Money Games

I realized that Monkey is still a bit weak on money. Rather weak, in fact. We've done it before, but it's been quite some time and so we're practicing place value with coins this week. I got the rods out and made a "key" for him, so if he forgets he can look and see: a penny =1, a nickle=5, dimes=10, and quarters=25. I think I'm going to get some rubber bands out next time to bundle the rods into units of 25, rather than just individual rods adding up to 25. And then, although it's hard to see the movie I made, I also mirror what he's doing with coins in the rods. It seemed to work out pretty well.

Egypt's Middle Kingdom

We're studying the Middle Kingdom of Egypt in history right now, and it's interesting stuff! One of the things we discovered is this temple in Abu Simpel that was built by Rameses II, and then had to be moved in the 1960s when they decided to dam the Nile and create a lake that would have swamped the temple. These clips tell the story of how it was saved.








We also watched a second documentary, which highlighted some of the technical difficulties of the move, as well as a cool feature of the original engineering and how they set up the light in the temple.









We found a copy of the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, and it's proved to be a lovely treasure-trove of information and they have some great links. That's how we discovered Abu-Simpel, and we also read about Ramases II, and about the Middle Kingdom. And they pointed us in the direction of some cool online exhibits from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we read about a scribe named Wah, his employer Meketre, and the cool funary models they had in their tombs.

Model of a bakery & brewery, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Chinese New Year

There aren't any Chinese New Year events in our area, so we're watching some of the cool stuff online. And it is very cool.

Weekly Wrap-up

Early in the week, we tried to get the last of our garden chores done before the snow came. It's been unseasonably warm, and it makes it feel like early fall, rather than late fall. I even briefly contemplated moving some strawberry plants, but decided that it's too late. Good thing I left them where they are: now we have snow on the ground. But it was a balmy 50F the day we worked in the garden.

Our Little Golden Dragon is struggling to get over a relapse of his bronchitis that he had a while back, but he's a trooper and is mostly cheerful most of the time. He and Monkey enjoyed an art project this week. They painted egg cartons, and Monkey has ambitions to turn his into a caterpillar. This is one of several crafts that Monkey thought up this week. It's fun to see him gaining enough confidence to think up his own crafts and then get them started! These caterpillars, being a painting craft, he had to ask for help. But one day this week I finished putting Dragon down for a nap and found him hard at work on a new folder game for us to use in phonics. We worked together to finish it off, then played with it right away. I need to find my contact paper and cover it, so that it will last through many games.

Speaking of phonics, it's going so well! We introduced the silent e this week, and Monkey had no problems with it. There for a while I felt like we were going sooo slowly, and wondered if we would ever get to the long vowel sounds, and now here we are! OPGTR actually breaks the silent e words into several lessons, but we covered a couple of them this week, in spite of not doing anything with it on Monday and Tuesday. We used a "magic e machine" (a cardstock frame we put the CVC words into to change the vowel sound) and his new folder game to practice. I just love hiding our phonics drill in games. We'd have fights over it every day if it wasn't for Happy Phonics and the other games we play!

In History, we covered Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as Joseph in Egypt. We also had a look at the royal burials in Ur, since that's where Abraham came from. We were working with the Scripture Storybooks the Church puts out, since SOTW doesn't quite match up. Ur is pretty interesting. We spent some time exploring Queen Pu-Abi's tomb. Monkey didn't know what a lyre is, so I found a youtube clip to show him. It's Anglo-Saxon, not Sumerian, but it's the same general idea, and was enough that the picture made sense to him. We talked about the cylinder seals they used, and a little of what they used them for, then we used the clay that was leftover from making our cuneiform tablets to make a cylinder for Monkey and put a little cuneiform on it. Unfortunately, it was a short night last night, and so when I was putting Dragon down for his nap I passed out too... and the cylinder was burned black. We may make another one. Which would be OK. Turns out they had holes in them to string them onto pins and wore them. So if we do it again we'll try to make a hole through the middle (a needle maybe?) to make it more accurate. He had a great time working the clay and made quite the collection of little balls and even a turret while he was "getting it soft." The Sculpey being hard didn't seem to bother him much! In any case, we had a good time looking at pictures of cylinders, checking out Queen Pu-Abi's cylinder, and later I did some reading about them too. Interesting stuff.

 Here's his narration of the story of Joseph in Egypt. I'm thinking that we may look to see if Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is still on YouTube. A while back we watched it, since someone had helpfully put it all into a playlist.

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Joseph was a righteous man. He taught his brothers about his dream, and then they sold him some Ishmaelites. They took him to Egypt. Potiphar bought Joseph. He was happy that he had Joseph and he put him in charge of his whole house. Potifer’s wife tried to make him kiss her, but Joseph didn’t, and he ran away from her. Then Potiphar’s wife told Potiphar that he kissed her. He put Joseph in jail.


He got out of jail when the king put him in charge of his whole land. Joseph was supposed to give them food for the seven years of no food. His brothers came to buy food. He told them that he was Joseph because they didn’t know it at first. He told them to come to Egypt. They did it.

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Math is going awesome as well. Monkey's fine motor skills are starting to catch up a bit, so I started teaching him his numbers this week. Not too shabby, for the first official instruction. He decided that he likes the other kind of 4 - the one that's open on top - better than the one in the font, and I'm fine with that. In addition to learning to write the numbers, we continued to work on addition with sums to about 15. We also bumped into multiplication, played with some inequalities, and did some dot-to-dots. The choose-your-own adventure style math that Miquan suggests is working out beautifully! He's requesting certain types of sheets, which makes me happy since he's practicing his facts happily, and it makes him happy because he gets to choose what he wants. His choices are based on the decorations, which makes this very easy right now! We even discussed negative numbers just a little bit, courtesy of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, our current read-aloud: If Grandma Georgina is 78, and she eats 4 pills that each take 20 years from her life, how old is she? Why did she disappear? We used a number line, and it took 2 tries to explain it, but I think he followed the logic of the negative numbers. He wasn't that interested, which is fine, but I think he got the concept. I like that.

