While studying creation, I thought the dc would enjoy doing a mixed media type art project, pulling out all of the odds and ends from our craft box.  We cut the pages for each day in graduating sizes. These are the pages from ds' book.

Day 1-Cut 2" wide.  Colored black on top and white on the bottom.  Days are numbered on the bottom inside of clouds. 

Day 2-Cut 3" wide.  Colored dark blue on the bottom and lighter on top.  Cotton used for clouds.

Day 3-Cotton for clouds.  Green yarn for tree tops.  Yellow yarn for ???

Day 4-Yellow yarn for sun.  White yarn for moon.  Foam stars.

Day 5-Yellow yarn for sun.  Green yarn for seaweed.  Fish stickers.

Day 6-Yellow yarn for sun.  Green yarn for tree tops.  Foam turtles and frogs. Fish sticker.

Then we bound the outside of the pages with scotch tape.  

I didn't expect to do many field trips that relate to Y1U1, since we don't live in the Middle East or Egypt!  lol  But we did manage to get out to see some cool stuff! 

The IMAX was showingMystery of the Nile which was really interesting. There are also teacher materials and a DVD to purchase. 

The museum has an interesting exhibit on mummies.  We saw lots of cool stuff that we had studied, as well as how modern technology is used to identify mummies.

See if your local area is hosting The Tabernacle Experience.  I have heard that there has been one in my state, but we have never been able to go to it.  This looks pretty interesting! 

Quite frankly, overlay map projects confuse me and I need step by step instructions.  But I was able to figure out how to apply the idea to a project which would interest us.  When we studied the Great Flood, we learned about mountain building and the massive erosion that created river beds, piles of fossils crushed into each other and covered with mud, huge canyons, etc.  We decided to do overlays on the major geographical features of today that probably resulted from the Great Flood.

We started with a base map of the world. This can be printed on paper or cardstock, although I didn't realize that and printed it on a transparency.  When I did that, I realized I needed a paper backing of some sort so it would stand out. 

Then we got a fresh transparancy, hole punched that and added that to the 3 ring binder, on top of the base map.  The dc colored with a yellow sharpie, the deserts of the world. Then on a piece of yellow paper (lower left corner) they numbered and listed the major deserts.  Then they were numbered in black on the transparency (so they could all fit.)   The dc glued the yellow paper with the key to the desert information onto the transparency in a place where it would not be in the way of any information.

The next layer is for the mountains.  They used a brown piece of paper to list the major mountains of the world.  Then they used a brown sharpie to number these locations on the map. They could have even drawn some upside down v's for mountains.  I think they didnt' do that because there were already some on the base map that I used.

The next layer is for the rivers.  They used a blue piece of paper, with a list of the major rivers.  Then with a blue sharpie, they drew in the rivers and numbered them.

The final layer was for the Oceans.  For these they did not use any color coded paper.  You see a blue paper but that is the one for rivers showing from underneath.  For this layer they took a dark blue sharpie and wrote in the names of the oceans.

For our resource we used A Beka's 5th grade history text, Old World History and Geography.

We have immensely enjoyed the books suggested by TOG.  However, I wondered if ds would have any interest in them, since he was hooked soley on the Boxcar Children.  Thankfully, TOG books opened his eyes to a whole new world!  We have enjoyed additional resources as well.

When we studied Egypt, we were frustrated with our timeline dates that did not match up with a Young Earth Creationist viewpoint.  I did some research and found Christian archeologist David Down at  Answer in Genesis.  Thrilled, we used his suggested dates which made a lot more sense.  A few months after studying Egypt, a brand new book hit the Christian bookshelves, Unwrapping the Pharoahs How Egyptian Archaeology Confirms the Biblical Timeline by David Down. We were excited about using this book the next time we do Y1U1 at the Rhetoric level.

When we studied Creation, we added  Dinosaurs by Design and  The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible.  Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation was another terrific resource.  We saved chapter 2, on evolution, for our study of Darwin in Year 3. 

