The Bible and Butterflies

Our Bible study has kind of been going on for awhile now. Technically in our family scripture study we are in 2nd Nephi (I think it has only taken us since January of this year to get that far) and for the children's learning time study we are using the Stories from the Doctrine and Covenants. I know Joshua is reading the Book of Mormon on his own and he is not quite to 2nd Nephi - he was trying really hard to catch up with the family. But for our history lessons we were up to the Old Testament so we checked out a few books from the library and pulled out an old video and went to work.  The first day we learned more about the people who lived in Canaan, like the Philistines and such. It is kind of nice to know who those people were and were they had come from.  I think that it is helpful to understand what things were like as Abraham was traveling from Ur to Haran and then through Canaan.  Also, I love the stories of Abraham in Egypt, and since the kids are still interested in Egypt (Joshua just checked out more Egypt books to read on his own) this was very interesting to the kids - that and Joseph in Egypt as well. In my personal scripture study I went back and read the Pearl of Great Price and started again with Genesis so I would have everything fresh in my mind and be able to accurately retell and explain the history to the children as well. It is interesting to me that they mummified Jacob so that they could take him back to be buried in Canaan. It actually is written that Joseph called the physicians and they treated him for 40 days (that's how long the natron salt takes) and then after the appointed time of mourning (the same time the people would have mourned for Pharaoh) the procession left to go bury Jacob with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebeka, and Leah. Poor lonely Rachel.

I also let the children watch a series of videos we have on the Old Testament (I think the Christmas and Easter story are in there too) and they love these movies so much. I am also pleased with them because they are pretty scripturally accurate. The movies are from a series called "The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible" which was produced by Hanna-Barbara and feature Margo, Derek, "and their nomad friend" Moki who discover essentially a time portal during an archeological dig somewhere in the Middle East that takes them back in time to witness some of the more well known Bible stories. I can't really get that picture to line up very well, but below you see Margo, Derek, and Moki.

The kids already knew most of the Bible stories, besides watching these videos, but it is fun to watch a movie every now and again. AND I forgot to mention the copies I have of these are in German, so that is even more fun.  

Now,  a little LESS scripturally accurate is the following book, which retells some of the more famous Bible stories in a storytelling friendly way. At first, this book bothered me a lot. I very much did not like their retelling of Adam and Eve and their portraying that story as such a sad day where God was very disappointed that Eve had messed up the perfect world he had made. And then, besides the fact that they totally left out Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, I was really bothered by their retelling of everything related to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and to some extent Joseph, but that wasn't so bothersome. It took up until this point in the book (after I had been stopping every paragraph or so to tell the kids why this or that actually happened or how it even happened at all) before I realized that major and crucial information was left out of these retellings because the pastor who wrote them honestly didn't know. Everything relating to Priesthood and authority was totally scratched. I didn't even know you could tell the stories of the Patriarchs without at least some reference to what the birthright actually is and what that means to all of mankind. I mean, the Abrahamic Covenant? It's pretty important. At first I was disturbed a little because I thought, of course if the pastor admitted there was an actual line of authority through which God governs his church, this pastor's following would have to leave him and find that actual line, at least if they were interesting in the truth. But then I realized it is not his fault that he doesn't know. I'm sure he is a wonderful, loving, Christ-like pastor of his flock as far as he knows to be, and I am extremely grateful for people like him. But I am also extremely grateful to be able to understand the scriptures more fully and the doctrines of Christ.  I am grateful that everyone has the right to worship and believe in just what they want and how they want, too. So if the rest of the Christian world believes the Garden of Eden story as this good man portrayed it, that is just fine. But I know it was not a day in which God mourned. Anyway, I'd been thinking about that a lot. This book is still very fun to read and it really is a good read aloud. I just think it misses those points of the stories that make them important and relevant.

