2012-2013 School Year: Week 22

For history we finished up our projects on the ancient Americas . So as I said last week we were learning about the Ancient Americas and one of the things we took a long look at was the Nazca drawing in South America and how they were probably actually done. Math and the stars is what we figured they used to draw these huge drawings in the ground. So our project this week was to make our very own Nazca drawings. How you ask? Easy. Use white crayon on white paper so you really can not see what you are drawing and then use water color paints over the top. It was a ton of fun. I even did one myself. The kids really enjoy art and love it when it can be mixed with history!

Also this week we started reading about the Rise of Rome. We did not get much past the story of Romulus and Remus. My son remembers this story from several years ago when we did a study of this same thing. The one new thing that we learned was about the Etruscans and how they borrowed the alphabet, clothing and even the gods of the Greek people. This is why you will see so many things that look the same throughout the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Our geography term for the week was Dune. No, not the movie! LOL! My daughter did a great job on her drawing. I was really proud. And of course my little artist son did a great job too.

As you know we have started learning about stems in science. One of the experiments we started this week was to put a piece of celery in a glass of colored water. Hmmm, sounds familiar from a couple weeks ago with the carrot. We will get back to you of the outcome of this one.

I love our little mini book we did in our science note book journal. It is  always good to re-cap what we have learned from our past reading. Such as, a cactus does not have leaves at all but the (leaves) are actually stems. Or that there are two types of stems: herbaceous and woody. Heck, I never knew that a tree trunk was a stem, but I guess I really never thought of it that way either.

As you can see in the pictures with the play-dough we are learning about phototropism. Remember a few weeks back I talked about us learning about geotropism which is the fact that a seed will always grow toward the earth not down toward the center. Phototropism is very similar thing. Plants will do whatever they can to get to the sun. The play-dough is just a way of showing that. As the play-dough grew and was shaded it grew this way and that trying to find sun! Amazing how much we learn form our Apologia science book. If I have not said it before or you are new to reading, I highly recommend their science books as well as their note booking journal.

Alright, that's it for this week. I'll catch you on the flip side!