More Fun School Stuff

We have been having so much fun with school lately. We read about the enslavement of the Isrealites and how they made bricks, so we made our own mud bricks. We used a little bit of flour, some dirt and grass, and enough water to make a paste. They baked at 200 degrees for a long time. We shaped them into bricks and decided that we would like to have a mold if we were going to be doing this every day. Here is a picture of Sister Sue making a wall with the bricks we made


Next we read about the Phoenecians. One of the things that these brave explorers were known for was the purple dye they made. We made our own purple dye from blueberries. We put them in a pot with water and boiled them for a half an hour then soaked our fabric for at least 5 minutes and now we have purple fabric. Here are the girls holding up their fabric, now we have to decide what we are going to make with it.


Today as we studied about explorers who discovered America we talked about what it was like to be a sailor. One of the things they did for fun and function is tie knots. We learned to tie a bowline knot. This is a rescue knot so it should come in handy. Here is a picture of them rescuing their dolls from after they had fallen off the ship at sea.


Miss M tied hers all by herself, Miss Mae tied hers with my help, and I tied Sister Sue's knot.

I love homeschool. We have so much fun.

Here is another random picture. This is one of the reasons that I taught Miss M to read....


So I would only have to read Green Eggs and Ham once a day instead of multiple times.

This is a well used book at our house!

Fun music finds

For music this year we are studying "The Story of the Orchestra" where we isolate individual orchestral instruments and learn to hear their sounds. I am amazed at how we are able to hear the different instruments when listening to a whole orchestra after isolating it for a whole week. In our quest to vary the songs we use to learn the instruments I have found some really fun videos on youtube that I thought I would share
This one is just weird:


This one is so pretty:



Did you know that if the french horn was stretched out it would be 12 feet long?

I fell in love with the oboe:


I also now love the bassoon:


If the contra-bassoon were stretched out it would be 16 feet long!!!

This song is beautiful and the dancing/skating is amazing:


There are many more, but I am short on time and you don't watch to sit and watch videos all days. We are having so much fun with this. I love to hear my children in the car trying to pick out the different instruments as we drive down the road listening to music. I would rather hear an argument about oboe vs. bassoon than about the toys they would like to bring.