We have been busy this week.  Gavin hasn't had a lot of projects going on but he has had a couple longer, more time consuming ones to work on.  This week he has painted and labeled his map of Mesopotamia.

I forgot to take a picture of the labeled map but here is what it looks like.  The big blue space on the left is the Mediterranean Sea with Cyrus being the island in it.  Obviously, the Nile is flowing out of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea to the right.  To the right the Tigris and Euphrates are flowing into the Persian Gulf and on the top right is the Caspian Sea.  Then he painted the Fertile Crescent.  The day after I took this picture he painted more green on the other sides of the Tigris and Euphrates because they were farmed too.  The little blue specks in Israel are the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee.  He labeled all the bodies of water, Egypt, Sinai Peninsula, Cyprus and several cities of Mesopotamia. 

Adelaide painted a bit too this week.

Gavin did a few experiments involving surface tension.  Here he is counting how many drops of water he can put on a penny before it spills.  Then he put a couple drops of dish detergent (liquid) on the other penny and did the same thing with the water.

Here he is blowing bubbles in water.

And blowing bubbles in water with some dish detergent in it.  We talked about surface tension and observed how the bubbles form and join.  Then Gavin watched several videos on the Happy Scientist website involving surface tension and molecules.

Austin is still working on the letter E for elephant.  We re-read Horton Hatches an Egg and talked about being faithful.  Then he drew a picture of himself being faithful.  I wrote a sentence to go with it and he made the elephant on the top of the paper.

Once the salt dough map was over Gavin started working on a scale model of the Tabernacle.  I thought I would have to basically do this for him, or at least help a lot, but he has really surprised me with his patience.  I helped him put in a bunch of little tiny hooks that had to be screwed into the base, although he stuck with me on this for a long time and it was very tedious.  After that I've just showed him what to do and he has taken over.  Below he is putting the outside posts and 'cloth' around the outside of the Tabernacle.  It's really white ribbon but works great. 

Back to science I let Gavin play with matches.  Really he was lighting a candle but he enjoyed it just the same.

Then he put a jar over the candle to watch what would happen.  After a few seconds the fire went out.  He knew that fire needs oxygen and this just proved it!

We also got some molecule beads so he practiced putting together different atoms to make compounds.

This morning he added the rope to the outside of the posts.  I started this for him and did a few posts to show him how and he took it from there.

You can kind of see the rope he's adding in this picture.

Gavin has been reading more in these books this week.  He also watched a video about the Tabernacle.

We've been reading a little more out of this book this week.

And Austin and I read these books this week.

This is the true story of a ballet of elephants.  The thought is awesome.  I tried to find video of it but could only find still pictures.  I really didn't think the book was that great and was kind of disappointed.