Linking verbs

We learned about linking verbs today. Her writing curriculum had us make paper chains. Such a good idea for reinforcing this idea! We made a single chain link of pronouns, and a single chain link of ing verbs. Then we linked them together with a linking verb. It made its point and L liked it. She even did more than was required. Win, win!

The Living Christ

In our homeschool we semi-follow the classical method. That includes a lot of memorization for young children. We are also very religious people. We spend time each evening studying the words of Christ.

For our study lately we have been memorizing The Living Christ published by our church leaders back in 2000. (We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; or, for the sake of ease, we are Mormons.) I'm amazed that even my three year old is able to recall a lot of the document.

We have a lot of old Ensign and Friend magazines (published by our church), so we went through those to find pictures of Christ. We take a small phrase every few days and find a picture that represents the phrase. Then we put the picture on the wall with the words of the phrase on which we are working. We repeat the new phrase together about three times then recite it together with everything we have learned so far. We have a lot of pictures on our wall now, with many more to come.

(Ignore the date on here, my camera needs some help.)

 

 

I really feel that memorizing this document has brought a stronger spirit of peace into our home. Jesus Christ is the center of our religion, we should also make Him the center of our lives. He is our Savior, and nothing is more important to learn than His teachings. We always try to leave Him as the focus of everything we do, including our school. 

Math project

We had the goal to make a bar graph of peoples favorite colors. We used tally marks to keep track of favorite colors, then used the mathlink cubes to illustrate our graph before drawing it. 

You can see the tally marks and cubes here.

Here we turned it into he graph.

Pizza oven

While I was visiting my family in Idaho my father and I took some old bricks I bought a few years ago to make a churrasceria and we turned them into a brick pizza oven. We made it with room underneath the cooking slab (we used a pizza stone for the slab) to put coals. We set the pizza stone on some old cooling racks, and held the cooling racks by placing bricks on top of them.

For cooking we started with coals underneath, but it needed quite a few coals to get it hot enough. Eventually there was a live fire under, but that got too hot. Probably the best way would be to start the fire under the cooking area and let it die to coals down there rather than just putting coals underneath after they burn down. Then the oven is hot, but not too hot.

We used plywood covered in tinfoil for the top and the oven door. It worked really well.

We had extra pizza dough left over so I made it into some loaves and baked them. It worked like a charm. Some were slightly burnt on the bottom, but we just cut that part off. All in all it was a fun experience. I wish I had it at my house.

Purpose of education

The purpose of education is to prepare us for life and the life eternal. That being said, it would make sense not to teach our children anything that they will not need or that they do not love. If they do not love it then they will never be good at it. If they don't need it they will never use it, so it is wasted time spent learning it. And if they are not going to use it in the next few days then they will forget it, so that is wasted time. 

They should also be involved in useful, purposeful work. Not busy work, but something that makes a difference and something they know is useful in the real world.

So what should they learn? 

Young children (learning to do; or concrete, experiential learning)

Basics

Life skills, I.e. cooking, cleaning, organizing

Good habits, I.e. using time for good things, obeying, structure to a day, finding interests, exercise

Service

Gospel study 

Older children (learning to know, or more abstract learning; more concrete learning)

Build on the basics

Shadowing and learning about professions

Act/sat prep

Running a business

Good habits

Service

Gospel study

Making ice cream

We picked strawberries a while back. When we came home we started making Popsicles and ice cream. Yum! We tried the ice cream in a bag, but it wouldn't freeze. So we put it in the freezer for a while then squished it. Repeat a few times.

All in all this didn't work very well. Next time we will just use an ice cream maker. :)

Adobe dwelling

We decided to make Mohenjo-daro model dwellings since we have been studying ancient history. Apparently the city was abandoned for some unknown reason. Crazy.

First we used a string to cut the block into flat, 1/2" pieces.

Then we measured 1/2" and cut long strips.

 

Then came cutting each strip into bricks. Paul got banished to the booster seat because he was trying to climb all over the table. Poor guy, he just wanted to help.

After we cut each individual brick we let them dry for two days. Then it turned into a month. We still have to make another bunch of bricks before we can make the houses. Maybe next week? Stay tuned!