November/December Homeschooling

Savannah and I continue to plug away at homeschooling and have found a lot of enjoyment and an increase in knowledge as the days go by. We had to postpone French since neither one of us was having any kind of success with it. I'm working on finding another French program to use or else Savannah can save it for when she goes back to public school. As for the other subjects they keep us both busy, me with planning, Savannah with the work and studying. We try to get out of the house from time to time for some fun field trips. One fall morning we drove around looking at all the beautiful leaves and scenery and took some pictures for her Fall Science poster. We just had to stop and talk to this cute donkey and horse.

For Science we have been studying the human body and have enjoyed several experiments. One of Savannah's favorites was making a rubber bone. She soaked a chicken bone in vinegar for 3 weeks...

and since vinegar is an acid, albeit a weak one, it stripped the bone of its calcium, making it weak and rubbery. We laughed as we both bent the bone and thought of Professor Lockhart when he "heals" Harry Potter's broken wrist in the second Harry Potter movie.

Another fun experiment was checking if various items, like seashells, rocks, and eggshells, have calcium in them.

She looks like such a little scientist!

Learning about the skeletal system.

For our Science class I had bought a frog to dissect as we learned about the various systems in the body. Neither Savannah or I were particularly thrilled about it but I knew it would be useful in our studies plus the science activities book we use called for it. Savannah's expression here mirrored my own on the day we had to get started.

It took a little getting used to...

but Savannah is clearly a trooper!

In her history class we spent almost a month studying Ancient Egypt since Savannah loves Egypt! She had a couple projects that she really enjoyed doing - one was making canopic jars.

The other was The Hall of Pharaohs project. She had to research the lives of ten of the most famous or important pharaohs, mainly from the New Kingdom, and make up a short report on each of them that included their name in hieroglyphs, the dates that they ruled, five facts about them, and a picture. She did an awesome job! Here are just two of the reports she did; we hung all ten in the hallway leading to our basement.

And of course there are those little perks of schooling at home. I mean, what better way to learn about Ancient China then while enjoying Chinese food at the best Chinese restaurant in our area?

Gotta love those fortune cookies!