History and Science Spring 2024

Now that I've caught you up on 2023, I need to catch you up to the present....SEPTEMBER 2024.

I can do this. It will only take hours more of writing a blog. No biggy.

Here we go, back to the beginning of 2024:

In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth...but for real, that's where we started our history for 2024. Our first history lesson was about the creation.

The problem is, I have older kids now, and I've done all of this like 3 or 4 times now, so I don't always feel like doing the awesome activities I've always done. ALSO I'm wayyyyyy behind with history, so I just want to get it done and move on.

BUT I've realized that Abraham still is only 10 (actually nine at the start of this blog timeline) and he LOVES crafts and activities, so I plan on doing more crafts again. But, well, that is my new goal. I didn't always do it last semester.

Like I said, we talked about the creation.

Then we studied dinosaurs. I'm pretty sure we're going to a dinosaur museum THIS week, so maybe that can count for our learning last January?!? 

Then we talked about the fall and flood.

Then we talked about the ice age and cavemen. Yep. no activities yet, but we have been reading cute books! I love the one about the caves in Lascaux.

Then we talked about Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. Our first activity! We made crescent rolls. Get it? Crescent?

Then we talked about Abraham. Of course we read a book about Abraham as a little boy because we have a little boy Abraham!

Then we learned about ancient Egypt. We learned about this for awhile and we actually did TWO activities. (Awesome us I know.) We made ourselves into mummies and we made papyrus out of celery.

Then we learned about Joseph and the amazing colored dream coat...and watched Joseph King of Dreams.

Then we learned about Moses and watched Prince of Egypt (the best cartoon in the history of cartoons in my humble opinion.) We also had a Passover! Well, Auntie Bear had a passover, and it wasn't a full on passover, but it was pretty epic, and of course we dressed up, because.....Antie Bear.

Then we learned about Joshua taking over Jericho.

Then we learned about David. We did an activity of playing with sling shots!

Then we learned about Hammerabi and his laws.

Then it was ancient Assyria.

Then ancient Babylon.

Then ancient Persia. We read a lot of the "Arabian Night" stories as part of this, but I didn't have my Arabian nights book since it was still in storage, so I had a hard time finding a good version.

Then we learned about Daniel and Babylonians.

Then we learned about ancient India! Another activity time!!! Good for us, right? We went to the Harikrishna temple in Utah. The tour guide bothered me because we had been studying ancient India right before we went, and so we knew that the Indus River Civilization had mysteriously disappeared and that we didn't know much about them, but he was totally contradicting that! I don't know what to tell you, but other than that, the temple was really wonderful.

Then we learned about Ancient China. I wanted to do homemade paper. I really did. I had put all my 2023-2024 school year stuff in special boxes and left them at Cayleen's instead of my storage unit so I would be able to do school when I got back from our adventures, but the paper making kit wasn't there! And I was perturbed! But anyway, we did have floating lanterns, but that was more for science than for ancient China, so we'll talk about that later.

Then we learned about Ancient Greece. BOY! There are A LOT of Ted-ed videos about ancient Greece! We learned about Homer, the Olympics, the Philosophers, and mythology, but although we read quite a bit, no real activities. HOWEVER, Abraham did have an Olympic themed birthday party, so let's through those photos in right now:

Funny story about his birthday: When I asked Abraham what theme he wanted for his birthday, he said "Squid Games." I had never watched squid games, so I said "sure" and asked him to show me what he was talking about, where on he shows me a Mr. Beast video entitled "Squid games." It was a fun video, and I planned the party around it. We sent out the invitations for a squid game birthday. I even planned on dressing up like the doll. THEN I stumbled upon the REAL squid game trailer and realized that theme was NUTS and then Abraham realized it too, and he decided to change the theme to the olympics.

BWAHAHAHA

Then we learned about Alexander the Great.

Then we Learned about Ancient Rome.

