Minoans and Mycenaens-week 19

YEAH!!!!! We've made it Early Greece! The kids are thrilled. They are huge mythology buffs so getting to some of these stories is the highlight of their year. We've pulled out Percy Jackson's Greek Gods and Greek Heroes on audiobook and they have been listening non stop. Hulk didn't do much of our Mythology study last year (we took a month off ECC to do some when the girls became obessed with Percy Jackson... We've listened to ALL 10 books multiple times..lol) So this is the first time he's putting some of the stories together. Its been fun to see the light bulbs going off. He's also a boy and likes stories about war, and blood, and death.

Math has been challenging... there are days I can't decided if this is really too hard, or if I am giving too much, or what. I am kinda at my whit's end...lol.

 IN MFW 1st  we started summaries in the Bible Notebook. I was actually really impressed by Hulk's first summary. He used the reader and his notebook to help him with spelling but otherwise he did it solo. I had him write it on paper first and then he copied it over into his notebook.

 Hulk and Ying started Basketball this week. Neither has ever played before. It will be interesting ;) But in other great accomplishment Ying conquered a very difficult rock climbing path she's been trying for a while! Go Chick! In other PE related we hit the ice skating rink for home school day. They spent most of the time doing hockey slide and Supermans. Ying taught Hulk and it was over from there.

Week 18----- We have "itiesitis"

We have "itis" this week. We are all about the Canaanites, Jebusites, Hittites,Amorites, and on and on. Hulk says NO more "ites" However our study did line up nicely with some living history. One of our local churches puts on a great look back what life was like in the day when Jesus was born. While technically during the Roman era, many of the crafts and trades featured have histories tracing back to our current time period.

Ying and Yang pressing olives with a stone press to make olive oil.  The girls were very shocked when the shop keeper tried to barter with me for one of them as a wife for her son. It was unreal to them that in this time period they would be close to marriageable age.

A Prophet in the street warning of the coming Messiah

Capentry shop. We talked about how in  the time of the Canaanites the tools would have been broze or stone as steel and iron had not been discovered or spread to the area yet.

Wine shop.... We discussed that in acient times ( well ok actually until roughly 150 years ago) it was acutally safer to drink ferment drinks like wine and ale then water because in the process of making these parasites were killed. Today modern filitration and sanitation does this for us.

The Potter using a kick wheel.

The Roman Tax collector.... we had to get the mark of Caesar to show we had paid our taxes.

Yang getting hauled off by the Roman soldiers because she licked out the mark of Caesar...lol

We took a day off to get in the Christmas spirit. The kids helped Grandma and Grandpa with outdoor decorations, and made thank you cards and other crafts to decorate our home.

 We Also attended another local event : The Holiday Lights of Hope. This is a large walk though display benefited a local child advocacy charity. This was our first year and the kids had a blast. Their favorite part was the light maze. It sounds easy but was surprisingly difficult due to the effect of so many points of light in one place.... We got to the middle fine ( the Chick-fil-a Cow) but getting to the other side took much longer..lol because you were looking for a dark end.

 Anyway.. Happy Merry Christmas season....