Discovering Passover

You can't know where you are going until you know where you have been.....

That is why it is important to me as a Christian that my children know what the Passover is. It is important that they know why Jesus went to celebrate it, and appreciate the symbolism and the beauty of the story. For the "one" who is going to celebrate at the festival, a festival of remembering when God free's his people, and a festival where it is remembered that a lamb is sacrificed, using it's blood to cover and protect God's people, is then a festival where at the weeks end, the "one", becomes the lamb himself.

We started Wednesday with a video from Chabad.org  that reviewed the Passover story. You can go to the site and decide which of several video's are appropriate for you childs age. They have several available. I will  let you know ahead of time that this is a Jewish website and so there are some small differences in the stories that you may not be use to. We simply discussed any differences after the movie. Watch them first to make sure you are okay with their content. We followed that with a discussion about the Passover and how Jesus becomes the lamb. Of course this meant that a craft was in order....

A lamb craft- a few simple supplies, you can find any template that you like or just make 2 different size ovals for the head and body. 

This is what one of our crafters made , they were all different, some used  pasta shells, others cotton, and still others a combination of both . They added a lavender collar to the lamb because Jesus is Royalty.

From there because we were on the topic of lambs we went to you tube for a video called "Will Ewe keep me warm"? Made by the Utah Ag Classroom. The kids loved this one, I could tell by how quiet they were the whole time! Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09iWNtU-sw4

In science we are working on Physical "vs" Chemical change and so we did an experiment with wool. Steel wool that is. We took a piece of steel wool and soaked it in white vinegar for one minute, we then felt how warm the steel wool was, from there we took the steel wool and placed it in a mason jar for 5 minutes with the lid on. At the end of the 5 minutes we discussed the changes and why they occurred.

A few supplies and eager "scientists" 

Steel wool soaking in vinegar for 1 minute

Steel wool in the mason jar. Notice the cloudiness of the jar. That is due to heat being produced by oxidation.

The result after 5 minutes in the jar. A rusty piece of steel wool. 

For a complete set of instructions and the how and why please visit:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/steelwoolvinegar.html

Today, Thursday we talked about the last supper, and what it is that is eaten at Passover. We started with the story of the last supper. 

Thought I would share this. This is a picture of the Student Discovery Bible we use and is geared at ages 7-11. We really enjoy it.

From there The kids worked on coloring a Seder plate as I talked about the 15 steps of the Seder found at this site:

 http://www.chabad.org/kids/article_cdo/aid/1609/jewish/The-Seder.htm

We also looked at an interactive Seder plate online found here:  

http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/mediaplayer/flash_cdo/fileid/434480/aid/269147

A picture of their plates 

Part of our lesson included information on the Afikomen bag. It is used to hold matzah. We also discussed the game that some play which includes hiding the Afikomen bag at the beginning of the Passover meal. The person who finds it then gets a prize or treat.

These are their decorated afikomen bags.

We are going to attempt making matzah tonight for their afikomen bags...........we shall see.......

Here is our guide:  http://judaism.about.com/library/3_howto/ht_makematzah.htm



O.k. on to science, still focusing on Chemical change, and an egg is part of the Seder plate sooo.......

We are working on how to make a disappearing eggshell. The idea is that you take an egg, place it in a glass of vinegar, and watch. Immediately you will see bubbles ( carbon dioxide). This is caused by  the vinegar- an acid reacting with the calcium carbonate of the shell. This is also what causes the shell to disappear( in about a day or so).

Our bubbling egg immediately after adding the vinegar. You can use a raw or cooked egg for this, it  doesn't matter.

Well, I won't be blogging tomorrow because  I will be cleaning my house and preparing for our Easter guests, but I would like to share with you one little tradition that we do each year on Good Friday. That is the tradition of planting Jelly beans or candy. Each year we bury jellybeans or another small candy, just as Jesus was buried that Friday night. On Easter morning, the kids will find lollipops or other candies on a stick that have sprouted from where they planted their jellybeans. While they are a bit old for this, it is still something they love and want to do. When they were younger it was a fun and easy way to discuss/ explain the burial and resurrection of Christ. While I know I have pictures of this somewhere finding them would be quite a task! 

I will leave you with an image my oldest drew just a few weeks ago in church...... 

Rejoice! He lives!

Happy Easter!

       

        

College Day

So before I get to all the details of the day I should give you a little bit of the backstory. My husband and I met at a local college. My mother, after I had already graduated, went back to college at the very same school. She is now employed at the college. Because of this we were able to participate in "Bring your child ( in our case grandchild) to work day". We went last year and had a wonderful time but this year was even better!  So here are a few pictures of what we saw and learned about today!   

This is early this morning at the college after they had decorated their name tags and were waiting for the day to begin. Can I point out that I woke them up at 6:30 a.m. so we could be there at 8:30 a.m.? But it was worth it! 

A picture of them in front of a painting of the first president of the college . He was president for 30 years!  

