Homeschooling: A Typical Day At Our House

This year my son and I are enjoying learning about World History. Rather than using a single text as our curriculum, we're making use of a variety of books for this purpose, both historical fiction and non-fiction. Many of these we'll check out from the library, but the ones we'll use all year long we've gone ahead and purchased. Our two most favorites books are the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World History, which has absolutely wonderful pictures on each page and which I'm using as our primary history book, and The Story of the World: Ancient Times, along with it's accompanying activity book.

We started off this warm August day by reading a section in The Story of the World about Ancient Egypt. First we read about the Nile River, then we went on to read about how the King of Upper Egypt and the King of Lower Egypt had a battle to decide which one of them would rule all of Egypt. The Upper Egyptian King wore a white crown, and the Lower Egyptian King wore a red crown. The White Crown King won, so he put the red crown from the other king on top of his own white crown to signify that all Egypt was united as one.

When we finished reading, I asked my son to please give me a short description of what we'd covered. To my surprise, instead of simply telling me about it in a few short sentences, he jumped up off the sofa, and ran out of the room, returning a few minutes later with two hats and a sword. One of the hats was white and the other was red. Keep in mind when you see the photo coming up that we didn't have any red or white crowns on hand, so whatever hats we had of the appropriate color had to do!

King Narner, the White Crown King, became King of all Egypt, wearing the former Red Crown King's crown on top of his own!

(See the white crown peeking out from under the red?)

I laughed and laughed throughout the whole show! I wish I'd gotten it on videotape!! (Actually I do have the tiniest fraction of it on video tape, but wish I'd gotten the whole thing!) The whole enactment only lasted a minute and a half or so, but was absolutely priceless....!

Following the historical enactment of the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt, we marked Ancient Egypt, as well as the Fertile Cresent (so we could see their proximity to one another) on one of the maps in the Story of the World activity book. Just for fun, my son also drew the two kings fighting their battle, on the map.

In case you're interested in any of these history items yourself, here are some links to where you can purchase them, and/or find out more about them.

Our current focus in science is an in-depth look at the human body. We started the school year by reviewing cells, which we'd originally learned about two years ago, and are now learning about digestion.

We started our science lesson for the day by reading about digestion from The Usborne Internet Linked Complete Book of the Human Body. As we sat on the sofa and read together from the book, we often stopped and talked about what we were reading, asked questions, and looked at pictures of various parts of the digestive system that I'd gathered in other books. Following that, we moved on to doing some of the science experiments and projects about digestion that can be found in How The Body Works: 100 Ways Parents And Kids Can Share The Miracle Of The Human Body. After we did some microscope work, we took apart and put back together again a model of the human body.

Just how long is our full digestive system, anyway?! (An adult's digestive system is about thirty feet long!)

Digestion begins in the mouth, not only as we chew, but also as we salivate. What better way to learn about salivation than by experiencing it? (Actually, all we did was put our attention on observing the process as the lemon juice hit our tongues, as don't we all salivate everyday anyway, whether we think about it or not?)

Food moves through our digestive system through the process of peristalisis. Squeezing a tennis ball through a sock is a good way to learn how the process of peristalisis works!

What do you think? Can iodine pass through the plastic in a freezer bag? Apparently it can. In the photo above, we're checking on the results of an experiment we did earlier. In the experiment, we put water and iodine into a glass jar. Then we measured some cornstarch and a tiny amount of water into a freezer bag. We sealed the bag closed and carefully lowered it into the jar of iodine water, making sure the zippered end of the bag stayed several inches above the jar. When we returned, we discovered that even though the bag had not filled up with the water that was in the jar, it had allowed some of the iodine from the jar to enter the bag and react with the cornstarch. The cornstarch in the bag had been snow white, but look at it now!

In a similar way, cells allow certain things to pass into and out of them.

Looking at things under the microscope has always been one of my son's favorite activities! In this photo, he's looking at a premade slide of an intestine.

This is a really neat kit which allows us to learn about the human body by taking apart and putting back together again a model that includes the skeleton, muscles, organs, etc. It comes with a mat to place the body parts on as you remove them, which aids in identifing them. It also comes with a guide which tells all about the various systems of the body. We've found the Smart Lab: You Explore It- Human Body kit to be a lot of fun to work with, and of course it's very educational as well!

In case you're interested in any of these science-related items yourself, here are some links to where you can purchase them, and/or find out more about them.

The Wordsmith program comes in several levels.