This week Gavin is finishing up his first quarter along with his study of the Israelites.  Next week he will start learning about ancient India.

On Friday Austin worked on a puzzle.

To finish up his study on artist Paul Klee, Gavin had to make a sculpture.  Similar to the one line drawing, Gavin was given a wire (it was a hanger that had been straightened) and he had to make something with it.  

He made a snake.  Not super imaginative but not bad compared to some other modern 'art' I've seen.

Yesterday Austin started learning about the letter O.  This is the last of the vowels so in a couple weeks he will start working on consonants.  Since he has learned all his vowels we will start doing activities that use all five of them.  We don't really have a theme for letter O but we will read books about several things that start with the letter.  On Monday we read a book about ostriches and then he worked on a matching the vowels game.

He also did a maze to get the knight to the dragon.

Adelaide read her books nicely while he worked.

Then I got out some animal magnets for her.  It is a challenge to keep her occupied while we are trying to work!

Today Gavin started a new country in geography.  We are not staying so neatly into the one month increments like we did last year.  But, it works out great because we are starting ancient India next week in history.  First he opened his package from Little Passports.

He read the letter then reached inside to see what the surprise was this month.

It was a little stuffed tiger.

Gavin traced India on a map.

He finally finished his Tabernacle in history!  It's been a longer project then I anticipated but it has been a good one nonetheless.

Here's some close up pictures.

He is learning about the different groups of elements on the periodic table.  We learned about alkali metals, transitional metals and metalloids.  He is working on a lapbook to go along with everything he is learning.  He is also watching videos on YouTube from The Periodic Table of Videos channel (the ones by the University of Nottingham students).  He really enjoys the videos and seems to be learning a lot from them about the uses and reactions of different elements.  We have also read more in our Chemistry book.  Today he also had an experiment to do, or at least start.  He was reading about nonmetals and their properties.  So, he filled a cup half full of a fluoride toothpaste, drew a picture of a little man on one side of an egg with permanent marker, and placed that side of the egg in the toothpaste.  He will check it in a few days to see what will happen to his egg.

Today we also went on a field trip to a raptor rehabilitation center.  We got to see a couple different types of hawks, an owl and an American kestrel up close and personal!  We all really enjoyed it!

These are the books I've read with Austin so far this week.

Gavin and I read this book about India today.

Gavin is reading through this book this week.  It is a longer book so he has the week to get through it.  It details life in the Sinai Desert as told through the Bible and archaeology and it is really interesting.

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.