Posted in History

Last week started our leassons on Mummies. We are stretching this part of histoy for a few weeks as it intrigues him.  So here we are making Mummies. I did this two years ago when Chantelle did this subject.

Posted in History

By now, for those of you who were following the race, know that veteran Lance Mackey has once again won the Iditarod. I had Chantelle pick three mushers to follow, just incase one of them scratched. Guess what? Two of them did. The only one from her picks to finish was 18 year old Melissa Owens, a rookie from Nome. She came in 30th place. Not bad. Here is a wonderful blog article about Melissa's finish.

Posted in History

This past Saturday the 6th annual Iditarod began. I had Chantelle pick a few mushers to follow. The chose two rookies and one veteran. The rookies are, Rodney Whaley and Melissa Owens. The veteran she chose is Jessica Hendricks. Click on their links to see the positions they are currently running in. They are updated several times a day.

For the most part we are using the offical website of the Iditarod for following along with the race. You can also read updates at Zuma's Paw Prints, a "dogs" view of the competition.

For some lesson plans to go along with the Iditarod, check out these sites:

Iditarod for teachers

Iditarod and Alaska Unit Study

Iditarod printables

An E-Iditarod Project

Another Iditarod Unit Study

Lesson Plans for the Iditarod

There are a ton more links out there, but these are just a few of what we will be using. You can find a bunch more links, all neatly arranged here at Karen's Korner.

Make sure to get plenty of books on the subjects, such as mushers, sled dogs, Alaska, and of course the Iditarod itself. We are reading (see side bar for links to them):

Balto by Natalie Standiford

Iditarod Dream by Ted Wood

Mush! by Patricia Seibert

These are just the few that our library had on the topic. Our library is really lacking in some areas, this one is one of them.

We are also doing the Iditarod lapbook by Hands of a Child.

Posted in History

Here are the books we used with our two history spines to study Ancient Egypt. I have also updated our list of Anceint Egypt links we used.

Clothes of the Ancient World

Tales of Ancient Egypt

The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone

Fun With Hieroglyphis

Drawing History - Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Design Coloring Book

Hatshepsut! His Majesty, Herself

Mara, Daughter of the Nile

The Golden Goblet

The Egypt Game

Posted in History

Yesterday was our homeschool groups annual Heritage Day. This was our first year doing it so I wasn't too sure what we should make. Chantelle chose to do Poland, mostly because she is part Polish on her father's side. This is what her progect looked like:

We got some books on Poland at the library and I made up some word searches and crossword puzzles to pass out to the other kids at the Heritage Day. I even got a unit study from edHelper that got Chantelle started. (You have to be a member to get the unit studies. I signed up to access everything for one year and it cost me only 40.00)

Silly me, I forgot to bring my camera to the actual event, so we took pictures today at home. I did have someone take a picture of Chantelle's project atthe event, but it will be a few days before I get it.

Some of the other kids projects were wonderful. There was this huge set up on the American Indians complete with prarie grass, one on Guana, Egypt, and Italy. Two kids even made up their own countries. It was so nice to see their imaginations at work to create these countries complete with maps, flags and even how life is on the country.

My most favorite was the one on Israel. The mom had gone there and I spent some time looking at her photo album. She even had familiar children's books written in Hebrew. Matt was so excited to see Goodnight Moon and I thought it was funny to see the Mr. and Miss books I grew up with in Hewbrew. Matt got a kick out of the fact that you read the books from back to front and right to left, opposite of what we do. 

At the end, all the children who participated received a Certificate of Achievement.

I am all ready thinking about what the kids can do next year. Both will be participating next year. Only Chantelle did it this year.

Posted in History

Now that we are done studying about Ancient Egypt, I wanted to share the links that we used to help fill out the texts we use as spines.

 Gander Academy's Ancient Egypt Pages

 Hieroglyphic Translator

Directions for Making Egyptian Materials

Egyptian Lesson Plans

Egyptomania Coloring Book

Senet an Egyptian Board Game

114 Egyptian Gods & Godesses

Discovering Egypt

Online Pyramid Building Game

Explore the Pyramids

Online Mummy Maker

 The Ten Plagues

The Ten Plagues on Egypt - What were they?