 When we studied the Flood, we included The Geology Book by John Morris from the Institute of Creation Research.  This book helped me put all the pieces of the puzzle together about Creation, the Great Flood and geologic processes.  We also read Footprints in the Ash: The Explosive Story of Mount St. Helens, a beautifully photographed and fascinating book by John Morris and Steven Austin.  Scientists learned a lot from Mt. St. Helens.  They learned that gorges and canyons form quickly over a matter of hours to days.  They learned that peat bogs form in months.  In essence, they learned that big destruction causes big changes.  They brought some Old Earth Scientists to the newly formed canyons and bogs and asked them when they were created.  The OE Scientists took out their tools and determined these fascinating geological places were formed millions of years ago.  When they were told they were recently and quickly formed by Mt. St. Helens, and they saw the evidence, they were silenced.  Now the OE Scientists are having to change some of their theories.  =)  Because of discoveries and observations from Mt. St. Helens, New Earth Creationists are now showcasing the Grand Canyon through new eyes.   Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail has been selling well at the Grand Canyon bookstores, much to the dismay of the Old Earth theorists.  This gorgeously book has stunning photographs of the Grand Canyon, with excerpts from Young Earth Creationists about the clues found in the canyon. 

Then of course we watched The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.  It  helped us make connections between Egypt and the Israelites. It was so cool to actually see all the stuff we had read about.  Also, it was fun to pick out any errors.  It's been almost two years and I can't remember any errors.  There might have been but it was pretty accurate. 

I was asked the other day how I sewed our ancient costumes. These are the basic steps I used for costumes for dd and I.

First I measured each of us, from the neck down to however far we wanted the garment to fall. DD and I wanted them to go to our feet so I measured to our feet.  I multiplied that by 2.  That is how much fabric I need.  Then we went to the fabric store and purchased their cheapest white fabric. Now when fabric comes off the bolt, it is folded like this:

The selvage is the factory finished edge.  The cut sides have obviously been cut with scissors.  When we got home, I refolded the fabric to lay like this:

I smoothed out all the wrinkles. Then I cut a semicircle in the top for the neck opening and sewed up the sides almost all the way...like this:

The solid line shows where I cut the neck opening.  If I estimated that too small, I can always cut it bigger. The dashed lines show my seam lines.  The arms go through the opening above the seam lines.  I did not do any hemming or finish work.  After all, these are ancient costumes!  I tucked in the sleeves so the raveled edges wouldn't show.  If the raggy edges showed on the hem, I told the dc to say that came from miles of walking!  We were ancients after all!  LOL 

Since the Egyptians liked to wear gold, Dd and I wore gold belts.  I took out some gold lame fabric from my fabric stash and tied them around our waists.  Done!

I bought some cheap gold jewelry for me to wear.  DD made her own out of Sculpey clay.  She just followed directions in some of the craft books we had.

For ds, I just got a smaller piece of white fabric, wrapped it around his waist and used a safety pin to hold it in place.  Then I got a strip of white fabric to wrap around his waist for a belt.  I had found a web site with some color sheets for Egyptian collars.  I forget where this was found, but that is the neck ornament ds is wearing.  He made a band for his arm too. 

Then we all put on dark brown eyeshadow for Kohl.  I think that's how simple our costumes were.  Oh, we did go barefoot too!

 I used to do costumes for the children's choir at church and I learned tons about making the most of the biggies for the greatest impact and not sweating the small stuff!  Really!! So for Egypt, the key elements are white fabric and gold accents. 

My mom was the only person game enough to accept our invitation! lol  She was shocked to see us!  (At this time, ds is 10 and dd is 12.)

Here we are with Slipper kitty.  Moments before Mom's arrival, ds suggested that we come up with a brief introduction of who we were, with a testimony that we had changed our faith to the one true God of the Hebrews.  Slipper posed as the Cat of Bubastees, one of our favorite books written by GA Henty that I read aloud to them.  Mom never dreamed we would be dressed up!  She loved it!