OK, we also checked out this book, which I loved. I checked out another book like this about ancient civilizations in general that I thought was so awesome I actually just bought it off amazon a few days ago.  This book was amazing and I think I could look at these maps for hours.  It really helps everything kind of come together in your mind. For me, seeing where Abraham traveled, and seeing who lived in what land at what time and how the Israelites come back from Egypt and into Canaan, then off to Babylon, and then back again, where the Assyrians were, where there Persians came from, I don't know, it is all very, very interesting to me.

So interesting, in fact, that I made it into our next project. I drew the lines outlining the land and the water, and then Joshua picked out (with a little direction) which cities and regions he wanted to label on the map. I chose to pick this larger region because it shows all of the lands (except the Indus river valley in India) that we have talked about: Sumeria and Mesopotamia, especially Ur and Uruk, Egypt and Nile, and now Canaan and Gaza. Technically we haven't covered the Phoenicians yet (that is still for Monday) and then we will add Tyre and Sidon. And actually, after that we studying Assyria, so although we already have Nineveh on the map, we might need to add something up there as well. Our map is not really time specific so that we could have things like Jerusalem and Babylon and Ur and Haran and (eventually) Tyre on there at the same time. You'll have actually click on the photo if you want to read any of Joshua's writing, it's just a little too faint to make out.

Ok, butterflies. Joshua checked out a magic school bus book about butterflies a couple of weeks ago and since he really likes the Magic School Bus, he chose butterflies for his next animal. I thought it was kind of a weird choice, you know, after sharks, but actually it is turning out perfectly. Again, I let the children watch another movie we already have "Die Kleine Raupe Nimmersatt" which is "the Very Hungry Caterpillar" in German. It is less than 10 minutes long, so they've seen it a number of times this last week, just for fun.
 
But we've also read some fun and informative books on butterflies. Did you know a monarch butterfly can fly more than 20 miles an hour? That is crazy.  In our grammar study we were learning about paragraphs, so for our narration page we worked on organizing thoughts into paragraphs focusing on a single topic for each. It turned out pretty well and it was nice to use our grammar lessons in a more meaningful way.  We also made these metamorphosis wheels to show the transformation from the egg to caterpillar to butterfly.

The most interesting thing, though, will be later this week when we go to the Butterfly Pavilion in Colorado. Yes, a field trip within a vacation. We've actually been there before but it will be worth it, I think, to go again after just having studying a little about butterflies. Joshua is hoping to find some poisonous ones. Here are a few pics of the kids at the Pavilion a couple years ago - 2010 I think?

Wow, this is a horribly fuzzy photo. They have tarantulas there too. This is Abigail touching one through the glass. Gross. Joshua actually got to hold one, but Abby was too small. Maybe this year? I opted NOT to hold the giant poisonous spider and will NOT be holding it again this year.

Joshua had seen a church produced film with a scene of Jesus holding a butterfly on his finger and Joshua wanted so badly to do the same, but sadly, no butterfly was interested.

Later, however, I was talking to a man who worked in the Pavilion and asked him if there were any tricks to attracting butterflies. He said, "well, you didn't see me just do this." And he picked one up gently and put it on Joshua's shirt. Close enough.  We learned in our reading that the butterflies are most attracted to red and pink, so we'll probably wear those colors again.

And lastly, I think, is our number poster that we created. I realized that although Joshua can count by tens and fives, he doesn't know how to count by twos. And Abigail could use some practice getting past 10, so I figured a number poster would help us do the trick. Also, it is nice to see the patterns in math and right after we finished the poster I should the kids what it looked like when we circled in red all the multiples of 10, and squared in green all the multiples of 5, and then marked the multiples of 2 and also the multiples of 3. It is fun to actually see the patterns and this was something the kids could get enthusiastic about.  The poster has also come in handy in our regular math lessons, which are going very well. According to our book, Joshua should be starting multiplication in just a week or so, which seems a little early to me, but oh well. I remember memorizing my multiplication tables through 12 in second grade. Or third grade.  In any case, we are introducing it in a couple of weeks.

