Genesis 1

Since last school year's curriculum covered from Creation to the Greeks, we decided to have Olivia memorize Genesis 1:1-2:3. She worked hard at it all year and did such a great job!

This Year's History, Part 2

Later in the year, we got into the history of Greece and its science and culture. As part of the curriculum, we read two books: one about Archimedes and the other was a children's version of Homer's The Odyssey.

 Archimedes and the Door of Science was great because it not only gave us a look at the life of Archimedes, but also had tons of scientific info that we could use to make small experiments to try or observations to make. We talked about simple machines (levers, pulleys, screws), buoyancy, geometry, and numbers themselves. It's really amazing the contributions he made to modern math and science.

 We looked at buoyancy by making a boat from aluminum foil and floating it in some water. Then we crumpled the boat into a ball and dropped it back in and saw how the same piece of foil can float or sink depending on its shape.

We also experimented with centers of gravity and balance points. We made a tower of 5 bricks and saw how easy it was to knock over. Then we built a pyramid from the same 5 bricks and observed that a structure with a lower center of gravity are more stable than one with a high center.

Olivia then had to find the balance point (or center of gravity) of a butter knife, which has a heavy handle. She quickly found out that it wasn't right in the middle like she thought.

The Children's Homer was a great retelling of the Odyssey and the Trojan War. It was, by no means, easy to read but it was far easier than reading the original. The Trojan War story was somewhat confusing with all the various characters involved, but when we got to the story of Odysseus, Olivia was rather impatient to find out what would happen next each night.

To go along with the reading, we talked about the structure of Greek culture, which was primarily independent city-states, each with its own king and government. We talked about how each city ruled itself and how they often fought against each other.

Olivia also studied Greek art, which, for this year, was primarily pottery.

  She looked at all the different kinds of pots they used for different functions. She also had to make a few geometric patterns similar to ones that we saw in her history books.  

Also, we have been reading Aseop's Fables for Children at the table to all the kids. The kids have a chance then to narrate back to us the stories. They are short stories so it gives Gabe a chance to get in on some narration, even if it is just telling us who was in the story and where they were at or what they were doing. Olivia enjoys trying to guess the moral for each story. Ezra sits and listens and then comments on the pictures when there is one.

This Year's History - Part 1

As we've mentioned before, we have been studying history from Creation to the Greek civilation. While a large portion has been spent on the Egyptian kingdoms and the Greek civilizations, it has all been done in the context of Bible history. So even when we've talked about nations like Persia, the Greek City-States and places like India, and Assyria, it has all pointed back to how it relates to the stories in the Bible. The My Father's World curriculum actually assigns specific Bible passages that go along, historically, with whatever we are studying that day. It's been really interesting, even for Rebecca and I, to see how the cultures related to stories we've known for years.

One of our projects this year was to paint a pot with scenes of everyday life, break the pot and bury it for a couple of weeks. Then we were to dig it up as if we were archaeologists finding it many hundreds of years later. So back in December, she painted her pot...

and dropped it.

We buried it in the garden

What was supposed to be two or three weeks turned into months as Olivia forgot all about it. In April, I asked her and gabe to come help me prep the garden beds and specifically told them where to dig.

They were surprised to find a piece Olivia's Pot!

All work on the garden stopped as we carefully got down and started unearthing the rest of the pieces

We used the paint brush to carefully brush the dirt off the pieces.

When we had dug them all up, we laid them out as best we could. Unfortunately, the time in the ground had worn away the painting except for some smudges of color.

Even the chicken got into the action, looking for pieces in the other bed.

 As part of our history, we looked at what daily life was like for the Jews.

We talked about how their calendar is based off the moon phases and, because they were an agricultural people, how life revolved around the seasons.

We talked about how they were primarily shepherds, dating back to Abram (Abraham) after he left Ur.

Olivia got to try washing some dirty socks like a Hebrew woman would have and decided it was much easier with a washing machine.

Finally, we talked about their religious practices and how they fit into their daily lives, even down to how the festivals and feasts were based around the moon phases, harvests and planting times.

Olivia made her own Temple Breastplate.

Olivia made her own set of 10 Commandments just like Moses'. She actually carved in the Hebrew numbers herself!

We've had such a fun time doing this curriculum this year and we feel like Olivia has really learned a lot about the history behind the Bible, not to mention how much I've learned, too!