Other than that, the main excitement in my week was getting nominated for the Homeschool Blog Awards - super exciting! (I'm under Variety and Methods.)  How was your week?

Volume = LOUD

Loud, but enthusiastic today as he was practicing his memory work. I think we'll have to work on the "polished performance" part some...





In case you didn't quite catch what he's saying, here's the words to the poems.

Caterpillar
by Christina Rosetti

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry
Take your walk
To the shady leaf or stalk.

May no toad spy you
May the little bird pass by you
Spin and die
To live again a butterfly.


Cottleston Pie
by A.A. Milne

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie"

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie
A fish can't whistle and neither can I
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie"

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie
Why does a chicken? I don't know why!
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie"

Downy Woodpecker

A Safeguard and Protection

After listening to Brother Bednar's talk in Conference I wanted to find a way to help Monkey begin to learn to love family history work. Although the talk was primarily addressed to youth, Brother Bednar also specifically included children in his remarks. Then, after I found another clip (below) on lds.org, my husband and I became even more determined to find a way to make this happen.

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I will hardly ever ask the question, "Are you preparing to go on a mission?" I will ask the question, "Are you worthy to be in the temple? And will you be next year? And will you be the year after that? Are you doing the research in your own family, and helping other people with their research?" 

That, for a young person, in the wickedness of the world in which we live today, is one of the greatest safeguards against the temptations of the adversary.

-David A.Bednar

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A safeguard against the temptations of the adversary; protection from the wickedness of our world.

We need that.

We need to protect our children so they can grow up to the Lord! Now that he says it, it makes perfect sense that the temple would offer that protection to our children and youth. Of course the temple will draw my children closer to the Lord! Funny, President Hunter invited us to make the temple the great symbol of our membership, but in teaching my son I never thought to invite him to do the same.

OK. Now what. My big boy doesn't read yet. Not enough, anyway. And the little one not at all. (Though he does point at my alphabet strips and say, "That-- me!") How can I involve such little ones in family history and temple work? Obviously neither one can do real research just yet.

Things we can do

• Tell ancestor stories.
• Make an "Ancestor Book" - this would be good for long, "boring" Sundays, or for Family Home Evenings.
• If I get names ready maybe they can help print and organize the temple cards
• With (a lot of) help, Monkey could put dates into PAF after a temple trip
• We could find space for an "Ancestor Map" and mark where they lived
• We can take our digital recorder to Nana & Grandpa's house & ask them for stories

What else? How can we help our children do this?

Exotic Music

This afternoon Monkey asked me, "What's a gong?" We ran across the word in phonics. I explained, but a gong must be heard to understand, so when we were done reading we visited YouTube. Turns out there's quite a bit of exotic music on there, and we had a good time.

Pyramid Documentary

Oh the things you can do with a few clicks of the mouse! We've been studying ancient Egypt, and I discovered that not only does Hulu have this National Geographic documentary, but they'll even let me embed it here! How cool that? We'll be watching it tomorrow morning.

Peacocks and Robins

Cuneiform

We're making our own "cuneiform" tablets today, and I wanted to show Monkey a little bit about something a little more authentic than what we're doing. I've got some video of him working on his tablet. Hopefully I can get that - and all a little of the other cool stuff I'd like to post - up here soon! Finding time for my blog has been tough lately. But here's the clips I'll be showing Monkey this afternoon, after he wakes up from his nap.

Barn Owl Babies!

We actually missed the big moment; the babies finished hatching last week. But the nest cam people were kind enough to post a clip of the 3rd baby hatching on YouTube.

Postcrossing: St. Petersburg, Russia

Music Appreciation?

Baby Cardinal Food

We learned today that although Cardinals themselves eat mostly seeds, their babies like bugs best. We got pictures of a cicada, beetles, a centipede, and a cricket from this site. I pasted them into Word and printed them all out on a single page for coloring. We also did the cardinal coloring/narration page from the Cornell birds packet (page 30). And, best of all, our cardinal pair came back to our feeder today. It's been quite some time since they visited us!

And we watched a few clips because I'm a big wuss about bugs and have *zero* desire to go find the critters in person. Flipping through our Eyewitness: Insects book sort of stresses me out. All those big beautiful illustrations. Pictures of bugs.

eww...

Crickets:


Cicada:
This one's cool: the bug sounds like a wind-up toy!


Did you know that cicadas suck on trees? Then they squirt. Frequently. Cool, in a repulsive sort of way.


Centipede:
I couldn't find anything on your average garden centipede, but check this out! That thing's a foot long! I'm guessing that cardinals don't eat this type of bug.


And here's a few on Cardinals, just to keep that last one from giving anyone nightmares!

Run

Forever Blowing Bubbles

I've needed to remind Monkey that blowing bubbles in the milk isn't good manners recently (amazing, right!), so I was pretty sure he'd like this activity. It didn't disappoint.

Monkey Plays the Banjo

Ocean Videos

Some videos to show Monkey before we make that coral reef diorama.







There is also this site with a couple of flash games and puzzles.

Some Favorites