Piano is going well. Music class is going well. Joshua's reading is going well. Derek has started playing games with the kids outside with balls, so we act like that is P.E. They played "soccer" the other day and then some sort of made up handball game the day after. We'll get the kids signed up for swimming and something else in the summer. So I guess, as a whole, we're doing ok on this homeschool experiment.

The Odyssey (still) and Sharks

Last week, as mentioned before, we finished up Mycenae but we are still working on Joshua's retelling of the Odyssey with illustrations. This is a long project. There isn't much to tell, but that he still has a lot of illustrating to do. I think the final project will be worth it, though.  We've also been reading a lot of Bible stories since Old Testament lands and times are the next on our list. We finished  a big book of them just tonight (and Derek finally finished Gilgamesh! Yea!) so I'll need to get some more. Anyway, I'll type more about that next week.

But our animal for this week was the shark. I remember two years ago we spent an entire month on sharks. It's on this blog, you could probably look it up, January 2011. We got pretty bored of sharks at the end. So two days was a great review. Joshua loved the library books. I think he wasn't as impressed with sharks as he thought he would be. He mentioned one day how sharks were cool but octopus's were AMAZING! Still, we made a shark hat (I don't recommend this project. the hat doesn't stay on very well and it is less anatomically correct, as Joshua pointed out) and a stretchbook to display our knowledge of sharks. The stretchbook was very hard to figure out, but I thought it would be such a cool book so I struggled and practiced on it anyway. This was maybe Joshua's least favorite thing to do so far in homeschool.  I still think it is cool and we will probably make stretchbooks in the future but not for awhile. The shark hat was only cool because the kids had to paint the paper plates and they thought that was fun.

 OK, the awesome stretchbook. When closed, the book is just a skiddy-wampus little square.

 While opening, it looks like this (especially if you open it with only one hand because a camera is in the other.

 

And when completely opened and laid on the floor with a hand holding one of the flaps out for all to see, it looks like this. I thought it was cool anyway.

Here are our shark hats from January 2011. What little kids! Lukas wasn't even born yet.

Pre and Post Halloween

I realized I never mentioned that we painted pumpkins as well (I guess I was too excited about the actual carving. I think that is my favorite part of Halloween.) I don't even have any photos of the finished pumpkins, but here are a couple of the kids working on them. The finished works of art are still outside the front door, but the jack-o-lanterns have been tossed into the garden already. The poor jack-o-lanterns. Their time in the spotlight was so short.

And then of course, the post Halloween sorting of the candy. I learned that sorting candy is a good math exercise and it was actually Joshua's idea to sort in the first place so he had Abigail and Lukas sort their candy as well. Since Joshua did it at kindergarten last year, I think he thinks it's just what you do. And he's right. But he doesn't know yet that after you've sorted your candy you are supposed to trade with your siblings. I am not willing to teach them this tradition because I have a feeling one very little boy would get cheated out of a lot of his candy if I did.

Front Room Completed

I was a little happier with my front room about an hour ago before we hung up the two final items - the big photo of the Nauvoo Temple and the wreath above the TV. Although the temple is level, it's not centered and the wreath is too high. But at this point I'm not really willing to do anything about it.

Besides that, I LOVE MY FRONT ROOM. It didn't turn out how I first thought it would. The sky really never is the limit on these home improvement projects. There is that little inhibitor called the wallet. But I am very pleased at how things came together and Derek and I were able to pick photos of family members and frames and place them on the walls where we both really liked them. I wont bring up the fact that I did all of the work, except in hanging the temple photo, even though this was my birthday present, nor that I used my own personal spending money to buy all of these things - well, I suppose I just did.

Anyway.

The photos I took (please excuse the messy living room - it is Halloween after all) aren't very good. They kind of distort the colors and don't give you a good sense of, well, much. The frames really do look good together - it's just the colors in the photos on the blog - I promise the browns aren't so red and such. But you can get an idea of what has occupying my adult thoughts (thoughts not revolving around my children) for the last month or so.