Touring the college library- they also have a food court inside!

At the health building looking at trophies

Inside the gym burning some steam

Sweet! The Planetarium! 

I wish I would have been able to take a picture during the show. We got a 45 minute lesson that  amazed me! We learned that Saturn has an ice moon. That means that it has a moon ( named Enceladus)  with volcanoes that spew ice instead of lava. The official term for a volcano that shoots frozen water, methane, or ammonia is a cryovolcano. This is why there is a ring of ice around Saturn!  Seriously blew my mind! Eh... I mean the kids .........

This is at the science lab. They had three -10 minute stations all centered around the theme of germs. This was one. The germ games on the computer.

This was the second station they visited. Mock germ gel was applied to their hands and they were able to look at it under special lighting and see the "germs" glow. The orange is the germ gel. 

At the third section they were given black lights and asked to go around the lab and look for germs. Hot spots were handles, knobs, and keyboards.   The science department gave out bio-hazard  stickers and hand sanitizer to each child at the end of the activity. 

This was Legal Affairs. They went over the rules at school and home. They then picked a small toy or object out of a bucket. Once selected,  they were then asked to write a rule about their item. For example, if you selected an eraser, the rule could be, never chew on your eraser. They were able to keep the object they picked, and were also  given pencils from the department.   

Looking at the wall plaques on the way to visit the Fire Science department.

Fire Science! How cool  is it that they let us look at the supply room- and tools!

More Fire Science supplies!

Dragging a "child dummy" at the Fire Science activity. He/ she is very heavy by the way! 

They let them use the hose to knock down a cone!

In the "burn building" Students of the college get real experience fighting fires.  The ceiling is 600+ degrees when they are inside and it is lit! Glad we are not real students! 

Emergency Medical Services did not disappoint. They re-enacted an emergency visit to someones home. The little boy simulator talks and answers questions about how he feels during the simulation. My little boy happens to be suffering from some pretty severe allergies right now and has been coughing like a banshee for about a month. They asked if they could record his cough to use for the simulator- so funny! They also had other children act out/ say a few lines to add to the simulators vocabulary.     

Visiting some of the other simulators at the EMS department.

Criminal Justice included a little "basic training" with the kids. SO funny!

The "take down" in the Criminal Justice Department

Beating up a few  "manly targets"

It was a wonderful and busy day! And I wish I had more energy and space to share more of what we learned and did because it was a wonderful experience. I am so thankful to all of the people who made this day possible. It was truly amazing that they would take a day to welcome so many young children through their doors and educate and feed them also- pizza party! 

 Before our day was over we needed to make a quick stop over at the co-op to pick up our goodies. I couldn't resist getting a picture of one of the pretty little chickens that walk around there.  

Before I close I have to say this. To all of you ladies who work outside of the home and have families, and then come home and cook and clean.......my hat's off to you! I do not know how you do it

 everyday! We got home at almost 6:00 p.m.I am wiped! 

Alright, well, that is it for today, I hope you come back tomorrow and see what we are doing to celebrate and learn about Passover.  

Lent and Pretzels

Today was a lot of fun! Continuing with our Easter/ Spring Season lessons we worked on a pretzel themed day.
That sounds strange I know but  there is a Legend regarding the pretzel that says it was originally made by a monk during the Lenten season who gave them as treats for children who learned their prayers. They began calling these treats Pretiola which is the Latin word for little treat. How cool is it that we added another Latin word without trying! That word later became pretzel.  There is a cute story that explains it called "The Legend of the Lenten Pretzel" You can read the story here:
 http://www.sundayschoolkids.com/activities-lent-easter/1-legend-of-lent-pretzel-instru.htm

The craft to go along with our story was a "Pretiola" wreath made from pipe cleaner and a wooden wreath frame

And the result of our craft.

We then moved on to Science where we reviewed the topic of Physical "vs" Chemical change in our text. We discussed how heating/ cooking food is a form of chemical change. We followed that lesson by watching  "The Magic School Bus Ready Set Dough" The kids in the show visit a bakery and discuss chemical change.

From there I found on Scholastic.com a lesson for chemical change that included pretzel making. Hooray!

The directions from Scholastic.

You can find it here: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/subarticle.jsp?id=2850

And the results of our "Chemical Change"  lesson. 

I know I always blog about Science or Bible or some other craft but here is a little proof that we really do other subjects -Ha! 

 Well that was our day. Tomorrow is the start of Passover but we will be waiting until Wednesday to start that. Come back tomorrow and see why!

Flowers and Chocolate

I decided last night that I would save blogging both Wednesday's and Thursday's activities for today. The majority of our Easter and Spring activities are centered around Bible and Science and so two days easily combined into one post.

