Heart of Dakota: Bigger Week 5 update

Ok, I realized I need to purchase a thesaurus for the phrase" We had a great week" I keep saying that each week and I am sure my readers are getting tired of that same line. Anyway, I have realized that the Early American History that I learned as a child was very watered down as well as my memory of it has been watered down too. There is so much over these past 5 weeks that I have learned I still can not believe it. All those holes in my timeline in my head I have had for years have started to be filled in! Being able to re-learn history has not only given me a love for the subject, but I also have a greater appreciation for history now. Making a timeline has helped greatly too, and you can see from the pictures below how well my son and daughter's Timelines are coming along. Making a Timeline really helps to see how things fall in place. I highly recommend each of you to take this task on. It is so easy and well worth the few moments it takes.

One of our projects this week was to learn more about the Indians. The art project was to make a sand art craft. So the ingredients for this was simply salt, food color and paper plates. I had the kids look at some real sand art on the internet to understand exactly what we were doing and to see the beauty and complication of this in real life. My son really went to town on drawing out his project on the paper plate. My daughter was having a little more difficult time understanding that she needed to make the drawing a little larger to be able to fit the sand into the open spaces of her drawing. But once she understood this concept she had a great picture drawn up. We went out in the back yard and the kids went to town using a paint brush, watered down glue and our colored sand (salt). What a mess, but what fun. I even had to join in on this project! However,  I made WAAAAAY to much sand so now we have plenty left over for many more projects. I see Christmas gifts in the future!

I loved the geography lesson about the four different hemispheres. Not that the lesson was anything new for my son, but the fact that we used a melon and masking tape to mark off the northern, southern, eastern and western hemispheres made him crack up. And then I went ahead and had the children mark where they thought each of the continents were. They did a great job.Then we got to eat the world…Haha!

My favorite part of this week was our science project. You see children, in general,  have a tendency not to wash their hands really good, But this week was all about how the pilgrims dying off so easily because of hygiene problems and the spread of  germs.

We got out some hand cream, glitter, soap, paper towels and water. Using the cream as a glue for the glitter and rubbing the glitter in the creamed hands to act like germs, they had a chance to wipe their hands just in a paper towel first. The result is that their hands were still full of germs. Next we had them just rinse their hands and low and behold, their hands were still full of germs. It was not until they actually washed them with soap and water that all the germs were gone. It was a huge Aha! moment for my son especially. They realized that if the Pilgrims would have had this soap they may not have spread so much germs therefore it is possible they could have not died off so easily at first. They also learned that they need to do this in their own lives too to be able to keep themselves form getting sick and spreading germs to and from others. Great lesson!

We finished up our science by learning about Vertebrates. My son already knew about these as well as mammals, but my daughter was really intrigued by the thought that animals were put into the two categories. Vertebrates and Invertebrates and that we humans were considered vertebrates along with other animals. I wish I would have had a video of this moment for her this week.

Another one of those "Aha" moments for both children was the Need/Want collage they were asked to do. They had to go into magazines and cut out things they thought were wants and things they thought were needs and glue then to a paper. Here is the "Aha" moment… even though there was plenty of things that were good for us like weights, bicycles etc, they still went under the want list. The only things under the need list was food, body coverings and water. What we need ultimately to survive is food and water. Everything else is a want., even a bra and undies. Look at my daughters collage. LOL!! 

On top of all that fun we were able to visit the Discovery Science Center and learn about bugs this week and spend a few hours at the park with Dad. Have I mentioned how much I love homeschooling and how it allows for us to have such a flexible schedule?

So, week 5 over and done. Learned a ton and had fun doing it. Jeopardy was great fun. My daughter and son tied so they both got to pull a treat form the treat bag. YEA! They are looking forward to next week though. We school 5 weeks on and  1 week off, so next week is our week off. Unfortunately I will not have a post regarding HOD next Fir/Sat, but I will be back the following week. Hey do me a favor if you like my blog posts, hit the LIKE button up top for each one you read.

Have a great couple weeks everyone and come on back for week 6.