Today our baby turned one. Where has this year gone?
The older children opening Elisabeth's presents, while she enjoys playing with a balloon!
To celebrate her birthday, and Abigail's upcoming 4th birthday, we had a very special breakfast at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
Can you spot who's got glasses?
Then we went onto the Sea Life Centre in Manchester, a birthday present from Granny. We managed to book in advance and get a big reduction in ticket prices as we are home educators.
We all thoroughly enjoyed our time there and it linked in very well with our current science unit on water.
The children were especially fascinated with the jellyfish, after the project they had worked on earlier this year.
We then had a quick trip into the neighbouring Trafford Centre to enjoy the mock Ancient Egyptian architecture, to tie in with our current history topic.
And here is a short clip of the birthday girl walking.
Happy Birthday Bis, we are very blessed.
"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward." Psalm 127:3
The children and I have had an exciting and informative time getting to
grips with the culture and history of Ancient Egypt.
We have started to construct our model of the Nile. As you can see from the
photographs, we have been collecting objects that reflect our Egyptian theme.
Objects the children chose to use were camels, frogs and locusts.
The desert was made of sand, we added stones for the
mountains, and a strip of tin foil for the River Nile. Our pyramid was made using a plastic mould filled with a
mixture of sand and PVA glue.
Nathanael and Tabitha deciding where to put the clay sphinx.
Together we looked at the Biblical account of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. We talked about how they were used to construct treasure cities and other large buildings. Whilst studying the pyramids we found out about how the brick and stone would have been transported and used in Egyptian construction.
On week six we had an Ancient History Quiz and I was
surprised how much the children had actually remembered!
Nathanael chose to write his answers to the quiz upside down, like they would be printed in a book!
Next we took a look at Egyptian warfare. We found out about weaponry and battle tactics, such as the use of chariots, and read Exodus 14. The children, once again, used a mixture
of labelling, drawing and collaging to illustrate what we had learned in their history books.
We
had great fun making our own version of the Ancient Egyptian Composite Bow!
Having studied the pyramids, we decided to find out about Pharaohs, so we took a good look at the Kings and Queens of Egypt. We looked at the boy King Tutankhamun, Thuthmose III and Queens like Hatshepsut who dressed like a man, even down to the false beard!
We also watched a couple of videos clips that reflected the pomp and splendour of Egyptian royalty, such as The Royal Procession from the classic Polish movie "Faraon" by Kawalerowicz...
...and this evocative scene from the epic film "Cleopatra," starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
I decided that it would be good if we could link our History project into our daily Bible Study that we do together as a family. As coincidence would have it, we just happened to be studying the book of Genesis, which tells the account of the sons of Jacob and how they ended up following their brother Joseph into Egypt (Genesis 37-50). One of the resources that I used was "The Story of the World, History for the Classical Child. Activity Book One: Ancient Times," edited by Susan Wise Bauer. I photocopied some pages which featured the story of Joseph in a comic-strip format. The children had great fun colouring this in and sticking it in their History books.
We also watched a half hour video animation on the story of Joseph by Testament Films.
I divided this section of work into two parts and gave it the title, "Hebrew slaves in Egypt - Parts one and two." Part one dealt with the Jews settling in Egypt and Part two dealt with them leaving. We did a word search on the theme of the sons of Jacob (courtesy of "Story of the World," again) and...
...some colouring.
In order to be a little bit more varied in this project and keep things interesting, I incorporated a mnemonic from the book "Walk Thru the Old Testament," by Dr Bruce H. Wilkinson.
The idea is, that through a series of spoken words accompanied by actions, a person is able to retain an overview of the Biblical narrative. Here is a video of Nathanael and Tabitha having a go!
We also watched a video clip from "Prince of Egypt" which encapsulated the drama of Moses and the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea.
I really enjoy the time we spend learning together and it is very rewarding to see them excited about history.
"Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord,
and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously:
the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."
I spend one morning a week, with the two older children teaching them History and German. This is something we really look forward to. Starting this September, we have embarked upon an Ancient History project. We began by looking at how artefacts and objects are useful in providing information about Ancient Civilizations. We recreated an Archaeological Dig, by burying historical objects in the ground, then carefully digging them up...
Drawing them...
and measuring them.
Ancient Egypt
Inspired by the Mummies we saw at the Ancient World Exhibition...
the children enthusiastically mummified action men figures with masking tape!
Next we looked at Ancient Writing, specifically Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
Tabitha and Nathanael attempted to write their own names in this style. They also examined a sheet of papyrus and we talked about the process of making it into paper.
Over the last few weeks, we have been collecting objects associated with Egypt. We have a toy camel, a scarab beetle, a toy locust, sand and other items that we are going to use in a working model of the Nile river!
