This week Austin has been learning the letter E with an elephant theme.  We have read a couple of elephant books and Austin made an elephant puppet.

We read these two books.

Austin played with this elephant counting puzzle.  The elephants hold on to each others' tails but only if they are in the right order.

Gavin made a folder with different Mesopotamia activities inside.  He made this pop-up ziggurat.

And did a map/craft.  The boat he's making 'floats' up the Tigris River.  He also made some puppets and wrote a postcard pretending he was in Mesopotamia.  These things came from a History Pockets book.

Adelaide got to play with Play-Doh for the first time.  Austin had gotten it out and of course she had to play with it too.  She did a great job of not eating it.

Gavin started a salt dough map of Mesopotamia.  It is currently drying and will be painted this week.

Here he is cutting the bodies of water so they are lower than the land.

Austin got a little salt dough and he made an Egyptian soldier with it.

Friday was a teacher workday for Austin so there was no school.  We decided to also take the day off of school and go to the zoo instead!  We had a great time as always.  The first hour the zoo is open all the things you normally have to pay for are free so we made sure to be there when they opened.  Our zoo is free to get in although they do charge $15 to park so I just consider that the entry fee.  Anyway, we got to go pet the stingrays for free!  We even feed them shrimp and dead fish which was kind of gross and kind of fun too.  None of us had the courage to let them eat it out of our hand though.

Austin wouldn't pet the stingrays but he enjoyed watching them.  This was the first time we have seen them because this exhibit is usually closed when we go.  This is their last weekend before closing for the year and we were glad we were able to see them.

We also managed to make it on the last free carousel ride of the morning!

I appreciate in this picture that there are two other moms also taking pictures of their kids while the dad is riding on the ride.

Since we went during the week and not on the weekend it wasn't nearly as crowded as it usually is when we go.  They have a new underwater tunnel for seals but last year we didn't go because the line was so long.  This year we went in with no problem!  It was a lot of fun to watch them swimming around!

The overalls Adelaide wore were the same overalls both of her brothers wore for their first trip to the zoo.  I was afraid they'd be too boyish but I thought she looked very cute in them!  They have little lions, giraffes, alligators, etc. embroidered on them.

One of the elephants had a little baby following her around.  There was another baby too that was a little bigger.  They were very cute!

The boys enjoyed stopping at all the little carts where zoo employees (actually I think they are volunteers but whichever) have things for the kids to touch and tell them about the animals that are in whichever section of the zoo you are in.  This was at the African cats section.

We brought a lunch to eat but the boys got a treat afterwards.

We saw lots of animals and had a great time!  We were a little disappointed the penguin exhibit is currently closed but I'm sure they will do a great job renovating it.  Adelaide enjoyed her first visit to the zoo although she was really tired by the end.  She hung in there really well though with minimal fussing.  She liked the elephants and seals the best I think.  She would have loved the penguins if they had been open.  The only downside to going during the week is they only have the sea lion show on the weekends and we really love the sea lion shows!

Here are a few more pictures I took this week.  Sorry they are out of order.  I found Adelaide devouring a bottle of bacon bits!  She didn't even look sorry for it :)

She also found Austin's jester hat and was running around wearing it.

Gavin worked on these books in history this week.  We reviewed in science and did another experiment involving getting things to float and he had both a history and science test on Thursday.

Austin finished up his week last week by making applesauce.  First he poured in the apples (I peeled and cut them of course).

Then added a little water.

He was very diligent in stirring the apples to make sure they didn't burn.

Then he mashed them up.

He added a little cinnamon and vanilla.

And all done!  Gavin and Adelaide agreed that it was very yummy applesauce.

Our history curriculum incorporates a lot of geography, which I really like.  Gavin enjoys labeling his maps but I have been trying to figure out a better way to make sure he remembers what he labels.  Then I found this great idea by another mom using the same curriculum:

http://www.tina.thejobes.com/2012/08/tapestry-geography/

It takes a little preparation (everything about this curriculum requires preparation which is kind of the downside but it's a great curriculum and Gavin loves it), but basically I printed all the names that were on his maps of countries, bodies of water, mountains, and major cities.  Then I laminated them and stuck magnets on the back.  I put copies of the maps he labeled on our dry erase board and he puts the names where they belong on the map.  Best of all, he thinks it's fun.  I also think this is the method I'm going to use for testing rather than making him write it all out...this is much faster!

On Friday Gavin painted another Paul Klee inspired painting.  The trick to this one was he had to make a one line drawing.  So once he put his pencil down he could not life it up again until he was done with the object he was drawing.  Then he traced over it with permanent marker and then painted with water colors over the marker.

His painting was supposed to look something like the creature in this book, which he also read on Friday.

This weekend we went to a farm for a little fall time fun.  Here is Austin going through a straw maze.

The boys got to pet a chicken!

Gavin convinced us all to go through a corn maze.

Austin was not so thrilled with the corn maze.

Sunday evening Gavin had soccer practice.  Adelaide put her backpack on and said, "bye-bye" and started walking away.

This morning Austin started the Letter E.  We are learning about elephants so we read this book.

Then Austin worked on some peanut addition.

Last week Gavin learned how to subtract numbers with up to four digits on his abacus, today he learned out to do the same thing using pictures.

Both boys started making a serpent-headed throwing stick.  Since we learned about Mesopotamia and followed Abraham through to Joseph (we've also been following the story during our Bible time) we are back in Egypt and learning about the Exodus.  Egyptians used these throwing sticks to hunt birds along the banks of the Nile.  We didn't have time to finish today so we will do that sometime later this week.

After she saw both brothers painting, Adelaide insisted she too must also paint.  She is very good at insisting.

We finally finished our book about compounds, elements, etc. but did one more experiment from the book today.  First Gavin dissolved salt in water.  He tasted the solution to see what it tasted like.  Then we put a clear glass bowl in the middle of the salt water, put a piece of foil on top and placed ice cubes on the foil.  Finally, we heated up the water to boiling.

I forgot to take many pictures of this experiment.  But after letting it boil for a few minutes we took it off the heat and let it cool.  Once it had cooled a bit we took out the glass bowl and Gavin tasted the water inside and found that it was not salty at all.  Our little experiment showed distillation by turning the water to a gas and then cooling it back into a liquid (we used the ice cubes to do this fairly quickly) and some of that cooled liquid went into the bowl in the center.  Of course the salt stayed in the water in the pan.

We also got to go on a field trip to the fire station with Austin's school this afternoon.  Adelaide was not very excited about the fire station.  She lasted a couple minutes and then just wanted to go home.

This is the book we finished in science.

We read a few pages from this book today.

And Gavin is starting this book.  It's fiction but follows a girl and her family as they leave Egypt for the Promised Land.