School Week of 10-7-13

Ahh,  Another week of school down. Have I mentioned how much I love being home with my kids every day? Although, yes, I admit that there are times I am glad to get out for a couple of hours either by myself or with friends, but overall I love teaching them and I adore learning right beside them.

This week we are learning about the attributes of God. What He really looks like not in his outward appearance, but on the inside. This is such deep stuff and it has been amazing me how both my kids are really are grasping this. I am so dedicated to gearing my kids up and having them ready for these next coming years when their faith WILL be extremely tested with the way things are going around here in the good old USA.

For Geography we are still working on learning about North America. We keep going back and forth between Canada and USA. This week we were able to completely label Canada with is providences and capitols, some of the major seas and cities etc. We even made a beautiful Canadian flag. We also started the outline for the map of USA.

Now let me explain for a moment how this mapping works for geography. We have our map in a plastic sleeve and on the plastic sleeve in permanent marker we outline that map. Let’s say of USA. We will then write in all the state names on the plastic sleeve as well. But then we pull out the paper map and do all the rest of our markings on this physical map. It looks so cool when it’s done. OK, now I am sure if you look very close you will see some writing on their maps that looks like mine. Yes, I help with some of the very tiny stuff, especially for my daughter. But they are finding everything themselves.

For History we are learning about China and the Grand Canal. The Yellow River and Yangtze River was a huge divide between North and South China so by building the Canal they were able to open up more trade and unite China together.

Our history project this week was to make beads that look a little like Jade. You see once they united China under the Tang Dynasty, things were great and therefore people wore beautiful clothes and wore stones and beautiful jewelry. So we made our beads and then strung them together to make beautiful necklaces. I actually wore mine today to church and got some wonderful comments on it. My daughter and son also wore theirs and everyone was amazed at how they did such a great job. Now my son did his a little different. He actually made a pendant style (manlier) and did an inlay of the Chinese word Dragon. Check out the picture to see what I mean.

We also wrote in Chinese this week. Now I want you to remember when you look at their Chinese writing pictures that the kids remembered hearing that the Chinese read top to bottom and right to left. They really enjoyed both projects for History this week and the Tang Dynasty will be in the back of our minds.

Lastly in science this week we are continuing our learning about the Canine breeds. We are learning how evolution is not a possibility and how so many people get mixed up when talking about evolution and natural selection as well as artificial selection.

You see, evolution says that a bird can have a baby of any other kind such as a dog or even a lizard or the more popular belief is that an ape can spring forth into a man. Whereas Natural selection says that a short haired and a long haired dog get together and have a combination of short and long hair. If they live in extreme cold weather then the short hair pups will die and the long haired babies will most likely live. Therefore the long haired will grow up and start having long hair offspring and start a whole new breed. Well, that is the extreme short of it. And of course artificial selection is done by man. We bread out or bread in traits into a dog (as an example) that we want. Longer ears, shorter tail etc. This is how we end up with so many breeds. A great example is the newer breed is the Cacapoo (Spelling). We even do this in our fruits and vegetable, our meat supply is HUGE in doing this. (Just one reason why I am a vegetarian). Anyway, you get the idea!

OK, that’s it for this week. Oh, I want to apologize. Last week I meant to write up for the week and all I ended up doing was posting pictures. Oh Well, I hope you got the idea of it! See you next week.