Ancient History, Week 7

Ancient Egyptians & The River Nile

There are so many great resources for ancient Egypt that our studies will span several weeks. This week, we focused on the basics of ancient Egyptian life and the importance of the Nile River.


Tuesday

• Read Usborne: Ancient World by Fiona Chandler (pages 10-11).
• Completed corresponding Blue House School ancient world worksheets.
• Completed HO map work for Lesson 5, Main Lesson.
• Read "The Farmer" (page 6) from Voices of Egypt by Kay Winters.

Wednesday

• Read Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by Tomie dePaola via YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OedouFBB4Q8.
• Completed Evan-Moor History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, Grades 1-3 "Ancient Egypt" student booklet, words to know, and Nile River paper project (or eBook).

Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile didn't come in time for me to pick it up from the library, so I had to improvise. I found a great visual presentation of the book on YouTube. However, I wasn't fond of the creator's narration. I ended up using SaveVid.com to download the video to my laptop, then I transferred it to my Kindle Fire. I turned down the volume and read it myself to Tessa.

Tessa created an accordion-style paper brochure of sorts as part of her "Ancient Egypt" history pocket. It explains and depicts how the ancient Egyptians used the Nile's vast resources to survive and prosper.

Thursday

• Read Usborne Beginners: Egyptians by Stephanie Turnbull.
• Read The Winged Cat: A Tale of Ancient Egypt by Deborah Nourse Lattimore.
• Read Muti's Necklace: The Oldest Story in the World by Louise Hawes.
• Completed draw and color.

Friday

• Read "The Nile River" (page 26) and "Food" (page 40) from Modern Rhymes About Ancient Times: Ancient Egypt by Susan Altman.
• Completed "Make a Model of the Nile" from the SOTW activity guide.

I know Tessa would have loved to have gone all-out and created a larger, more elaborate scene of the Nile River. Anything she can recreate in miniature is exactly her kind of thing. Unfortunately, the weather here is beyond nippy now most days...not exactly hospitable enough to keep this project outside. We only have one window in our house that gets morning sun and has a shelf nearby, so we needed to create a very small, simple version of the Nile. Our supplies were minimal...a small disposable rectangle pan, aluminum foil, soil/sand, rocks from the driveway, and an old Duplo crocodile (okay, it's really an alligator...close enough). Most items we had on hand.

Tessa began by scooping a mixture of sand and dirt into a small disposable pan. 

After helping Tessa fashion a river bed from aluminum foil, she added pointed white rocks from our driveway in Upper Egypt to stand in as snow-capped mountains. Then, she sprinkled grass seed onto the banks of her soon-to-be Nile to mimic the planting of crops. 

After adding a Duplo crocodile, Tessa gently flooded her Nile River. (Personally, I think the Nile should have been flooded before planting the crops since this step is technically out of sequence, but we followed the directions anyway.) 

Tessa's flooded Nile River. (We added a lot more grass seed after this pic was taken.) She'll continue to flood it once a week until her crops are ready for harvest.

Tessa's Nile River two-and-a-half weeks later. Crops are ready for harvest! Quick note...we ended up watering this more than once a week.

* HO = History Odyssey, SOTW = The Story of the World

Life Science, Week 7

The Brain & Nervous System

It never creases to amaze me how enthusiastic Tessa is to learn new things. I thought going over the three main parts of the brain and how it and the rest of the nervous system works to control the body might not be the most exciting thing for her to learn, but she chattered about it and carted around our model brain (her "pet brain") all week long.


Wednesday

• Watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Brain DVD by Disney.

Thursday

• Read Think, Think, Think: Learning About Your Brain by Pamela Hill Nettleton.
• Completed Evan-Moor ScienceWorks for Kids: How Your Body Works, Grades 1-3 "The Brain Controls the Body - Parts of the Brain," "My Brain Mini-Book" and "Extension Activities - Cell" activities (page 19) from TeacherFileBox.com.
• Examined Learning Resources Cross Section Human Brain Model and then identified and talked about the role of the cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem.

Following Monday

• Tessa read Our Brains reader by Charlotte Guillain during reading.
• Read Blastoff! Readers: The Nervous System by Kay Manolis.
• Completed RSO Nervous System Lab 1: Reaction Time.
• Completed Teacher Created Resources My Body by Patty Carratello "My Brain" activity (pages 7-8).

Tessa tested her nervous system's reaction time by attempting to grasp a ruler after it was dropped several times without warning.

Tessa recorded her reaction time for each drop and then charted the results. Earlier, she hypothesized that she could teach her body to react more quickly with practice. Although her reaction times did not dramatically improve over the span of the five drops she recorded, she was generally correct.

Tessa colored and glued the brain from Teacher Created Resources "My Body" to an outline of her body that I had traced earlier onto pink butcher block paper.

The outline of Tessa's body. Tessa will add more body parts as we study them.

Other Books of Interest

• Bobby Bramble Loses His Brain - Dave Keane

* RSO = R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey

Ancient History, Week 6

First Writings

Tessa practiced writing in cuneiform and hieroglyphs...two early forms of ancient writing.


Monday

• Read The Story of Writing by Carol Donoughue (pages 6-11).
• Completed cuneiform writing activity adapted from "Make Cuneiform Tablets" from the SOTW activity guide.

Tessa and I found the cuneiform writing activity so frustrating at first that I admit, I rushed it. I thought maybe she was just too young for it, so we worked through one quick short word and called it done. As it turned out, Tessa just needed more practice. She played with a stylus, some Play-Doh and cuneiform guide sheet on her own for a couple of hours after school. She got quite good it! She even had me pretending to be an ancient scribe student and her the teacher. I lament that our keepsake tablet could have been so much more had I been a little more patient. The good news is that all of her free play gave her a more thorough understanding of cuneiform. She enjoyed it so much that I know she'll remember this lesson for years to come.