We learned about Romulus and Remus, about Gladiators, about aqueducts, the baths, Pompeii, the Slaves (namely Spartacus) Julius Ceasar and the splitting of Rome under Diocletion.

As part of this, we watched movies. There are so many good movies about ancient Rome and so we had to watch some. I was thinking about watching "Gladiator" so I went onto Kids In Mind to find out why it was rated R. I found out it didn't have any sex or nudity, but it was a 10 out of 10 for violence. I started laughing to myself about how violent it was, and Daniel asked me about it. I started reading it to him:

"We see about five gladiator battles (most are extended scenes) during which people are beheaded, stabbed, sliced, impaled, shot with arrows, hit with spiked balls, clothes-lined with chains, punched, and kicked; "

After I read that first part, Daniel goes "That sounds like an awesome movie!" Bwahahaha oh man, whose child is this?!

But then I told him that the only thing I knew about that movie (because I had never seen it) was that he says "are you not entertained?!" and so we should watch that part on Youtube, so we did, but in that clip was half of the beheadings, stabbings, and slicing!

We did not end up watching "Gladiator." But we did watch "Pompeii" which had a gladiator fight in it, so that was good enough.

I thought of watching Spartacus which is a really impactful movie, but there was just too much sexual stuff in that movie in my memory, so I decided not to. 

I did, however, want my kids to watch "Cleopatra" since it covers all of the most important moments in Julius Ceasar, and Antony's leadership. I remembered how much sexual stuff is in that movie, and I decided to edit it all out. That took FOREVER! But I finally got a clean version to show to my kids who I had to bribe and plead with to have them watch it.

I did not have to force them to watch Ben Hur. They liked that one.

Then to finish off Rome, we learned about Constantine and the Nicene Creed, which I think is one of the most important lessons Christians can learn. 

Oh and we learned about the actual fall of Rome (or Western Rome, rather.)

Then it was time to go up North and learn about the Anglo Saxons. We started this by learning about Beowulf.

We read the Young Readers version of Beowulf. I really like Young Readers. I've gotten myself quite the library of their non-fiction as well as their abridged classics. They write in an engaging way.

We learned about Justinian and Theodora and the Byzantine empire and the Hagia Sophia. 

We also learned about King Author and Camelot. (Again, young readers had a good version.)

We learned about the Feudal system and read many books about castles.

Then we learned about Genghis Khan.  There was this awesome Youtube playlist that we watched (in addition to reading Story of the World) and it was really fascinating! (Although I think these videos went a little easy on Genghis Khan since he did murder so many people.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVTVF6ioaY&list=PLEb6sGT7oD8HHLNkEDA88zI_NBZOX8tAB

Then we learned about Muhammad. We again read from Story of the World, and we watched our OWN video about when we went to a mosque:

And we also watched this video by Nas Daily. In fact, we've watched his other religion videos when we've been learning about other religions. They are so positive and clear spoken:

Fun fact: Muhammad never went to Jerusalem in person. Only in a dream did he take a flying horse up to heaven, and the original Sahih doesn't mention Jerusalem at all. Muhammad was taken directly from al-Haram into heaven, and back to al-Haram. He doesn't say that Jerusalem was part of this journey, although he does mention a "distant Mosque" later on. Also, the Quran never once says "Palestine" but does say "Israel" over 40 times. Yet people have been dying over the dome of the rock for centuries. Fun fun. 

Then we learned about the Pilgrimages/Crusades. Again we read from Story of the World. I LOVE Story of the World! SO easy to read and listen to!

Then we learned about King Richard, Prince John, and Robin Hood. Going from Muhammad to the Crusades, to the Magna Carta was such an easy transition. It just flowed right into each other.

We got cheap bows and arrows to celebrate Robin Hood and the Magna Carta. But they were so cheap, they almost immediately broke, but in this photo you can see the suction cup on Abraham's face, which proves we did buy them.  

