, but we've been working on a lot of lap book mini books. On Monday we talked about famous Romans, like Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Octavian, Nero, etc. And we made these cute little laurel leaf crowns.

Joshua said, "And you too, Brutus?" while I took the photo. And I'm not even joking. He actually said that.

On Wednesday we learned about gladiators and the Colluseum. The children worked on their mini books while I read this entire book to them. I really love this series. We also read the book about the pyramids and Tikal, the ancient Mayan city. So for future reference and for any other homeschoolers or interested parties, this is a series worth looking into.

And on Friday we learned about the gods and goddesses of Ancient Rome, which although they are pretty much the Greek gods and goddesses, there are some interesting stories that are specific to Rome. Like the Anead. Really cool. And Romulus and Remus of course. And some other really interesting stories. This author and illustrator also produced a similar book as the following about the Greek myths so I knew we would enjoy the Roman counterpart. I read the entire book to the children in one sitting, about 100 pages, while the kids sat totally engrossed in the stories, only now and then looking at the mini books they were supposed to finish.

Also, for Joshua's copywork this week, he copied this:

Other than that, and some other interesting general history books we read, that's all I got for Rome this week.

For science we learned about leaves and what they do. On the first day we collected leaves and talked about all the different parts of a leaf. We drew our leaves and took particular notice of how they were all different shapes, sizes, even colors.  We read a really interesting book about leaves. I really like this series also. The explain complex things in a way for children that is easy to understand. Like this little description of photosynthesis. The leaf makes sugar by taking the carbon dioxide from the air  and the water from the roots and turning them into sugars by using the energy from the sun. The waste product left over is oxygen and the leaf lets that go out into the air.

On day two of leaves we talked more about the cholorophyll and why leaves are green but then change color. The concept is, for green leaves at least, is that the green pigment chlorophyll, which captures the sunlight, is so prevelant that it covers up the other yellow and orange shades in the leaf. If you took out the green, you would be able to see the other colors. Kind of like if you have a small plate and you put a little yellow dab of paint on it, and then a little dab of orange. Now take a huge plop of green paint and mix it all around. The color you end up with is green, even though the yellow and orange are there. With leaves, you can take the green out, and that is what happens in the fall. All the chlorophyll dies, in a sense, because the tree is shutting down for the winter and doesn't need to capture all the sun energy anymore. So the green pigment dies off, and now you can finally see the yellow and orange pigments (like carotenes. I can't remember the name of the other one. I think it starts with an x). Red pigment, however, is different. The red pigment from leaves isn't already present in the leaf. The red pigment has to be activated by the sun, so after the chlorophyll fades away, the sun can then activate the red and that is when the red color shows up. An experiment was done to show this concept. Someone put a piece of sun blocking tape on a leaf. When the chlorophyll left, the entire leaf turned yellow, but after time the leaf exposed to the sun turned red, while that strip of leaf under the tape just stayed yellow.

Anyway, science lesson over, we extracted our own chlorophyll from some leaves. First we chopped up our leaves into tiny pieces so the chlorophyll trapped inside would be able to leak out. Then we poured rubbing alcohol over the leaf mush and set the little jars in a tray of hot water. After 40 minutes or so we could see that the alcohol had turned green - the chlorophyll was seeping out of the leaf and into the alcohol. Then we used coffee filter paper to soak up the chlorophyll and other pigments present in the leaves to see what other colors were hiding under all that green. We mostly found a lot of green. But there were slightly different shades of green, and some obvious yellow. This makes a lot of sense because the tree from which we took the leaves only turns yellow for a short time before all the leaves eventually turn brown and die in the winter. It's not the most beautiful tree as far as fall colors go. Anyway, here are our results.

If this photo were better you would be able to see some obvious yellow strands in there too.

In other homeschool news and activity, last week Joshua wrote a story about 6 cats. It was part of his grammar assignment. Then we painted a picture to go with it. Don't be fooled that there are only 2 cats in the painting. There were indeed originally six.

I wanted to document how big my little bean seed grew! You know, the one in the bag so we could watch all the stages? The vine finally snapped, I think under the weight of the leaves, so I took it down and threw it out, but not before I took these photos.

Joshua is doing excellent with his reading. His new favorite books are from this mystery series. Here is a taste of what he's reading.

And finally, if you've ever wondered what my secret to homeschool success is, now you have the answer. (well, just the success from the past week and a half.)

CHOCOLATE CHIPS!

And Derek and I bought each other a freezer for Mother's and Father's Day! Yea! Except it's almost about halfway filled up with walnuts and we still have 5 or 4 more boxes of walnuts to shell!

And next week we finish Rome and dissect flowers!

