Tuesday, August 30, 2011

New Beginnings


This year we have several new things in our homeschool. The most exciting of which is a newly remodeled schoolroom. Chris used kitchen counter tops to build this desk system. Eventually the blank spots on the walls will hold shelving too.
HISTORY - Another new part of school this year are the Great Courses Medieval History DVDs taught by Linwood Thompson of Bellflower High School. Today was our first day of watching the DVD and having the Brames over for an intro to our history for this year. In the first DVD, Mr. Thompson dressed up as the apostle Paul. We learned about his conversion to Christianity and how Christianity was spread to the Romans. I made a sheet of ten words/pictures that the kids could listen for and then put tally marks next to as they heard the words in the movie. They really enjoyed this activity.
SCRIPTURES - We then came upstairs and they counted their marks by 5s and compared their totals. We found out that the words Jesus, Romans and death were mentioned the most. We read about Paul in the Bible Dictionary and the kids colored some pictures of Paul teaching. Jared and Beryl worked on a worksheet about the Books in the New Testament.
MATH - Speaking of Books in the New Testament. We explored numbers with the words New Testament. New has 3 letters and Testament has 9 letters. 3+9=12, there are twelve apostles. 3*9=27 and there are 27 books in the New Testament. It was a good start to the school year.