India, Weeks 24 & 25

We spent last week as our "Spring Cleaning Spring Break" in preparation for Elianna's 4th birthday party and lots of family coming down to visit for the special weekend.






But before that week of crazy cleaning, we spent 2 weeks in India enjoying the sights and tastes, learning about some of the history, facts, and famous people of the country. The girls enjoyed several crafts and fun projects during our studies. Here are the highlights of our "trip" in pictures...

In India, brothers make bracelets for their sisters to show that they will love and protect them. The girls each made a bracelet for one of their sisters. They were so sweet trying to pick out the perfect beads they thought their sister would like.


For the festival of Diwali, Indians make Rangoli. They use dyed rice powder to make these beautiful designs on their homes to welcome visitors. We used colored sand to make ours. What a fun project!




We tried out how it would be wear a sari. (I'm not sure the Indians would approve of our use of a Hannah Montana bed sheet, lol. But it worked for us)



We made bangle bracelets to represent all the jewelry Indian women wear. The girls decided that they would love to live in India and wear tons of jewelry all the time!


We made Indian "smoothies" one day from a recipe we found in a book about India. These are called Mango Lassi. The girls have begged for them so many times since then! Annlee is due for some oral surgery soon and has requested this drink for her breakfast the day after her surgery. It was pretty delicious!






We made trinket boxes out of clay. This was lots of fun for the girls! They LOVE crafty things so I try to do as many as possible. I was so pleased with how these turned out! They worked hard and were very proud!







Mmm... Indian food!


Here are our lapbooks. They turned out a little bigger than usual this time. We just had lots of information to include about India!












In science, we learned about volcanoes. The girls had a great time watching how mountains and volcanoes are formed through two fun experiments.
First, we cut a small hole in the bottom of an empty yogurt container and inserted a new tube of toothpaste in the hole. We filled it partially with dirt and then squeezed. They watched the toothpaste slowly push it's way up through the dirt in much the same way that hot lava pushes it's way up through the surface of the Earth. So simple, yet they loved it!



And of course, we couldn't talk about volcanoes without erupting one of our own!


We found a fun spelling website called Spelling City that the girls have been loving! I can type in their spelling words and they can play games with them and even take their test online! They think it's so cool to take their test on the computer! And the website is free - HUGE plus!


Maryella is still doing her regular All About Reading and Spelling programs. We've found a few tricks to help her "want" to do it a little more. It's certainly no fun when it's a fight to get her to read! One thing she enjoys is to read in a fun place. We've had days where we read on the front porch, in the other living room, and the latest is on my bed all snuggled up together. She also has figured out that she'd rather write on the white board than on paper for her spelling work. Fine by me! Anything that makes learning fun is SO worth it!


Another fun thing I'm doing with her... she gets to add a bead to her string everytime she finishes reading a book! Anything to encourage reading, right!? She's loving doing this and NEVER lets me forget to let her add that bead!


We also enjoyed celebrating President's Day a few weeks ago with this fun project. I love how they turned out! And obviously the girls had a good time!

Weeks 21 & 22 - Saudi Arabia

These past two weeks have felt like we were doing a little of this and a little of that. Normally, our geography and science fit together. This time, we studied the Middle East - a challenge in itself trying to explain the religion of the region. Deserts would have been the most logical science ecosystem to study, but we had already covered that in a previous unit. Therefore, our curriculum, My Father's World, had us learning about ecology and conservation. Some of the topics were really tough! Have you ever tried explaining the greenhouse effect and global warming to a 6 year old? Whew! Our curriculum did SUCH an awesome job of it though! Sometimes our science book, Properties of Ecosystems, gets a little dry, but this particular lesson was so helpful in explaining these difficult concepts from a Christian perspective!


Yes, we should be good stewards of our environment and take care of our planet. But do we need to worry about global warming and fear the effects it will have on us? No, why? Because God is in control! Plus, scientists disagree on just how the changes in our planet will ultimately effect us. Therefore, let's not spend too much time dwelling on it! Here are the ideas the girls came up with for what our part can be in helping our planet... we will try to implement as many as we can in the coming days and weeks!


In other geography/science news... we learned a ton about camels! This experiment was so cool to show the girls how a camel's feet help it walk through the desert sand. Because a camel has large, wide feet that spread when it steps down, it won't sink into the sand like other animals with skinny little hooves would.


Here are the mini-books the girls made for their lapbooks. They did a wonderful job drawing their camels!


We also discussed the beautiful monogram art seen in books such as the Quran. The girls had fun making their own monogram drawings. Check out that cross that Kaylin made! So gorgeous!


We studied the Arabic alphabet and even practiced writing it ourselves. I have no idea if they did a good job or not, but it looked ok to me! I also found a free app for my phone and we were able to listen to someone pronounce each letter as we wrote it. Very interesting!