Preschool Quacks and Quilts

I know the week technically isn't over yet, but I've already posted about our Celtic guest teacher and for history, although we have started Ancient Rome, I haven't got much to show for it. We're working on another lapbook and I'll probably through in a few projects here and there but knowing I was teaching my last week of preschool (YEA!!) I didn't plan anything stressful for regular school. Instead of doing any science this week (our Tuesday and Thursday afternoons) we filled that with our guest teacher and then the regular morning stuff (math, writing, spelling, and grammar) that we weren't able to do in the morning because of the preschool.  I did, however, have Joshua use this poem for his copywork this week, which slightly fits in with our science theme of botany. Sort of as a funny note, I usually go straight to the internet when looking for ideas for poetry and such but lately I haven't been having any luck. Then I realized back in the old days when I was young we used to look in actual BOOKS for poetry. So I pulled out my old Childcraft How and Why book and found a couple of gems.  This poem comes from one of those books.

Trees

Trees are the kindest things I know,

They do no harm, they simply gorw

And spread a shade for sleepy ocws,

And gather birds among their boughs.

They give us fruit in leaves above,

And wood to make our houses of,

And leaves to burn on Halloween,

And in the Spring new buds of green.

They are first when day's begun 

To touch the beams of morning sun,

They are the last to hold the light

When evening changes into night,

And when a moon floats on teh sky

They hum a drwosy lullaby

Of sleepy children long ago . . .

Trees are the kindest things I know.

Harry Behn

Alright, so back to preschool. 

The theme for the week was "Quack!" the nursery rhyme, although technically this isn't one, was 5 Little Ducks, the number was 6 and the sound was "qu." Or if you would rather see that in photo form, here...

Alright, on Tuesday two of the kids were sick, which made me sad but I think in the end it was probably a good thing since we were working with acrylic paint and permanent markers! First we reviewed the sound and the nursery rhyme. All the kids got to hold a plastic bath time ducky as we reenacted the little ducks running away and then all coming back at the end. One child brought a little duck that quacked when you pushed his belly so instead of singing "quack, quack, quack" we just pushed the little ducky and let it do it for us.  Then we read a few books about ducks. The first was Little Quack and this was the favorite, and then Giggle, Giggle, Quack, which is one of my favorites, and then Duck for President which was above the kids' heads. You know, duck was riding in parades, kissing babies, playing the saxophone on late night TV and giving speeches that only other ducks could understand. Unfortunately, I understood it all too well.

Then we went up to our forbidden items - the acrylic paint and permanent markers - and made our five little duckies with their mammas.

Snack was, of course, cheese and quackers. Big success.

And then we played "hide little quack" and we took our smallest plastic ducky and each child got to hide it in the play room and then the other kids had to find him. But the key was they had to do it QUietly because the baby was sleeping, literally. The kids were having so much fun that they didn't have anytime to "play" before their moms came to get them, which disappointed more than a few.

Thursday, today, we revisited duckies and quack. We worked on a Q q worksheet which I was surprised to find the kids had a hard time with. Abigail and another boy who is already reading could write it just fine. But the other little kids really struggled. I'm not sure if it is because Q is such an infrequently used letter or what, but even the other kids who could read already commented on how hard it was.

Then finally I handed them a paper with a mama and 5 baby ducks and they got to color them as crazy as they wanted, with disguises, costumes, whatnot. These were their inspirations.

This is what the children drew.

Then we switched gears to quilts. I had two quilts to show them. One that I had made (well, my mom mostly made it) out of all my old jeans from when I was in high school, which is just squares, although technically I arranged them into sort of a pattern. And then the other is one my grandmother quilted. I have two of them as a set to but on double twin beds someday - after the children are gone so they don't ruin them!

We read a really cute book about a pioneer girl collecting scraps of fabric along her way west to Oregon and then making a quilt. We talked about how quilts can tell stories of people's lives and adventures. And I sat in front of my big US map so I could point out which state the girl was walking through as we read about it in the book and we could follow her journey.

For snack we had cheese and quackers again but with different crackers and this time it was a huge failure. One kid just dumped his in the trash (not malignantly, he honestly didn't see anything wrong with just throwing perfectly good food in the trash) and another kid shouted out how gross the crackers smelled so I picked up his snack and said, that's fine, you don't have to eat it. Go wash your hands and you can play downstairs until the rest of us are ready. No snack for you! But he, I think, was relieved. Then while he was downstairs the other kids and I reviewed how you don't have to like the food or even eat it, but you still need to be polite. I know, now none of you want me to be your kids' preschool teacher for fear of them not being fed. Don't worry, I was very polite the entire time. Although kind of ticked off.

Then we made our own quilts out of squares of scrapbook paper. The kids really loved this and spent a lot of time on their quilts. One little boy even made two! One for him and one for his older brother because his older brother "really likes awesome stuff."  Bravo.

And then we were done.

And my favorite part of it all this time, was cleaning up my playroom downstairs. It was so nice to put the toys away, through away the scraps of paper, bring back our distracting toys I have to hide for preschool, and put the furniture back together. My room was my own again. *sigh* I really liked that part. And especially knowing it was my own again for at least another year and half, until Lukas is ready for preschool. I've liked this experience for Abby and I know she has enjoyed it as well. It hasn't been bad for me, and I've enjoyed it too, some parts more than others, but I am happy that I am done teaching for a while. Abby still has 3 weeks before graduation though. That should be cute and I'm looking forward to that too.

Next week - Ancient Rome and Leaves!