Gifts of the Nile: Week 2 Review

Our first unit of study this year is a short unit on Ancient Egypt. Although I planned it for only a couple weeks since we've discussed Egypt before, I've found so many books and projects I wouldn't mind exploring but there's not enough time! On the other hand, I'm really excited about our Ancient Greece unit coming up so we'll have to revisit Egypt later on!

This week we explored the great Nile River and learned how incredibly important it was for the Egyptian people. We learned about papyrus, hieroglyphics, irrigation and the importance of place value!

On the whole, we had a good second week. Next week we will continue on with our Egypt studies but will turn our focus from daily life of the average Egyptian to the great Pharaohs and the Gods and Goddess of the culture. 

Oh and we had a guest speaker this week....

Next time I need a substitute teacher, I know who to call. ;)

Easing Back In

So we have wrapped up out first week back to school and it was a success overall! Yay! As I said before, we started out with half days (so only about two hours a day) to transition everyone from Summer Mode to School Mode.

I already covered our first day in a previous post. On Wednesday we went to the library on post. This is where I have to make a "bad mommy" confession - this was the first time we'd gone to any library in over two years! Eek! To be fair, we have TONS of children's books in the house and are constantly adding new ones to our collection but still...

We got there in time for Story Time...where my kids were the biggest and oldest of the bunch since all the others were in the 2-3 year range but they had a good time and everyone picked out some books.

We continued our "All About Me" project with a page on Favorite Things and Favorite Foods during the rest of the week. Aside from drawing and coloring, they each had to try to write the words as they sounded them out.

Fridays are usually our quiz day (spelling and math) and then fun art projects or music. As we didn't have any spelling words this week - we were left with art mostly. We made Monster Marks (corner bookmarks), which I found here on Pinterest. Lots of cutting and gluing and folding involved but pretty simple and painless. Plus it's easy to offer lots of options to make the monsters full customizable. 

J's is the pink pig monster. I's is the leopard monster. A's is the orange thing that makes me think of Animal from the Muppets. The Purple critter is mine. I helped with some of the cutting and the instruction but they picked out the features and assembled their creatures. 

Back to Homeschool!

This time of year my Facebook and various parenting forums are flooded with all those CUTE "First Day of School" pictures and, I admit, the photographer in me gets a tiny bit jealous of the photo-ops of class rooms and bus rides and meeting the new teacher.

I can't simulate all those things at home. And I wouldn't want to really - it would look a little cheesy for "meet the teacher" to always be ME after all. But we do take a picture on the first day of our new school year!

J, who is doing second grade this year, says she wants to be a swimmer when she grows up.

I will be doing first grade work (for the most part) this year even though she's only five. She says she wants to be a swimmer as well - perhaps I shouldn't have asked them in the same room at the same time.

And then there is A, who is doing kindergarten level work who she's only four. She claims she wants to be a baker when she grows up. I hope she does, if so I'll keep her around forever. hehe

I decided to ease into the first week with shorter days and just some light projects that involved coloring and writing mostly. On Day One, they each did a self-portrait of themselves and I must say - they don't look as colorful in person as they seem to see themselves.