Olivia's Art Curriculum

This year, we are using God and the History of Art, which came with The My Father's World set. It's had some really good activities and exercises that have challenged Olivia to try new techniques in her drawing. The latest activities involved colors and color mixing. 

Back in January, she and Gabe both did color wheels with food coloring and water. It was an activity that Rebecca found by Mama Jenn (via Confessions of a Homeschooler). 

Over the last couple of weeks, Olivia had to explore and experiment more with creating her own colors in both pencil and paint. She could only use primary colors (red, blue, yellow and white) to create the rest of the colors in between.

Olivia's color wheels

She then had to use what she learned to replicate a painting by Albrecht Durer called The Stag Beetle.

Once again, using only red, blue and yellow, she had to blend all her own colors to try to match what she saw on the card. Let me tell you: mixing black is no easy task...

We've enjoyed the projects we've done in this particular art curriculum, however, there have been quite a few that we'e skipped over because we didn't think the content was appropriate. We skipped doing the things that involved nudity and also especially dark, heavy church imagery. We just didn't feel like these things were really appropriate for a 7-year-old to be copying or attempting to imitate. There were also a lot of lessons involving Egyptian and other cultures that we were selective about, especially if they involved idols or foreign gods. In all likelihood, we would not have purchased this art curriculum on its own, but since it came with the MFW package, we decided to try it out.

MFW-CTG Science - Friction

Of all the neat experiments we've done this year, this is one of the most successful and clear. The exercise is about how friction can stop things from rolling. The idea is that if a can, like a can of soup, is full to the top, it will roll easily down a hill. However, if it's only partly full, the friction of the contents inside against the side of the can will stop it from rolling far or fast. 

Olivia rolled the cans to Gabe just a few feet away down a shallow slope in the driveway.

The can rolled easily. She didn't even have to push it.

However, when we tried it with a 1/3-full container of oats, the friction inside the container wouldn't let it roll at all.

Even pushing it only got it to go about 3 inches.

Ezra wound up pushing it the whole way to Gabe.

To further illustrate just how strong that force can be, I tried kicking the can down the steep part of our driveway. It went about a foot before it stopped. It was quite impressive, really. 

Science Experiments - MFW

Here are a few shots from our recent science experiments

The first one was about cell structures and involved soaking an egg for a few days in white vinegar. The vinegar dissolves the calcium in the eggshell, leaving behind just the membrane under the shell. Apparently, with the right egg, you can actually see through the membrane and see the yolk, but ours didn't come out that clear. 

 The egg is now soft and spongy (and pickled) and  translucent, so you can see light through the egg.

Still a neat result, though.

Next, we learned about osmosis and how cells can pass water through the cell walls without breaking them

Firs, we cut a potato in half and scooped a "cup" in each half.

We boiled one half to kill off the cells. Once it was boiled, we set them both on shallow plates with a little water in each one.

We put a teaspoon of salt into each cup and sat back to wait.

After 20 minutes, the one we hadn't boiled had draw water up from the plate, through itself and to the cup to dissolve the salt.

The dead one just sat there and did nothing about the salt.

Science Lessons

Olivia's Science curriculum this year is Genesis for Kids, which has been a great deal of fun. The experiments follow the progression of Genesis Chapter 1 and group things together by their corresponding day in creation. For example, we did these light experiments as part of the chapter on Day 1 and the air and water experiments as part of Day 2. In each experiment, we talk about how God made each of these things we are studying and how things work together perfectly because He made them that way.

When held just right, the magnifying glass acted as a prism, allowing us to see the colors of the rainbow and talk about how light is made up of all those colors.

We looked at how the light from the Sun can be focused into a small dot that can then burn things like leaves and paper, especially if they're a dark color. She thought that was neat and tried writing her initials with the dot.

Here, we lit a candle in a bowl of water, then placed a jar over it and recorded how high in the jar the water rose as the candle burned out. That change in the height is proportional to the percentage of oxygen in the air. We then talked about how we need that oxygen to live and if there wasn't enough, we wouldn't be here, and if there was too much, the plants wouldn't live (they need carbon dioxide), so God made it just right for all of us.

*Overall, we are not super impressed with this curriculum. While many of the experiments were fun, many of them did not work out well. In the future, if we cycle through MFW-CTG again we will likely use 106 days of Creation Studies by Simply Charlotte Mason. It is a similar approach to studying an overview of science but adds many living books.