Sorry about the glare.

I forgot to mention, on the left is a family photo and the Proclamation on the Family and on the left is "The Living Christ" and a painting of the Savior. I'm thinking of putting a potted plant on that little table with the lace doily thing. It just looks kind of lacking.

Halloween

This morning I dressed all the kids up and we all went to Abigail's preschool Halloween party. The kids had a lot of fun and Lukas asked me as we were leaving if we could "play Halloween party at that kid's house again." To which I replied, sorry no, but better things were yet to come.

We (I) carved our jack-o-lanterns. The got about 45 minutes of light time. Derek didn't want to leave them burning while we were trick-or-treating so we didn't light the candles until we got home, and then, like I said, after about 45 minutes or so Derek decided Halloween was over so he blew them out. That was sad. But oh well.

Also, I almost forgot to mention, we were all excited for our annual sweet and salty roasted pumpkin seeds. Now, I am not a pumpkin seed expert, but I have made these before, and not once have they caramelized on me this these did today. We were all kind of disappointed. Until we tasted them. Caramelized pumpkin seeds! Who knew.

After dinner (which no one ate of course, it's Halloween after all. You have to save room for all that candy!) Grampy and Grammy came by and we all went trick-or-treating. We were out for a little over an hour but at the end Abigail was asking when we were going home and Grampy had to carry Lukas because he just couldn't move his little legs anymore. It may be because their candy buckets were so heavy.

And after we got home Grammy read the children a sweet little Halloween book before she and Grampy had to leave. Then we herded the children into bed. I was so surprised that Kaleb made it the entire time! He was actually singing and laughing and squealing as we were trick-or-treating, even though it was 2 hours past his bed time. Maybe they'll all sleep in tomorrow?

Mycenae and Worms

I originally planned on a day or two about the ancient Hittites last week, but there was so little information I could find that I decided to just skip it. I'm sure my children's education will not suffer too greatly because of this decision. Instead, we moved onto Mycenae, which is the Greek city from which Agamemnon is supposed to have been king during the Trojan wars.  Sometimes narration pages get a little redundant, so we didn't really do any for Mycenae. And in fact, on Friday, we were so busy, that we didn't really do much homeschool, which is why Mycenae has flooded over into this week as well. But even Mycenae isn't that interesting all in itself. What is really interesting is Homer's epic poems, the Odyssey and the Illiad. I've mentioned before Derek has read two different versions of the Odyssey to Joshua (he's reading them Gilgamesh now from ancient Babylon - we went a little backwards) and it is probably Joshua's favorite book ever - although he is really enjoying Gilgamesh the Hero. So instead of doing narration pages on Mycenae I decided Joshua could narrate his own version of The Odyssey. This has actually turned into a huge project because his memory is too good and he starts recounting all these little details. (In fact, sometimes I say too him, "you know, its ok, you can just say Calypso let him go, instead of retelling the entire conversation between the two." That's probably not the best teaching tool, but it helps him not get too bogged down in all the details and make the project too large for him to finish. By the way, we aren't finished yet. He's narrated to the point where Odysseus is back in Ithaca and he's illustrated to the point where Odysseus sails away from Troy. So, yes, we have a long way to go. I would like him to get done by Thursday, but we'll see.  Once Derek is done reading Gilgamesh to the kids, he's going to read a children's version of the Illiad and then also the Anead. I'm sure I've mentioned that as well.

But today, because we had to read something during learning time and Derek has forbidden me to read "his" books to the kids (it is their special time together) I read Joshua a different book. It is about the man who discovered Troy, Mycenae, and some other Bronze Age settlement mentioned by Homer in modern day Turkey. He was a German named Heinrich Schliemann and his story is really interesting. The title is "The Hero Schliemann; The Dreamer Who dug for Troy" but I wouldn't call him a hero. He is kind of more like a nut. But he ended up an extremely rich nut. And a famous rich nut at that. The book was much longer than I realized, but Joshua was so interested in it, that we read the entire thing. It took us about an hour.  It is a very interesting read and I recommend it to anyone learning about archeology, the Trojan Wars, or needs a subject for a biography research paper or something.