On Wednesday our theme was "seeds/flowers"    

Our Bible verse was Romans 8:21
       That the creation itself will be set free from it's slavery to corruption ( sin) into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

We first read the verse together and then I asked the kids what they thought the verse meant. I was surprised that they were able to figure out the meaning so easily after just reading the verse but we used the illustration I made for our theme anyway. I began by reviewing how a seed grows using a few simple pictures I drew the night before. I then showed them another set of pictures. The first of the second set was a flower pot with a cut out view of 3 seeds which I wrote their initials in.I asked them to imagine they were the seeds, the flower pot the Earth. They could imagine that the dirt was sin. The second pot was a picture with the same but in addition I included the spout of a watering can and instead of drops of water I drew hearts with crosses into the middle to symbolizing Jesus pouring his love out for us on the cross. The last picture was of 3 stick figures with flower petal outfits symbolizing that when Christ poured out his love for us we were able to break free from our sin and become beautiful creations, pleasing to God because of Christ. We also discussed how we try not to sin, not because we are afraid to be punished but because Jesus' act was one of love and we are showing love for him when we do what we know is right.

A picture of the drawings I did to explain the verse. You could also work this to fit the parable of the sower/seed

Fromm there we moved on to science where we continued our focus on the scientific method. Being that the focus was seeds/flowers we did an experiment with wildflowers. We are trying to find out which type of water will be best for growing our flowers; tap, a sugar water solution, a salt water solution, or a vinegar water solution. I gave the kids 4 small flower pots each to begin with, we labeled them and each child then painted theirs. We watered accordingly. We will be monitoring them for the next few weeks. 

All of the supplies we used this week were from things we already had but the few things I did purchase were all dollar store purchases( like the sugar and salt) and were used for more than one experiment this week.

Additional Latin word for Wednesday was Flos meaning flower.

Today. Thursday!

I can not tell you how excited the kids were for today to come because they knew that Thursdays activities somehow included chocolate Easter bunnies.

So I happened to find this amazing bible lesson using chocolate Easter bunnies this weekend when I was getting our work ready for the week. You can find it here:   http://lois-graham.com/bible-lessons-from-a-chocolate-rabbit/

It compares our spirituality as Christians to that of  a hollow or solid chocolate rabbit. I did change a little bit of the wording when I went over it with the kids but it was great. The kids were able to cut into their rabbits at the end of the lesson to find out if they had solid or hollow rabbits. 

In science we did two experiments. In the first experiment we compared how fast we could melt a piece of chocolate in our mouth using 3 methods. The first was to just let the chocolate sit in their mouth, the second- to swish it back and forth, and the third to actually suck on the chocolate. It was not difficult to predict which one would win but the idea was to get them using the scientific method format and write it out. 

Just to show that this is again the same document, I have just changed the title, image, and supply list and updated it for our lesson.

Science is fun!

For our second experiment we tested which four environmental factors/ locations would create the white speckles you see on chocolate -  a sign that the sugar and fat have separated.  You can find out more about how to do these experiments  and more on   http://www.ehow.com/info_7973926_chocolate-science-projects.html

and also http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/chocolate.html

You can check out the 3 minute video we watched on the science of chocolate here:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/videos/chemistry/chocolate.html

Our Latin word of the day was cuniculus which is a rabbit

So that was the end of our week. We do not school on Fridays but I hope you will hop on back next week when we will be learning about Passover and a few other goodies.    

Spring Chickens

Today we continued with our Spring / Easter themed lessons.

In Bible we discusses two verses;

 Matthew 23:37
.....how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

and Psalm 91:4
  He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.

We talked about why a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings, For warmth, protection, shelter.

We asked "How then is Jesus like the mother hen"? When we are afraid, or lonely, sad, or just need help, he will "warm" us by listening, guiding, and comforting us. We also talked about how Jesus work on the cross was a form of protection; He was protecting us from separation from God.

Now if you know my kids you will know that everything is a craft oppertunity and while this was very simple it did a good job illustrating what we talked about ( see image)

It may be difficult to tell but they first drew a cross on their paper, then added wings( Jesus)  and added a chick on the bottom with their name.  Jesus' protection and love.

This week our focus will be on the scientific method so we discussed the function of , and did an experiment with feathers. If you scroll to the bottom of the page on the following site you can check out the experiment we did.  http://www.hometrainingtools.com/eggs-and-feathers-projects-for-elementary/a/1484/

Observing a real feather , the barbs, and barbules

This is an example of the microsoft word documents I make for our science lessons.  It is a packet  that I made up  in just a few minutes. What is nice is that we will use it over and over , but I will just change out the image depending on the topic and re-print.

We also worked on Math(added division with jelly beans again to our regular book lessons), Spelling ( using shaving cream for fluffy/feathery spelling words), Reading, and Latin. Of course we had to add the Latin word for chicken, which is pullus by the way- heehee.

We wrapped up the day by painting with feathers- both ends. While most of the children enjoyed this, there was one who was not very happy with the abstract nature of our creations. 

When all was said and done though, I think we all agreed it was a nice day. 



Just a little update from yesterdays experiment- we have salt crystals!!! 

Well, that's all I have for today! Thanks for reading along!

Joanna