School Week of 4-28 through 5-2-14

First let me start off  by saying May will be EXTREMELY busy for me. I have something going every weekend. I won’t even have time to stop and celebrate my birthday on the 9th. I have concerts that i am singing in and concerts that my children’s choirs I teach are singing in. Whew, I am getting exhausted just thinking of May. But no complaints just panting…onward Ho!

History is starting to come closer to America now. This weeks lesson was exploring the New World! Christopher Columbus knew the world was round and not flat like those scholars thought. And he went out to prove it. He got the three ships form the King and Queen. OK, what are they? You know them, Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Anyway, off he went. But unfortunately he discovered a new continent not India or Asia, but he did not realize it. It was Amerigo Vespucci that realized Columbus discovered a new continent and since he wrote all his journey’s down and published them in a book, they named the new continent after him, America! He became more famous in his time then Columbus who ended up dying in poverty.

Then Magellan came along and decided he wanted to sail East to get to the west. Hmmm, if he had only known how long that was really going to take. But they ended up naming a strait after him in South America and he got to name the Pacific Ocean. He never made it to India, but one of his shipmates made it and told Magellan’s story. Very cool. Glad these men had the guts to venture out into uncharted waters. Otherwise we would not have our wonderful country today!

So do you know how they break down the groups of ungulates? By the hooves! Monkeys and apes are split up by the noses and ungulates by hooves. OK, so easy, 1 toe hooves and 2 toe hooves. Anyway, we just got into elephants this week. The kids knew just about everything we had read because we watch the Discovery channel a TON and they just had a few weeks ago and show on elephants. Cool! The fun part was putting the so called Ice Age and realizing that it was all in the time of the flood. Makes since when you think that the (short version, very short) geysers that would have burst upward from the ground into the ocean as well as land would have warmed the ocean which in turn would have formed clouds which would have brought rain and snow. There is evidence that on some coastal areas where the water was warm there are more skeletal remains (like Siberia) with grasses stuck in the teeth. This is because the ocean was warming the little tiny bit of land. Anyway, if you get a chance to read it from the Apologia  Land Animals book, it all makes since. My version is teeny.

We just finished our last drawing in our Geography terms book. Now for the next couple weeks I will have the kids go back and touch up and fix any drawing or writing they think need fixing and then we will go get them professionally bound. I am so looking forward to that. they can then use them for Geography next year. Speaking of, as you can see we are now in Australia and the Oceania. This one is going to go fast. there is not a lot out there. Australia is mostly desert so not a lot of rivers etc to add to our maps. However there are a ton of dots (islands) out there. Not sure if we will able them all but a few of the big ones. i think we will do some studying on the Great barrier Reef.

Math, English and Spelling are the same old same old. My daughter is struggling to put into place the things she learns in spelling. She is still spelling everything phonetically. So we are going to work harder on that the rest of the school year and hit it harder in the fall. That’s it for this week.

Alright, I’ll catch you on the flip side!