Posted in History

Last week as a finish to our studies on Ancient Egypt, Chantelle and I baked and frosted a sheet cake to look like a map of Egypt. I did the baking while she was finishing up her other lessons and tinted the frosting blue and orange. Blue for the water and orange for land. Chantelle scratched out the map on the cake with a toothpick before we frosted it. She also made up little flags to point out certain areas on the map. So here it is:

Posted in History

Last week, Chantelle and I were studying about Tutankhamen and it reminded me of the Saturday Night Live skit back in the 70's that Steve Martin did. Well I found a little video of it over at YouTube and wanted to share it all with you. So here is Steve Martin as King Tut.

Posted in History

Yesterday Chantelle and I started making the canopic jars. She made the human and baboon while I made the hawk and jackal. We used pasta sauce jars and a paper mache mix to make them. Once they are done drying, we will be painting them and I'll take a picture of the finished work.

Here is a picture that my hubby took of me and Chantelle making 2 of the canopic jars. I am working on the hawk and Chantelle on the human. What a messy table we had that day.

Here are the 4 jars right after we make the heads. We left them near the window to dry. Today we will complete to covering ofthe jars and let them dry a few days.

Chantelle also made a model of an Egyptian garden, think the garden the Egyptian women were at in the 10 Commandments movie.

Paper towel tube pillars, construction paper trees, foil water and paper fish and turtles.

Posted in History

Today we did lesson 11 in Mystery of History. The activity for the younger child was to make a mummy out of a stuffed animal. Well being a kid at heart, I decided to make a mummy out of Matt.

He's alive !

Of course I also had both the kids make a stuffed animal into a mummy. Chantelle did her Build a Bear horse 'Beauty'.

Matt made his teddy bear 'Fuzz' into a mummy as well.

Posted in History

Chantelle and I have been studying different styles of ancient writing. Here are pictures of 2 different forms that she learned about:

Heiroglyphics

Can you figure out what it says?

Cuneiform

Even though there is a spelling mistake, can you figure out what it says?

Posted in History

The other day Chantelle and I did Chapter one in SOTW. One of the activities in the activity book was to create a cave painting. This is a picture of Chantelle's "cave painting".

Some of the activites in the book are a bit young for her, like this one. But I still like to have her do them to add a little hands on stuff. I also give her assignments that are more to her level to complete.

Posted in History

Starting this week we are finally getting into the interesting part of the events leading up to the American Revolution, as well as the war itself.

 I got this book by Scholastic called Hands-On History American Revolution (ISBN 0439072085) that has tons of hands on pages that will help reinforce what we will be learning. I plan on having the pages comb bound at Staples into a book once we are done.

I also found a computer game called Liberty's Kids (like the tv show). I was playing it the other day when Chantelle was away so that I can see what we have to do in it.

You are a reporter and have to travel around asking questions, "drawing" a picture for the front page of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

Your first assignment is to find out all you can about the Boston Tea Party. Lots of people to talk to, some of which know nothing about what happened, some make stuff up. Some of the people won't talk to you unless you find an object that they lost. You have to go find this object and give it to the person to talk to them. You also  have to talk to someone famous like Sam Adams and Paul Revere.

Once you have talked to everyone that you can and have copyed down what they said, it is time to head back to Pennsylvania to print your paper. You pick a sketch for your picture and find the most truthful responces to the questions asked. There is a feedback button you can click to see how well you have done. The more papers you sell, the better you are doing.

I have only done the first 2 assignments (the second one is about the battle at Lexington & Concord) but I like how in depth it is. I actually learned some things that I never had before. I believe you can print out the actul paper that you made up because there is a print button you can click. I am going to go play it again today and see if I can do that. If we can print it out, we will add them to the book that I mentioned above.

I have also gotten the Declaration of Independence lapbook research pack and ebook from Hands of a Child to work on. Right after I got it, they came out with an American Revolution pack that I am going to have to beg my hubby to get for us.

I have to head out to the library tomorrow and pick up a bunch of books that I have on hold about different battles of the war as well as different people. I am planning on reading the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Longfellow as well as a little bio of Longfellow himself (which I have misplaced after I printed up).

Awhile back when we were studying the Salem Witch trials, I had my aunt send me a copy of out family tree. I knew we were related to Rebecca Nurse and I wanted to show Chantelle. While looking at it, and we only had a summed up version of the tree, I noticed that we are also related to Longfellow. How cool is that!