Week 3 September 20-24: The Civil War

 Story of the World took us to the Civil War this week. We have already discussed it quite a bit, the study of wars has been their main focus in our study of history, specifically what tools were used from one war to the next. Our library books on the subject had one of the Hazardous Tales comic books. I have tried to introduce them in the past, with no interest, however this time Michael picked it up and read it and was very excited to learn they have a whole collection of books on different history subjects!

 This particular one was on the use of ships during the Civil War. What?! That is what I said when he told me, because I had zero knowledge of ship battles happening on what I assumed was an all land based war. They called these ships Iron Clads, as they had covered the hulls in iron to prevent cannon balls from destroying the wood ships. All three boys were very interested in this, and we watched a documentary focused on the Civil War and did some more reading about the iron clad ships. 

The boys all did their math work books, each completing three lessons as well as playing the card game Sleeping Queens. 

We celebrated Mabon, the Autumn Equinox with apple cider in apple cups! We talked about the fall and changing of seasons.

The boys asked for more of the air dry polymer clay and spent at least an hour every day this week constructing! They get so creative! My favorite this time is the white hand in the middle, it is a character from the game Kirby. Avery made that one!

They also did three lessons in their writing books. Michael and Emmet attended their Minecraft Education class with teacher Kori, and Michael attended his Urban Sketching. He is learning some really awesome skills in it!! The Minecraft class is focused on story telling and they are each creating a story board within the game. It is fun to watch them come up with ideas!

We did not do a lot in our Human Body unit this week. We read You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Soap!, and discussed adding making homemade soap to our list of crafts this winter when the veggie garden isn't my main focus in life! We asked for the tallow from our cows we just had processed and they want to make the real deal. We have done melt and pour soap before, but they want to learn how it is made from scratch. I have looked into it before but haven't attempted it either. I know you can make it form wood stove ash, but buying lye is much more reliable and less dangerous (still incredibly dangerous to work with lye!! They will get to observe from afar when I add that ingredient!). We also had a book about Florence Nightingale. I enjoyed learning more about her.

The boys read Hazardous Tales comic books, Garfield comic books, and Emmet read a book called Jay Saves the Day. Avery did two reading lessons from All About Reading. 

More of our school supplies have been trickling in, the book with the plans to build a functional wind mill is here! They poured over the book again and in the next few weeks we will be compiling a list of items we already have and what we need to buy (benefit of living on a farm is there are always lots of spare parts laying around!)

Hope you had a great week and are enjoying some rain after such a dry summer!

The Dillmans