After our introductions, ds opened the unit celebration with the shofar he made out of paper mache. 

 Then we ate food typical of the various cultures we had studied.

Our favorite was the pomegranate.  I have never used these before.  I had to google instructions on how to use them.  They are full of seeds and these are what you eat.  They are filled with a great liquid.  I also found a wonderful recipe!  First you roll the pomegranate on the counter top to smash the seeds inside.

Then you poke a hole into the fruit with a skewer and insert a straw.  The world's first soft drink!  LOL

Then we showed off our projects.  Here is one of ds' seven page flip books on Creation.  We made each page a different size and they increased by one inch as they got bigger.  This is the day the stars were created.  We already had a million foam stars someone had given the dc for crafts, so we pulled them out for this project.

 Here's his page on the day the frogs and turtles (more foam shapes) were created.

 Here is one of dd's pages.  Don't you love the flamingo?  I think she used a stencil for that, the cat and the flower.  And she used cotton for the clouds. 

Scanning the table from right to left you see...

Here are overlay transparancy maps.  We did these for the Great Flood. I used numerous Creation resources to study geology and the Flood.  From looking at recent big floods and volcanic eruptions (like Mt. St. Helens) Creationist Scientists have seen that big floods create huge canyons within days, not millions of years.  After all, when do you see the greatest erosion, over years of peaceful weather, or after floods?  When we first moved into our house, there was no grass and we had a hill.  That was fine, until it rained and the harder it rained, the more erosion I had.  I needed to hurry up and put grass down before my yard washed completely away!  We've had 3 different hundred year floods in our area since our dc have been born.  The one flood caused waters to go over the spillway of a dam for the first time ever...creating a new course of direction for the river and a new canyon. After the flood waters started to recede and the river road was passible again, we drove down and were shocked at the change!  Using this as the baseline for our theories, our transparency maps reflect these changes.  I think my next blog article will feature how we did some of these activities.  I'll do a close up in the next article as well as some of the resources we used which were not part of the TOG curriculum. 

 These are the salt dough maps of the Nile River.

My dc were just learning how to use IEW and KWO with simple paragraphs.  So we took one of our paragraphs and made a pop up book!

Another pop up book with a paper boat... 

Our major art project was the tabernacle.  I knew this represents our relationship with God and is referenced over and over again in the Bible.  Therefore I prioritized for us to understand this better.  And how better to understand it than to make a model?  I'll detail how we made it in the next blog entry.

Here is ds lifting the different covers to the tabernacle, explaining the significance of each one.

Here is the inside from the top...

Today, we can sketch out all the pieces and what they are and what they represent!  This is an extremely meaningful project!

Well, at the end, Mom was quite impressed!  She said she was going to tell everyone they needed to come to the next one..when would that be she asked?  This was not fluff she said, as best as I can remember.  But she was really impressed and wanted us to do another one!  For the record, my mom has come to all of them (8 now), Dad has come to the next 7, my MIL has flown in from 1500 miles away to 2 (at the end of each school year).  My dad's cousin was visiting during one and she attended the Elizabethan one.  We now e-mail these blogs to my ds' former Sunday School teacher who has been a wonderful encourager to us!  I've been to shy to invite them!  Should I?  ;)  I should also add, that although my mom is incredibly impressed with this and could sit and just ask questions all day and listen to every book, every story, every detail, my dad gets lost...and so do I!  I also quickly saw the opportunity to do speeches and recitations.  So I add something new that is higher level to each one, trying to make them more creative and interesting, building skills my dc need to build anyway.  I am open to the idea that this could be boring for someone who is not a grandma or grandpa, so I've been hesitant to invite anyone else for fear of boring them to tears.  That was one reason I had the "walk through the museum" idea, but that has never happened.  Our guests are always ready for us to tell our story of HIStory.  To God be the glory!