An Extra Post

I try my best each week to make school as fun as possible and this week I think we did a pretty good job making that happen. So although I normally blog just once a month, I wanted to get this post up before I forgot some of the fun things we did. Our theme this week was Egypt and Desert Ecosystems. Although not all of our weeks have a theme, I do think it helps with giving me direction and aids me in including some fun things we may not get to otherwise.So here is a peak at some of our week.

    So each day before school or as part of our school day we start with a Bible lesson. This weeks lesson was themed around trusting and obeying and since we were talking about the desert and Egypt who better than Moses to discuss. In this picture they had just finished with a lesson on God providing Manna and quail in the desert. The kids used sand for the desert and pearled barley for the manna along with a picture of themselves and the title Trust in the Lord. I think they liked it!

This week During Social studies we discussed Ancient Egypt and touched on things like the Nile River, deltas, silt, crops, the invention of the shaduf, etc. So as a reinforcement activity we made our own Nile out of colored sand including the surrounding deserts. The best part was when they found out that the sand we used was glow in the dark and they got to take their projects in a dark room. The glowing blue Nile was a hit!

This is a photograph of a science experiment that we did after discussing how certain plants are able to survive in the desert. We made two sets of leaves using construction paper and paper towels. We then sprayed them with water and wrapped one in wax paper and left the other as it was. We then moved them to a window sill and came back an hour later to see which one had held on to the most water. It was a great way for them to see hands on how the waxy layer or coating that some desert plants have aids them in surviving, This experiment was found in a publication by Harcourt science.

You simply can not talk about Ancient Egypt and deserts without discussing pyramids which we did and then followed it up with a "sweet" project that no one complained about doing. Building your own pyramid using sugar cubes. It was interesting to see the different techniques used by each age level. Of course mummies were also discussed and with that I found a great little online activity from Discovery Kids called Mummy Maker.What I loved was that it was educational and not at all hokey. Here is the link if you are interested: http://kids.discovery.com/games/just-for-fun/mummy-maker

 Hieroglyphics were a blast! We started off with our book lesson and then as an add on I found a site that allowed you to type your name and have it translated to hieroglyphics. The kids each did their own and then printed them. What was nice was that it printed the name of each child and then also the symbols for all 26 letters of the alphabet. The kids then got a small piece of clay each and were able to carve their own hieroglyphic messages using a toothpick .This is the site for the hieroglyphic translator: http://www.eyelid.co.uk/hieroglyphic-typewriter.html


So that was some of our week and I hope that you enjoyed reading about it as much as we did learning about it!

Garden Tip!

So we did a little globe trekking this week for school and our garden tip is similar. For our tip we travel to India! One day as I was flipping through a book on natural pest control I learned that different spices could be used to deter certain bugs, and that is when it hit me. Most of the spices could be found already combined  for me in the Indian Spice tea I had in my kitchen cabinet. So I thought why not. I had been battling ants in my garden bed and nothing seemed to rid them. That is until I took a few of those bags of tea and buried them throughout my garden bed. Voila! Ants be gone!

Food! 

In keeping with our Globe trekking I wanted to show you a very cool version of rice that some may not be familiar with. It is called Black rice but also goes by the name of purple rice, forbidden rice, or imperial rice and it is grown in China. It is said to have been eaten by Royalty. Simply follow the directions on the bag and  you will have a great side dish similar in  texture and nuttiness to brown rice but way cooler, because if you eat enough it tints your teeth purple.It is a bit of a splurge but well worth it and can be found in your local supermarket.