Schooling With Friends
Monday was the start of a fun new group learning experience for Dakota. Sometimes it gets a little lonely being an only child homeschooling so we have invited a family with four kids, 8, 7, 5 and 4 and a little one, the same as Natalie to come over on Monday afternoons and work with us. Yesterday we worked hard in the morning to get our Magic School Bus dinosaur science unit started doing a sequencing activity about fossilization,got our math and reading in, so we could be ready for an afternoon of history learning following the Story of the World, Volume 1, the first few chapters.
Our friends arrived at 12:30 and we got right down to learning. We started with a group discussion about the Egyptians and the Nile, talking about the nomads, the fertile crescent and the story of King Menes. Then we read Chapter 3 about hieroglyphs and cuneiforms and used another book to learn about Rosetta Stone. I gave each of the kids a piece of tagboard that I had cut to look like a tablet and they wrote their name using our alphabet and then used hieroglyphs to write their names on the "stone". Then we did a quick paper craft for an alligator to use in our next project.
When we were finished at the table, we moved into the kitchen where I had a long piece of butcher paper divided into sections and each child made a section of the Nile River on their part of the paper. Then they added some green crops, an Egyptian barge, their alligators and used a ruler to draw a pyramid. Then the used a glue stick to make the inside of their pyramid sticky, took their section of the paper onto the deck and used sand to make the pyramid more realistic. We left them on the deck to dry, cleaned up and then the kids got to go play together on the trampoline in the indian summer afternoon.
All in all, I think it was a successful experience for both families. Both moms were tired,, but all the kids used up alot of energy and they learned alot about ancient Egypt. I am looking forward to next Monday's adventure and I know Dakota is too.
Our friends arrived at 12:30 and we got right down to learning. We started with a group discussion about the Egyptians and the Nile, talking about the nomads, the fertile crescent and the story of King Menes. Then we read Chapter 3 about hieroglyphs and cuneiforms and used another book to learn about Rosetta Stone. I gave each of the kids a piece of tagboard that I had cut to look like a tablet and they wrote their name using our alphabet and then used hieroglyphs to write their names on the "stone". Then we did a quick paper craft for an alligator to use in our next project.
When we were finished at the table, we moved into the kitchen where I had a long piece of butcher paper divided into sections and each child made a section of the Nile River on their part of the paper. Then they added some green crops, an Egyptian barge, their alligators and used a ruler to draw a pyramid. Then the used a glue stick to make the inside of their pyramid sticky, took their section of the paper onto the deck and used sand to make the pyramid more realistic. We left them on the deck to dry, cleaned up and then the kids got to go play together on the trampoline in the indian summer afternoon.
All in all, I think it was a successful experience for both families. Both moms were tired,, but all the kids used up alot of energy and they learned alot about ancient Egypt. I am looking forward to next Monday's adventure and I know Dakota is too.
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