My original idea for the latter half of this week was to move onto the Old Testament lands and peoples but that might flood over into next week as well. I don't have many pictures of our history learning, but I promise it was interesting.

In science we learned about worms and leeches. so gross. But we got some of the most awesome narration pages out of it. For some reason, science narration pages don't get boring. The books were very informative, even if they were gross, the leeches especially. For our worm day we went outside and collected worms in old peanut butter containers so we could observe them digging their tunnels. Lukas has never been so excited to participate in learning time. He was right there the entire time and insisted on making his own worm house. (I think our worms are barely struggling onto life so I better let them go). The kids had so much fun digging in the dirt, finding the worms, and picking out the best leaves for them to eat. And just so you know, you can't cut a worm in half and get two living worms, although the head end of the worm might grow a new tail end. And a worm does have 5 hearts, but they are all clumped together around it's head end. I always thought they were all throughout the body and that was why you could cut worms in half and they would still live, because they would still have at least one heart. Anyway, that is false.

And a quick warning about teaching your kids about leeches and bloodletting, besides that it is gross. I did come down one afternoon to see the kids playing doctor and Joshua had drawn and cut out a picture of a leech to use on Lukas, who was forced to lie on the couch and have a paper leech suck on his ear every few minutes to help him get better. If you don't want your kids leeching each other, don't teach them about leeches.

In other news, I had a birthday last week. I turned 32. That seems so young still. But then I realized I was almost 36 and 36 is TWICE as old as 18. That seems really old. So when I turn 36 maybe I'll feel differently about my age. For my birthday I made myself a cake. It was a four layer lemon and strawberry cake with a whipped cream frosting. It was kind of fun to make, and kind of pretty, but of course, we can't eat an entire cake so I gave a little more than half of it away and just threw away the last 2 two pieces forgotten in the fridge. And I've decided, I probably would have been just as happy eating the lemon curd I made for the filling, instead of sticking it into a cake. Maybe I'm more of a lemon pie kind of person instead of a lemon cake kind of person. I also went up to Salt Lake to visit a friend I hadn't seen in a long time and it was very nice to see her. She is an amazing person and I admire her very much.  That night Derek brought home dinner and we had cake. My favorite part of the day, maybe, was watching my kids sing happy birthday and literally squeal with delight as they cheered after I blew out my candles. They were so happy! And so that made me really happy.  Derek got me a water bath/steamer canner, some canning tongs, an apple peeler/corer/slicer, and a citrus zester. So of course Friday I had to test them out.

We made applesauce! It was so fun using my new stuff, and it really wasn't that difficult - especially since the kids ate all the apple peels right as they came off the apple. They really enjoyed that. And I couldn't help but notice their resemblance to our science topic of the week. We also made one more stop to the pumpkin patch with our friends and ran a couple of other errands, like our weekly library trip. It was a busy day.

Also, I worked on Halloween costumes. They turned out pretty good and the boys wear theirs every day! This photos doesn't show them totally complete, but they are pretty close.

My other birthday present still isn't quite finished. My goal was to have our front room finished, meaning having all the pictures selected, printed, framed, and hung on the wall. This has been a major project and an expensive one too (but to me, everything is expensive, even milk and bread). I've hung all but three photos and a wreath up since those items need nails and we've all had colds but Derek has been maybe the most sick so he hasn't hung up the last things for me. I'd much rather have him be responsible for a hole in the wall than myself so I don't dare try to hang them up by myself. When I get those done - which will hopefully be tomorrow - I will post those photos too. I already love the room, although if I look too closely at one arrangement, I start seeing mistakes, but it's ok.