MFW Adventures Week 3

Our third week of school is sadly over.  We had an amazing week! Jake is back from granny's house and he truly loved school this week. Who wouldn't love this program?

I think more than anything, he loved our new school mate. Henry is a 13 week Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. He is a true joy to our family.

 
Bible: The focus for our scripture reading this week was Jesus Saves. The kids spend the week  memorizing John 3:16. We discussed the verses that were read and about how Jesus guides us that we should live like him. Our family really took this weeks lesson to heart. The kids reacted very different after their time-outs this week. We sat and talked with them that Jesus would not have broken the family rules and disobeyed his parents. Throughout the days, we would speak to them before they crossed the line and asked if Jesus would be doing what they were. It worked wonders, they would stop. The kids enjoyed creating window art and with the name Jesus on it.

History: We traveled back in time and spent the week at Jamestown with Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.  We read about John Smith and his role in the establishment of Jamestown.   The kids loved the story from American Pioneers and Patriots.  The story talked about the mother going to the river to wash the table napkins. My younger two (5yrs and 7yrs) giggled about having to wash the clothes and bath in the river. 

This gave me the idea for us to make our own laundry soap.  All you need is Water, Borax, Washing Soda, and a bar of body soap. Boil 4 cups water, then add 1/3 shredded bar of soap. Once the soap is dissolved, add 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 washing soad. Once that is dissolved, pour into a large container that has 6 cups of hot water. Stir and then add 1 gallon cold water.  Stir and let sit for 24 hours.  Done!

It comes out in a gel form.  I blended it down into a liquid and added it to a gallon milk carton.  Here is the finished product in a milk carton. It makes 1 1/2 gallons of laundry soap.  This was so easy and cheap. I'm doing this from now on.  You can add your own essential oils if you want too.

This was the movie that we watched this week.  The kids highly enjoy that we have lots of movies to watch about our history topics.  It really seems to help them understand our lessons. It also sparks a lot of questions.

We made another map from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History. It shows the route taken by the three ships carrying settlers who founded Jamestown.  Through the  material within this book, we learned about the true first settlement in North America at Roanoke Island. Boy did I get a lot of questions from the kids about the settlement of Roanoke Island. What happen to them? Did they suffer? Were they taken by Indians? Next week we will complete the Roanoke Mini-Schroll Book.

We made our first project from Easy Make & Learn Projects : Colonial America. This is another amazing book that goes along wonderfully with My Father's World Adventures.  For this project we make a 3-D map of Jamestown.

Once again we used the Draw and Write Book three this week. Emily decided to draw Pocahontas.

Our favorite book from the book basket this week was Adventures in Colonial America, Jamestown (New World Adventure). My kids enjoyed the book so much that we read the entire story in one day. Normally we would have read the book over 2-3 days. We have many others from this series and I hope the kids enjoy them just as much. Another favorite was The Settling of Jamestown.

We completed Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims as our read-aloud. The kids enjoyed the story so much, they asked to keep reading. We were to complete the book over the next two weeks, but who can say no when you kids want you to read! I was amazing at how much Jake loved this book.  He called it the boy book.  He liked that the book did not focus much  on Pocahontas. I have to make sure that I find more "boy books" that he will enjoy this year that go along with our studies. I get so focused on the girls stuff, I forget that he is officially schooling now. 

The kids are looking forward to our book basket next week, where we will learn more about the Indians.  We will be making a wigwam like Squanto would have lived in. I think Jake will really love this. He is really going to make this school year fun! 

Science: Air, air, and more air. We learned about air pressure and how it effects things.  The kids love experiments that include anything to do with food, and that includes juice boxes.

For our second experiment we watched how air pressure can trick us. We put a ruler on the table and tapped it. It easily fell down, just as the kids thought it would.  Then, we laid a piece of newspaper over the ruler, we had to push much harder to make the ruler fall. The kids were amazed and couldn't stop giggling at their results. They learned that the air pressure was much stronger when adding the newspaper.

To complete the last task , we filled a glass up with water, added a piece of cardboard on top of it, and turned it over. What do you think happened? Yes, giggles and more giggles. The water did not pour out.  Magic, as they called it.



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