Cosy quilts and bandaids

I had no idea how fitting it would be to make a quilt for this unit.  Quilts were actually used in the underground railroad as symbols of what houses were safe and some even had symbols that gave the runaway slaves directions!  Who knew!  Quilts were of course made and sold to raise money for the Union troops as well.  I was going to buy some scrapbook paper and make paper quilts, but since I bought only $1 a yard fabric it ended up being cheaper to make the real thing!  Maxwell and Hyrum loved this project, and Maxwell won't sleep with anything else now.

We started taking about the civil war this week, and we focused on Clara Barton.  WHAT A WOMAN!  She's my new hero.  I think studying about her was the perfect way to study the war.  If my boys ever have to go to war, I hope they would be on the nursing side of things and not on the fighting. We learned some basic (very basic) first aid and the boys got their own first aid kit that they put red crosses on.  Hyrums bandaids were gone within seconds.

This week we began learning about magnets.  What kid doesn't love magnets.  This was the first time I had to kind of hold the kids back and say "well, we are going to do that experiment next week"  I know that kind of teaching method is against a lot of homeschooler's ways, but I like order okay! What we DID do was fun anyway.  We spread out tons of different stuff and went "fishing" to find out what was magnetic (did you know that some Canadian coins ARE magnetic?  crazy) We tested the strength of magnets and made things with iron in them magnetic and then pounded them with a hammer and heated them up to get them to loose their magnetism.  I have since then had a good portion of my silverware be able to pick up paperclips....that Maxwell....

During our devotionals, we focus on one apostle a month.  This month is Boyd K Packer.  We learned that he loves to draw and carve birds....so...