Week 4 in Review

After a week off (don't ask), we finished out our study on the United States.

We continued in our Hero Tales book with the story of Harriet Tubman. I love that this book has a biblical character trait discussed in each story along with discussion questions. Harriet's life was a difficult one and I learned so much more than I knew about her before. That's one of my greatest joys in teaching my kids--I get to learn right beside them.

 

Our scripture memory verse for the week came from Matthew 1:23: 

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”^[a] (which means “God with us”).

The kids had a bit of fun with a problem solving challenge when we were doing geography. Their task was to take a blank map of the U.S. and color it in, using four different colors. The challenge was that no two states that touched could be the same color. I was surprised that they were able to do it fairly effortlessly. However, I'll admit I gave them a big hint (which would be that there is a point somewhere in the U.S. where you can stand in 4 states at once--start with that). 

The weather didn't allow us to take a nature walk this week, but we talked about forests and looked at places online like eNature to study various types of trees. Another fun resource for studying the outdoors is  the Crinkleroot series of books. Specifically, there is the Guide to Knowing the Trees.

Our big art project was another Native American craft from the book Global Art. The Sioux Indians would paint pictures on rawhide and tie them to sticks to represent their stories. I asked the kids to take three circles and draw some of their favorite special memories. We were going to tie them to sticks but we didn't get a chance to get them since we didn't do our nature walk. So I'll be sure to pick some up when we go out this week. So for now, here are the circles that they did.

My son drew a soccer ball (his favorite sport), a cabin for his recent camping trip, and a tv (really???).

My oldest decided that our three cats were her only favorite memories LOL.

My youngest was a little more thoughtful. She did a trip to a local water park,one of our cats, and playing with a friend that recently moved away.

Our week ended with a tasty treat from the book A Trip Around the World. To end our study of the U.S. we decided to make a traditional American recipe. We just so happened to have all the ingredients for a colonial Pumpkin Cake. Yum!

What were your homeschooling highlights this week?