Razorback Academy

First of all, we’ve been really busy due to our upcoming move. We’ve started doing 4-day weeks for school except for history and some catch-up science if need be on Fridays. The kids seem to have it in their heads that this is a “day off,” but I keep stressing that it is TO CLEAN.

G finished his Egyptian death mask a couple weeks ago, and I finally took a picture of him with it. I thought it turned out really well! The paper mache’ wasn’t too terribly messy either!

Last week we covered creation and Noah’s Ark in history. We went out to our front yard with the tape measure and measured out just how big Noah’s Ark was. We literally ran out of room on our street!!! Granted, there are only 8 houses on our street (a cul-de-sac), but still! It was really neat to see just HOW BIG it was!

C recently finished up his 3rd grade math book and started on 4th grade. He had a rough day earlier this week and was saying it was because I’m making him do 4th grade math when he’s only in the 3rd grade. I finally came out and said, “C, it’s because you’re good in math. It’s a GOOD thing.” He seems to be the type that he expects everything to come easily to him, and if there is the SLIGHTEST challenge he thinks it’s the worst thing in the world. Hmmmmm I think that’s called “perfectionism.” I wish he would feel that way about his chores!

We are doing the Book-It! reading incentive program with Pizza Hut, and L read her goal pages for this month about 10 days into it. Yay!!! So far she seems to be the only one who will be getting a pizza for October. G MIGHT; we’ll see. Maybe when C and J see them get pizzas, it will light a fire under them.

J will be starting his K curriculum in about a week. He’s learning about different bugs right now, and he has had fun with that. Last week it was different animals, and he LOVED that. He seems to be really excited about learning to read – learning about different letters is one of his favorite things.

Next week Grandma & Grandaddy are coming for a visit, and everyone is SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited about that!!!!! We won’t do much “book school,” but we have a couple of field trips planned, and that will be a lot of fun!

One of today’s assignments in history was to make a Flora and Fauna booklet for our Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Unit 1 lapbook.  So G, C, and L were discussing what plants and animals were grown in ancient Egypt.  Pomegranates, melons, onions…

C pipes up and says, “Pickles?”

C and L are doing Lower Grammar work (3rd and 2nd grades) in history, and one of their projects this past week was to make an Egyptian paddle doll similar to ones that ancient Egyptian children would have made and played with. Here they are with their final products:

These were relatively easy to make. It just took several steps due to paint needing to dry. G is doing Upper Grammar work since he is in 5th grade, and he is making an Egyptian death mask. (Of course, since this thing looks relatively involved and requires paper mache’ LOL!)

The three of them just finished a salt dough map of an imaginary place that shows different geography landforms. (I’ll try to add a picture of that later.) I was proud of how well they worked together without much help from me. I told them what landforms had to be on it, and they went at it!