Here are some of the books we looked at over the past 2 weeks. I normally let the girls read through the books on their own to get a feel of the area we are studying. This time however, I wanted to read through a lot of the books with them. I wanted to be sure they understood what they were hearing and that we don't believe the same things as were presented in the books.



I was so proud of the girls reaction to the Saudi Arabian flag. We always include a flag of the country we are learning about in our lapbook. This time, I was really torn about using this one because the Arabic words say, "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet." I needn't have worried though. As soon as I read that to the girls, they all looked at me and started talking at once about how that wasn't right. It lead to a great discussion about the Muslim people and specifically how we can pray for them.


We made and tasted hummus. I'm not saying they all liked it... but they tasted it, lol!



Here are our lapbooks all put together.





In other subjects, I wrote down a few funny quotes that made me laugh over the past couple weeks. Maryella was working exaggeratedly slowly in Math one day. I asked her if she might want to speed things up a little bit and she calmly shook her head and said quietly, "No, I'm doing Math Yoga." That girl cracks me up!


And then Annlee made my day one day as she was learning how to diagram adjectives in English. You see, I was one of the weird ones who actually enjoyed diagramming sentences when I was younger. It was fun to me (don't laugh!) I felt like I was getting to draw a picture of the sentence. Maybe it appealed to my creative side. Who knows. Anyway, I've been worried about how my girls would take to it. The curriculum we've chosen has tons of diagramming. It truly helps to see the parts of the sentence, but it can get pretty confusing at times. I've tried to present it as a puzzle or game. Annlee was getting her diagram down on her white board one day and when she was finished she looked up with this fascinated expression and said, "You know, it's like each word has it's own secret room." She gets it! I think I've found a diagramming buddy, lol!


Kaylin, on the other hand, has struggled with the diagrams this week. Admittedly, hers is getting pretty tough. After diagramming tons of sentences, I think she's caught on too!
Here is an early sentence learning how to diagram adverbs


And here is one of the later ones. It got lots more complicated as the unit progressed!


And just a few other pictures from our last two weeks...
Maryella working with our All About Spelling curriculum. I think it's really helping!


Annlee reading in her favorite spot.


Baxter in his favorite spot while we are doing school.

Weeks 18, 19, & 20 - Kenya

It was with a little sadness that we wrapped up our study of Africa last week. This has definitely been our favorite continent so far! We focused mainly on Kenya, but studied all of Africa and the savannahs. Here, Maryella and Elianna are working on a puzzle of Africa together. Elianna had a couple days of homeschooling with us before her preschool started back in January.

Playing mancala - a game that originated in Africa.

These are some of the books we enjoyed during our studies.

We drew pictures of many of the African animals throughout our three weeks. This was one of the early ones we did (yes, I draw them too!)

I found these giraffe paint by number pictures in the dollar section at Walmart back during the summer. The girls enjoyed doing these!

This torn paper lion was one of my pinterest finds.

We cut animal pictures from our old Nat Geo magazines, glued them on poster boards, and then "finished" the pictures. This girls each did these differently. I love how Kaylin cut her out animals out of their backgrounds.

The girls made clay animals one day.

They painted them on the day that we were having new floors installed. That only disrupted things for one day.

We took the animals outside after they dried so they could enjoy a mini "safari"!

The girls made African drums one day.

They also made necklaces to look like African jewelry.

We happened to drive past a sign for Payne's Prairie on our way south one day. I didn't even know it was there! We had just learned that there are grasslands on each continent - African Savannah, European and Asian steppes, South American pampas, and North American prairies. This was a perfect find for a quick field trip!

We learned that children in some parts of Africa like to collect scraps of old wire and twist them together to make vehicles to play with. These toys are called galimoto. We used pipe cleaners to make ours.

Annlee's galimoto (and notice those new floors! Woo hoo!)

As our three week "trip" to Africa came to an end, it was time to try out some African food. We shelled peanuts together and then roasted them as a treat to eat while the rest of the dinner cooked.

We enjoyed meat on a stick, corn and peas, chapitas (a fried flat bread), and sweet potatoes. They grow lots of yams in Africa. I'm sure they don't bake them as fries like we did, but that's the only way my girls will touch them.

I think the favorite part of the meal was that they got to eat with their hands! Not many utensils used in Kenya!

We had fun making all the little foldouts to include in our lap books.

I think these really help the girls retain what they are learning. Plus, it's a handy way to show off the things we've talked about.

Remember those pictures of the giraffes we drew? We ended up drawing lots more animals during the three weeks. We use the Draw, Write, Now books to draw them. We all love doing them! These are Kaylin's animals. Hopefully they show up here. I thought she did a really great job! Here Kenyan fact cards are shown here too.