Things for the Mummy's Afterlife

As mentioned in this post, D wanted to make some items to put in the sarcophagus so that her little mummy would be comfortable in the afterlife.  The first thing she wanted to make was this boat that it could use to sail to afterlife.

She also made this "Scroll of the Dead" and "Sword".

Then she wanted to make some pottery.  We used Air-Dry Clay to make these.  I had to help her with shaping these as she wanted and she did the painting.  I filled in the details once she was done painting the base.

I highly recommend these two books before beginning this project.  These highly influenced her imagination and the whole process was led by D.

Mummy making

For our Chapter on Egypt in the SOTW, we wanted to make mummies.  Making a chicken mummy is out of the question for us as I am a vegetarian!  So we settled for the next best thing by mummifying one of the little dolls that we seem to have a million of.  I let D decide which one she wanted to mummify and we started the process.

The doll she decided upon, undressed ready for action!

Here is the setup that waiting for the kids that afternoon.  The linen strips are from an old towel.  The small plate has some wet linen to clean the body.

They took turns preparing the body.

Then we started wrapping the body, by then M had lost interest and wandered off!

Here is the finished mummy.  I had to help tie a knot to secure the linen.

We followed this up by making some items that D thought were need to be placed in the sarcophagus with the mummy and of course the sarcophagus! But that is for another post!

Fraction Nomenclature

When we were working with fractions way back in June I had hand-written our nomenclature cards.  The served their purpose but looked ugly!  As part of the re-organization that I am doing for our school room, I quickly put together these nomenclature cards.  It also has a simple definition for each part.  I store these in a simple envelope I made by folding construction paper.  I wanted to laminate both the cards and the cover, but we are out of the laminating sheets right now!

If you are interested you can download this pdf by clicking here or by visiting the download tab above.

These downloads are for your personal use only and not for distribution or sale.  If you choose to share anything you've seen in this blog, please link back to here.  Thank you for your understanding!

Pharaoh's Crown

As part of the chapter on Egypt, we made the Pharaoh's crown.  We own this Ancient Egypt book and it has lovely pictures and easy to read texts about Egypt.  As a bonus there are also little crafts you can do on various things from making crowns, to pyramids to all kind of things!  This book is D's favorite and you can often find her sitting in a quiet corner reading through this book.

Anyway here are our crowns.  we used red and white cardstock, eyeballed the sizes and used tape to hold everything together.  We used gold acrylic paints to make the snake heads.  I attached an elastic band to keep it secure while wearing it.

This has been used in various dress up and role play activities!

Cave Painting

As mentioned in this post, we started Story of the World: Volume 1 this summer.  D enjoys the story form of learning history and the bonus is that we love to do fun activities with each chapter.  We are taking time with each chapter and doing a lot of activities to make things memorable.  I am planning to post all our activities and also have a separate tab available dedicated to only the SOTW activities.

For today here is the cave painting that we did.  I try to include my little one (2 1/2) also in our activities.  

D wanted to have a draft of what she was going to paint on a piece of paper!  Though her final painting looked nothing like her draft!

D's draft.  You can see daddy hunting an animal, D doing a cave painting, M sleeping in a tent and mommy next to the tent!

We taped a crumpled and cut out grocery bag to a table.

M is attempting her painting!

Summary: South America Unit

D had tremendous interest in learning about South America sometime during the month of June and we explored our continent box, worked on maps and read a ton of books on South America.  I had snapped these pictures then, but have managed to write a post only now!

Working with the puzzle pieces

Labeling the countries

One of our favorite books

We happened to find a sugarcane around this time in one of our local stores and integrated tasting it as part of this unit!

This is her replica of the Machu Pichu ruins using the Cubes

We tasted the goodies we received from Argentina as part of the cultural exchange

We summarized what we learnt.  D drew the pictures and I wrote what she dictated from memory.

We worked with out South America Toob and D's favorite is the poison dart frog!

This is her version of the Amazon river flowing through the rainforest

We received this set as part of the exchange, which include the tea and the special mate cup and the bombilla

We tried drinking the tea from the mate and it was horribly bitter!  I don't know whether it was supposed to be that way or may be I should have done something different.

So then we switched to our regular cup and used the bombilla to sip the tea and read some poetry!

D's Curriculum plan for 2012-13 year

D is 5.5 years old and will turn six this December.  If she were to attend public school she would have started Kindergarten and if she were attending a Montessori School she would be in her final year of Primary and doing some early elementary work.  As mentioned in my previous post, we are sticking to mostly Montessori with some Classical curriculum mixed in.

If you want to see what worked and what did not the past year please visit my previous post.

Language:

Reading - This next year I am planning to have a special read-aloud time everyday.  D will read from our FIAR selections and I would read one chapter from our chosen chapter book.  The idea is that this would improve her fluency and speed.

Grammar - We will be sticking to Montessori Grammar and Word Study.  I will be using Karen's albums as well as some of the free early elementary albums.  Just like last year we would be doing First Language Lessons to change things up when we feel like it.

Poetry - Most of our memorization of poetry would be from the First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 (Second Edition) (First Language Lessons).  Just like read-aloud time, I plan to have once a week Poetry time where we would take turns reading from some of the poetry books we own.

CopyWork and Dictation - I plan to introduce some texts slightly longer than a line from the FIAR books and also from the chapter books we will be reading.  At some point, I want to introduce dictation of texts from books, but it would be based on D's lead.  We are not following any special writing curriculum, D does a lot of free writing and any structured writing at this point will come from CopyWork and Dictation.

Handwriting - We should get enough practice from CopyWork, but D has a great interest right now to learn cursive and on her own has learnt to write a few lower case letters.  I had picked up HWT cursive (3rd grade) Teacher's Edition at the used book sale and am planning to use that if D's interest still continues through the school year.  We'll see!

Spelling - We are currently around half way through All About Spelling Level 2 and will continue with it through out the school year.

Mathematics:

Our basic focus in Math this year would be to try and master the basic Arithmetic Operations.  For this we would continue with Montessori Math and add in Singapore Math TextBook or RS as we see fit.

I want to create special areas for Geometry and Fractions in the Math Shelf and follow the Montessori Sequence for this.  We might do some early elementary work in this area depending on D's interest.

Measurements, Time & Money from Singapore and RightStart.

History:

We would be continuing The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor, Revised Edition through the year.  Our goal is NOT to finish the book, but to take time and savor each chapter and do a lot of activities.  So we would be taking our time with this.

Culture:

As mentioned in my previous post, for Geography and Science my goal is to go through the sequence in the Karen Tyler albums. That should give her a good base for elementary.

Critical Thinking:

We tried Mind Benders Beginning Book 2 (Gr 1-2) and Lollipop Logic, Book 2 (Grades K-2) over the summer.  D enjoys these and we might do some of these as D's interest strikes!

Art & Music:

We are trying this new co-op once a week where we have enrolled for Art, Astronomy and Nature classes.  Most of our art should come from here and the rest based on lessons from the SOTW.  We might do some seasonal stuff too so that M can participate.

For Music we need to start back up on our Piano classes for the coming year.  D loves the piano and loves to practice!

This is our tentative plan for D.  She had a lot of input on what she wanted to learn this next year and what she did not like during our past year.  We are excited to start the new year!

I’m linking this post up at the iHomeschool Network’s Not Back to School Blog Hop.  Pop over there to take a peek at other homeschoolers plans!