And lastly, we learned about the colonization of the Ottoman Empire! We talked about the Hagia Sophia AGAIN since the Muslims ransacked it and turned it into a mosque by covering up all of the Byzantine art with plaster. 

That is where we left off for the 2023-2024 year of history. "But Lindy" I can hear you saying. "You aren't even done with the middle ages! aren't you supposed to be done with the Renaissance by now?" How dare you! Homeschool is supposed to be flexible!....but you would also be right, so I'm a bit frustrated with how behind we are because I do want to teach all the things I had planned!

Moving on to SCIENCE!

I do not have my science book in front of me, so I don't remember everything (I'm in Utah right now) but I want to get this blog-catch-up done with, so bare with me.

The first of the year, our first class was about crystals. I got the kind of crystals that grow really fast, and we had a crystal Christmas tree by the end of class! We also started my sugar crystal candy that I always do for this lesson. We also made borax crystals and we made snowflakes since they're crystals as well!

The next week we did soluble vs insoluble. We also talked about colloids. As part of this we made homemade mayonnaise. 

I don't have any photos of the next week, but I'm almost certain we learned about mixtures and compounds.

The next week we talked about chromatography, but I know that's no the only thing we talked about because it's never the only thing we talk about since I don't have very many lessons about it. We may have also talked about how to test for an element and did some testing for metals. -I might edit this blog when I get back home to my books-

The next week we talked about Ph scales. That was a fun week. We made Ph indicators using purple cabbage and we also made indicators using turmeric. 

(the days I have a lot of photos Amy Bay has come)

The next week I finished up teaching about the Ph scale by making "Butterfly Pea" tea which changes colour when you add honey. This was a BIG hit.

But then we changed gears completely. I had been kind of rushing through the chemistry lessons, and I had started them in the summer, so we had finished all the chemistry in my book, so I changed gears and we went back to learning about weather, because that was something I completely missed while sailing. Don't get me wrong, we got REAL world experience with weather, but I wanted to teach about it.

We learned, umm. I guessing from the photos that we learned about convection currents and air pressure. Yep. Pretty sure.

The next week we talked about air currents a lot more. We talked about how hot air rises and cold air falls. 

Later we even went out to the land and lit Chinese lanterns to celebrate this, however, those lanterns are a PAIN to light! ANd it was windy, so the lanterns went everywhere they shouldn't and it was amazing the Proffitts house didn't light on fire!!

Next time, do it when it's not windy and bring a BLOW TORCH!

The next week we talked about what happens when low pressure and high pressure come together. We even made a little storm in a jar.

The next week we talked about natural disasters caused by weather. Hurricanes, tornadoes, storm surges. etc. I think I needed those 2 litre pop bottles to create tornadoes, so I gave them all pop. I can't remember why else orange pop has to do with natural disasters. 

This was our last lesson about weather, and then we switched to learning about the earth's crust.

We talked about the layers of the earth's crust, and the next week we talked about the ways we can know what kind of rock it is and what it's made of, so we talked about the Moh scale and the sediment left behind in a scratch test and density and lots of things.

We were supposed to have one last class where we learned about earth quakes and fault lines, but my kids had the sniffles, and I was lazy, so I said we should just go to Frank Slide as a field trip instead. 

We did eventually go, but it took so long to get there and it was a bit of a nightmare, so it ended up to be just me and the Peavoys (but the Chelsey Bennitts went early enough....when we were supposed to be there.)

And besides my science club, we also had some pretty epic science experiences. There was the eclipse. Iw were far away from the totality area, but we did see the partial eclipse. We looked through awesome glasses and pin hole cameras we made out of cereal boxes.

Also, we saw some northern lights, however on the night with the strongest solar storms there were CLOUDS grrrrrr.

Also, our science crew found a baby bird that fell out of its nest and forgotten by it's mumma. We (the Roberts) tried to feed it until it was old enough to take care of itself, but sadly it died. But it was still educational. 

And that's it for Science for the school year! Whoo hoo!