Weeks in review

School is still going so, so well.  I am amazed daily at how well everything is going. Raelee's level of learning is so high this year.  Her favorite subjects continue to be science, history and grammar (who likes grammar??)  Her spelling is getting 100 times better. She is really truly trying to spell correctly.

We are still working our way through Story of the World and REAL Science Odyssey. Both are very project based. Combine that with loads of library books, and we are learning a ton (yes, I say we, because I'm learning just as much.)

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Writing a Cuneiform letter to her friend.

She is in a weekly Science class. This session is learning about simple machines. I love the fun stuff she comes home with. She is learning a lot from the classes.

She observed slugs *shudder*

Independent reading time

We learned about Octopuses. I had seen this idea online and decided to make this fun lunch. Raelee really loved it and now asks for octopuses for lunch.

Cuneiform 'stone'

Patches 'helping' with school

Buster and Goofy are never very far during school. Usually causing problems.

She learned how to use a dictionary in school.

In history, we made bricks with sand and glue. It was a very realistic way to learn about how the Egyptians made bricks. Unfortunately  our's won't dry so we won't be able to make a pyramid out of them.

Next, we made a scroll out of real Papyrus (reed paper) that came directly from Egypt (thanks to my friend that gave us some!) She drew hieroglyphics on it. We talked about which one she thought would be better to write information on. She decided the Papyrus would be good because it was so portable.

So we put it to the test. We took both forms and put it in an Egyptian desert for thousands of years (or in the oven to speed up the process).

When it came out of that hot desert, the Papyrus was very brittle and broke to pieces. You could still make out the pictures though.  The 'stone' was still 100% fine.

It started raining and flooding in Egypt and both of them got very wet and soggy. 

When the rain finally stopped and the archeologist found it thousands of years later, the Papyrus was broken up and non-readable. The stone had some worn spots on it but you could still read most things on it.

Raelee then changed her tune. She decided that for history's sake, the stone was better even though it was heavier to carry around.  We learned that there is a lot known about Ancient Egyptians but not as much known about the other two time periods in Egypt because of the use of Papyrus rather than stone.

In science, we are studying animals, from the simplest form to the more complex. Today, we studied Echinoderms (Starfish, Sea Cucumbers, and Urchin). She happened to remember she had a sand dollar in her room from our trip to San Francisco. She studied that with her magnifying glass and was interested to find out that it has thousands of tiny holes in it.

I remembered that months ago, Daddy brought home a sea urchin and put it in a jar. I opened up that jar to show Raelee and boy did it stink. GROSS. However, the urchin was fun to examine. We also watched movies about Echinoderms.

We learned about where the muscles are located on the Echinoderms. We did this by using a banana peel.

We are learning all about Egyptians in History.  We were supposed to make a Chicken Mummy but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So, we are mummifying an orange and a potato instead.

Raelee pretended she was preparing a real person. She informed me when she took out the liver, the stomach, etc. She gave lots of 'EWWW there is SO much blood' drama.

We disinfected it with wine (or mouthwash since I didn't have alcohol and I wasn't wasting wine on this..lol)

Covered it in spices.

Buried it in Natron (salt and baking soda mixture)

 Now we wait and swap out natron. I will post a picture when we are finished with this project.

We also played a game where Raelee got to be the person that got to prepare the body. She enjoyed it even though I thought it was a bit gross. Did you know that they pulled the deceased person's brain out through their nose? Now THAT'S gross!

We are thoroughly enjoying ourselves and I think Raelee is learning a lot this year. She answers "YES" when somebody asks if she likes school. I would consider it a success, wouldn't you?