"The Heart"

We're studying the human heart this week in science and the kids made a model using graham crackers, icing, and marhsmallows to help them memorize the locations of the ventricles, atriums, aorta, pulmonary veins, etc. We finished the lesson by studying how many times the word "heart" is used in the Bible...only a mere 762 times...obviously God is trying to tell us something about the condition of our hearts! Here is one of my favorite "heart" verses...

"Love the Lord your God with all your HEART and with your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" Luke 10:27

This Week...

How is September already almost over??? Can't believe how quickly the days are passing...it's ironic how they seemed to drag on while we were waiting for Samuel yet now they are moving so fast! It's hard to believe we just finished week 4 of school...we studied the Vikings this week and the kids made this model ship. This little guy got to try some Cheerios for the first time and loves them!

He got the hang of them real quick!

He turned 8 months old last Saturday and is BUSY...crawling everywhere!!

Back to School!

Our first week of school is officially under our belts...everyone was excited to get started Monday morning! We studied cells this week in science and the kids made an edible jello cell with candy mitochondria, golgi bodies, ribosomes, lysosomes, and a nucleus!

February...

It's hard to believe the month of February is already half over! My blog is definitely sitting on the back burner for now as we settle into our new routine. I'm sure I'll be back in full force once Samuel's adoption is finalized by the state and we are free to post photos of him. For now we are enjoying every minute of these sweet newborn days. He is doing wonderful! We went for his one month checkup yesterday and has grown an inch and weighs 10 pounds! He is such a happy boy and we are so blessed by him! He was definitely worth the wait!! He got his feet into a little pink ink the other day and made some Valentine cards for all his special people!! We are keeping busy with school, plugging away while the weather is still so cold...we only have around 55 lessons left until summer break (not that we are counting!). The kids have also been addicted to the Olympics and we made this chart to keep track of the medal count for our favorite countries.

Ancient Greece!

We've been studying Ancient Greece this week, in between fighting off some nasty colds and coughs...Thankfully, everyone is feeling better and we have been able to finish some fun projects. We learned about some of the ancient mythological gods and goddesses and made some puppets...Here is Medusa, Athena, Cyclops, and Perseus... Next, we learned about the story of the Trojan Horse and made a small cardboard version. I heard rumors about the lego people hiding away in these to attack the Polly Pockets!!

Finally, we gave some Greek cooking a try and made some Baklava!! Yummy!!

It's so nice to study all these amazing countries and then have an excuse to make one of their amazing recipes!! Making and eating baklava is some fun homework!!

China Activities!!!

We have been studying China this week and have had opportunities for lots of fun China activities. We started the week learning to write and say some Chinese numbers.

Next, we made a Popsicle stick abacus...

And finally, since the Chinese were the ones to discover how to make paper, we thought we would try our hand at that. We started out by ripping pieces of paper into small bits, we used a mixture of plain white paper and newspaper, but any type of paper will work. Fill the blender half full of paper...

Add warm water and blend into a fine pulp...

Add 3 to 4 blender loads of pulp to a large basin of water...

Stir well...

Next, you will need some sort of mold to dip down into the basin. Nathan made this one for me using paint stirrers and a piece of window screen.

After all the excess water has dripped off the screen you lay a sheet of fabric on top, remove it from the mold and place it on a cookie sheet to dry.

After they are dry you simply lift them off and should be able to use them as sheets of paper!

China Week Kick-off!!

We're studying China in school this coming week. The kids were excited when they looked at their assignments for the week and saw that "eat Chinese food" was one of them! We thought today would be a good day for that as a belly full of Chinese food + a Sunday afternoon nap make for a great combination!

Sukkot Feast - Unit 1 Celebration

We held our Tapestry of Grace end-of-unit celebration last night. After studying the Jewish feasts for several weeks it was decided that we would hold our own Sukkot Feast (or Feast of Booths), which was traditionally held around the harvest time of year. They would construct booths in their yards where they would eat, sleep and worship for seven days. Here are the children constructing their booth... Next, they covered it with greenery...

Listening to a story, waiting for the feast to begin...

Each family spread their blanket out around the booth to partake in the festivities.

The children put on a little skit for their Dads.

We dined on lamb, lentil stew, pitas, hummus, grapes, olives, challah bread, and more...

We are excited for the start of Unit #2!!

The Tabernacle

Our history lessons over the past few weeks have progressed from Egypt, into studying Moses and the Israelites journey to the promised land. We spent few weeks studying the different feasts celebrated by Jewish families (and why we as Christians no longer celebrate these today) and the Tabernacle. I wanted the kids to fully understand the importance of the tabernacle to our church history and what an amazing structure it was. I encouraged them to make a tabernacle model all on their own (except for a little help from Mom with the hot glue gun). Here was the first step...constructing the frame. We were amazed to study just how large the tabernacle actually was and how much work it must have been to move it. The next step was to make curtains for the frame (Thank you box of Kleenex!)

They made a batch of salt dough and sculpted out a basin, lampstand, and ark of the covenant.

Next, it was time for painting...

Here is their finished work...

Here is a close-up view...they realized one mistake they made was that the lampstand was actually inside of the Holy of Holies and they made it a little too large to fit in there. We'll know better for next time.

We are looking forward to our end of unit celebration with our co-op next week (that's right the first 9 weeks of school are over!). We are planing an authentic Sukkot Feast.

Cartouches and Mummies

We're still studying ancient Egypt this week, and we started the week studying hieroglyphics and making a cartouche (an Egyptian nameplate). We mixed up a salt dough and the kids rolled it into a shape for their nameplate.

We used toothpicks to trace out the hieroglyphics that represented letters from their names.

After the dough was baked and cooled, we spray painted it and then buffed it up to look old.

Next, we studied mummification...Why the Egyptians believed in this practice...and how it was done. We even learned the gross things like how they would pull the brain out through the nose, remove all the vital organs (except the heart, this was left in the body and preserved in salt) and the other organs were embalmed in 4 separate jars. We decided to try our hand out at mummification with these victims...

Emily made me cover the other Barbie as she said it was not appropriate to post naked barbie pictures on the blog! We cut up strips of one of Daddy's old t-shirts for our mummy wraps.

Next, we died them in tea to make them look old...

Then, we learned how to wrap the mummies....

Happy kids with their mummies!