Homeschool Weeks 32 and 33

We studied the story of Esther in week 32.  At the end of the week we read how the Jews celebrate Purim and made our own three-cornered hat-shaped cookies (hamantaschen) to enjoy.   Week 33 we read Nehemiah and learned about the rebuilding of Jerusalem's wall and how the people repented and reinstated the feast days after Ezra read the law. 

 For the corresponding history lessons we looked at the Greek/Persian Wars including the Battle of Marathon.  This brought us into the Golden Age of Greece under the great Athenian leader, Pericles.  We took time this week to learn about what life was like in ancient Athens during this time.  This included Greek pottery, drama, architecture, origin of the Olympics, science and philosophy.  The girls filled out lap book pages on the Olympics, Socrates, Aristotle, different types of Greek columns, and various aspects of life in Greece at this time:  homes, clothing, entertainment, etc.    Nicolas went one step further when studying philosophy and read about Epicureanism and few excerpts from Aristotle in the Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.

The girls finished their unit on Charlotte's Web and we all finished memorizing Isaiah 40:21-31.  We will just review it next week.  We are still picking away at Greek root words and will review them all again next week and have a little quiz to finish out the year. 

Hamantaschen Cookies

We had our own Olympics by "competing" in the discus and long jump and running.  We passed on wrestling and the javelin throw.  I see one boy who has been standing at his dad's shoulder during track practice for weeks now and has learned a little bit about field event technique just by listening to him.    I think the only thing Seth picked up in the whole Olympic study was that they competed naked:)  Glad he decided to keep his clothes on.

My camera was off and by the time I got it turned on, the runners were by me.    Oh, well, they are cute from the behind too!

Anna drew her own picture on these Greek "vases" and painted them in "black relief" and "red relief".   Part of the project included mixing your own colors using only primary colors.  Her black looks more blue on this picture, but from a distance it does look darker.

The finished Fable posters (order is Nicolas, Lydia, and then Anna).  You may need to click on them to see a larger picture in order to read the moral of the fable and to see Lydia's four fables better.