I created my own simple cuneiform guide sheet for this activity from a free cuneiform font I found on the internet. I'm not sure how accurate the font it, but it worked well for us. Feel free to use it as well.

Download A Simple Cuneiform Alphabet.

Tessa's cuneiform tablet with the word "fish" on it. We used tan FIMO clay that we baked hard in the oven.

Tuesday

• Looked up and defined HO dictionary word for Lesson 4, Main Lesson.
• Read Seeker of Knowledge by James Rumford.
• Read The Shipwrecked Sailor: An Egyptian Tale with Hieroglyphs by Tamara Bower. 
• Completed draw and color.

Wednesday

• Read The Story of Writing by Carol Donoughue (pages 12-17).
• Completed hieroglyphs activity adapted from "Hieroglyphic Secret Note" from Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide by Marian Broida.
• Used Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Kathy Allen as inspiration for hieroglyphs activity above. There are several nice pics of actual hieroglyphs in it as well as a simple hieroglyphs guide.

Tessa finds it very difficult to look at a picture and replicate it with pencil and paper, so it didn't take long before frustration set in while completing this hieroglyphs activity. After several failed attempts, I left her to work on it alone while I fixed lunch. To my complete and utter amazement, ten minutes later she got it done! That's marker on her "papyrus" scroll there, so imagine how hard she must have concentrated. In hindsight, I wish I would have tracked down some hieroglyphs stencils or stamps. I think the activity would have been way more fun for her.

Tessa's hieroglyphs note says, "I like candy." Her name is encircled with a cartouche.

* HO = History Odyssey, SOTW = The Story of the World

Hooked on Phonics: First Grade - Completed!

How could I forget to post that we finally completed Hooked on Phonics: First Grade early last week?! Tessa has been reading early and leveled readers this past week, which is what she does on the off days of our schedule anyway. I feel like Tessa and I could both use a break from Hooked on Phonics. I'm wrestling with whether we should continue on with Hooked on Phonics: Second Grade so Tessa can gain valuable new decoding skills or jump over to All About Spelling, Level 1 and focus on spelling and reading fluency for a short while. We have the All About Spelling readers for level one, which I worry are quickly falling below Tessa's reading level. I need to decide soon!

Hooked on Phonics: First Grade...completed! YEAH!!

Atelier Art, Level 1 - Module A, Lesson 2

Picasso Hands and Flowers

Although this was only our second time using Atelier Art, I have been quite impressed at how well Tessa listens to the instructor on the DVD. She follows her instructions and movements way better than she does mine. I'm always tense when an art project involves paint...more so when my laptop is sitting a mere two feet from the paint and water bucket. After we got past Tessa tracing her hands (I had to help her a bit...Tessa tracing with her left hand just wasn't happening) and I realized that hey, she's doing a pretty good job, my tension eased considerably. I was able to take some pics. By the end, I was actually enjoying myself watching her paint.

"Picasso Hands and Flowers" is a lesson on color. It teaches that there are three primary colors and that those colors may be mixed to make secondary colors. The lesson also introduces renowned painter Pablo Picasso and features his painting Mains Aux Fleurs. Since Picasso is the key artist for this module, I'm considering using this lesson as a jumping off point for a quick artist study.

Tessa carefully mixed yellow with red to make orange, blue with red to make violet, and yellow with blue to make green.

After tracing her hands and then painting the middles of the flowers, Tessa used her freshly mixed green paint to paint stems.

Tessa painted the last of her petals orange.

Although not instructed to do so during the instructional portion of the DVD, the children featured on the DVD embellish their traced hands. Tessa wanted to embellish hers too. This would have been much easier before painting, but she made it work. 

Life Science, Week 6

Body Parts

Arms, legs, heart and lungs...Tessa learned her body has both external and internal parts.


Monday

• Read Kingfisher Readers: Your Body by Brenda Stones.
• Read Thank You For Me! by Marion Dane Bauer.
• Read All of Me!: A Book of Thanks by Molly Bang.
• Completed Evan-Moor ScienceWorks for Kids: How Your Body Works, Grades 1-3 "The Body Has External and Internal Parts - My Body Parts" and "Collage People" activities (page 13) from TeacherFileBox.com.

Tessa cut out body parts from various pictures in catalogs and magazines. She glued the pieces onto card stock to create a collage person and then labeled the parts.

Tuesday

• Completed Evan-Moor ScienceWorks for Kids: How Your Body Works, Grades 1-3 "The Body Has External and Internal Parts - Where Is It?" activity (page 14) from TeacherFileBox.com.
• Read Scholastic Discover More: My Body by Andrea Pinnington.
• Read Parts by Tedd Arnold.
• Completed Evan-Moor ScienceWorks for Kids: How Your Body Works, Grades 1-3 "The Body Has External and Internal Parts - Inside My Body" activity (page 14) from TeacherFileBox.com.

Wednesday

• Read Your Skin Holds You In by Becky Baines.
• Completed Evan-Moor ScienceWorks for Kids: How Your Body Works, Grades 1-3 "The Body Has External and Internal Parts - Skin" and "Extension Activity - Fingerprints" (item one only) activities (page 15) from TeacherFileBox.com.
• Used Drawing Is Easy: Drawing With Your Fingerprints by Godeleine De Rosamel to create fingerprint art.

Tessa's fingerprint art. She used fist prints to create the goat; thumbprints for the spider, bee, face and frog; and a hand print for the rooster head.

Tessa wanted to pose with her pics, so here she is!