2013-2013 School Year: Week 17

Very interesting week we had. First off I am posting this post a week late. I totally realized today that I am a week behind in my posting and I do not know how I did that. Oh well, such is life! The fact that I get it posted is much more important then when.

My computer is acting so weird. I got hacked a few months ago and since then it has never been the same. To download these few pictures takes me well over an hour. Yes, you read that right, over an hour. So the desire to write a post is not strong because I am sitting at my computer starring at an hour glass swirling for over an hour, waiting and waiting and waiting for the picture to load onto this site.

But I know it is important for me to log all the things we do each week. You know I want my kids to be able to look back at their school years and have a fantastic record of what we have accomplished. Not to mention it is proof that I am really teaching my kids, just in case anyone ever asks! 

I decided to go back and look at a few things we have missed in our Geography. This week was the Butte or the Butt as my kids like to call it. Very interesting that I never knew  that a Butte and a Mesa are really a very similar thing. The main difference is the butte is tall and thin and a mesa is much larger on top.

History was all about the Athenians and the Spartans. Those Spartan men were all about the brawn and the muscles. Heck the boys went away to Military school at age 8! I could never think of getting rid of my son so he could go off and learn to fight. I would miss him way too much!  Hmmm, got to wonder what it would have been like for the ladies back then. I am very sure as a woman you were looked at simply for one or two things only. Babies and cooking/cleaning.

Whereas the Athenians were all about the knowledge. The more you learn the more powerful you were. Not that they did not keep fit and learn to fight. They certainly did, but not to the extent of the Spartans. The main difference was the fact that Athenians lived in a democracy. This is were the first democracy really came from. So thank you Athens for this! The women were not treated too much different then the Spartans treated their women, but I think life for the ladies was all about luxury!

Science was….fun….long….patience etc. OK, so the truth, I ended up doing the majority of the science project. The project was to get some washing soda, bring it to a boil with some water and drop some leaves into it so that you could wipe the green off and end up with a beautiful leaf skeleton. Hmmmmm, well…..not as easy as you may think. First off it took about 2 hours for the green to even begin to come off. Then when I rubbed it barley moved. I finally got most of the green off, but only on one of the leaves and it was not easy.

You can see by the picture of the leaf that there was still some green left, but at least we got a chance to see the wonderful skeleton of the vascular system of the leaf. Now this was the part that the kids really enjoyed most. We were able to look at it under a high powered magnifying glass. Just wonderful! It amazes me still to this day at the wonders that God has created for us! Even leaves have life!

Well, like I said it was a weird week for some reason, but all in all we had a good school week. Week 18 will be even better!