So, today we made dragon bread (well, dragon pretzel) in honor of Michaelmas. I had planned to use an old Annie's pretzel mix I had, but the yeast was dead, so I used this recipe instead. It only took about half the dough to make our dragon. We followed the Annie's instructions for baking (and for forming...no flour, just a Pam-sprayed counter). It was easy and tasty. We put the M&Ms on before baking...and some of the dye came off. We then brushed him with melted butter and sprinkled cinnamon sugar all over him. Tasty!
We talked about angels in the Qur'an...and Jibreel (Gabriel) and Mikail (Michael) are the only two whose names are mentioned. We talked about how believing in angels (malaki) is one of the tenants of our faith. We also talked about some of the lore of Michaelmas and how it used to signify the start of Autumn in much of Europe. Happy Michaelmas!
Forgot to post this last week. So, we're looking at creation myths in OM3. Week six involved one from the Cherokee Nation called "The Coming of Crow." DS illustrated it, and did the copywork from it.
In Science, we continued in Galore Park Jr.'s science book--which had to do with anatomy and nutrition. DS really seems to like this. We also watched a bunch of Magic School Bus videos.
In English, I'm not a fan of the slooow OM English in either 3 or 4, so we used the Galore Park Jr. English book. I really like the program. DS read the book, "The Lemonade War" and we did some partnership writing.
We've also been doing stuff from all of the Scholastic Teacher Express printables.
Finally remembered to start again with Egyptian Arabic. It was mainly a "mumkin" week (May I have?).
OK, it's week five? Oops, I thought we were on week four. It was a good week. We did a bunch of different things this week.
In OM3, we continued with the stories and read about a girl of the Kush people (south of Egypt.) DH illustrated a picture from the story and we watched a brief National Geographic clip about the Kush.
In OM4, week four of the lesson guide, we researched animals of south Florida--both those that live here now, and in the past. Found out that 10,000+ years ago, Florida was much larger. DS illustrated some of the animals in his lesson book.
In Galore Park Junior, we read a story about an Indian girl and did the exercises.
DS finished, "The Search for Delicious," so I had him write a "real" book report on it. His answers were as short as possible, so I decided to use the BraveWriter partnership writing technique and basically was his scribe. I asked the questions for the book report, and then wrote his answers. That seemed to work really well--he gave really well thought-out answers. So, I think we're going to do more partnership writing, and then add in some copywork to help him work on writing speed/skill.
Created a copywork sheet for DS to learn the Tashahuud in English/Arabic. While DH can read Arabic, I don't know it well enough to help him with his Arabic script, so we used transliteration. I used this copywork program.
Decided that when possible, we're going to do "fun" math on Fridays--so RightStart games, codes/puzzles, etc. Today, DS did a riddle that involved multiplication tables. You find the answer to the problem which equals a letter. Eventually, you fill out the entire answer. "What shape does a Tyrannosaurus like best?" "A Rex-Tangle." LOL :)
Oh! Finally, I found this neat Steiner verse which I really like. We may use it next week.
So, we've almost made it one month! This week, we used the story in OM3 about the founding of Carthage. DS made a map drawing of the Mediterranean ocean, and put on where Tyre and Carthage should be. We used this for reference: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/greeksahoy!/greece_phoenicia.jpg
We also watched this video about the Phoenician alphabet. Some of the letter sounds as well as reading from right to left reminded DS about Arabic.
We started recorder using the 9-Note recorder method. So far, so good. The first lessons focus on B, A, and G...and then have a bunch of songs with those notes. We'll do that and then possibly at the end of next week, add in E.
Math-in-Focus continues with no issues. Started some logic too.
As for OM4, we've done the Language Arts associated with it and DS started reading, "The Search for Delicious."
I think I'm failing at the OM4 art lessons, though. DS has zero experience with drawing lessons, so he's struggling with the approach. Not sure what to do right now about that.
