Cieslak's Homeschool-journey
It's all about the fun, the craziness, the things we learn and our thoughts!!!
So far this week we kept busy with little craft projects. It is interesting what activity ideas our lessons have sometimes. In History we spoke about Nebuchadnezzar - King of Babylon. It is interesting to learn, not only about "normal" historical figures, but the many historical figures from the scriptures as well. With almost every lesson I am amazed how much I still have to learn and how little I knew about the subject before that lesson. Of course I had heard of Nebuchadnezzar before, but I didn't know many details about him and what happened to him. I didn't realize that the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon", which he had made for his Persian wife so she wouldn't be so homesick anymore, actually became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The gardens don't exist anymore, but we saw quite a few different pictures/ paintings of artists and how they imagined what the gardens looked like. We also learned, that the Babylonian temple is called a ziggurat. To make it more visual, we created a small little paper ziggurat. They also had a craft project idea in the lesson of creating a ziggurat out of cardboard and sugar cubes, and we would have totally done that if I would have had sugar cubes at home, but maybe sometime in the future. ;) The boys little paper ziggurat is pretty cool, too. For the past few weeks we have listened to the audio book "Bambi" in Literature. Not the Disney version, but the original version by Felix Salten. The boys are actually sad how short the book and the story is, and would have preferred it to be longer. After listening to "Little House in the Big Woods", which took us many weeks to finish, "Bambi" really is very short, but it is still a great learning experience because Bambi's story teaches many important things about life and how we can apply it to ourselves. Since the lessons about Bambi are coming to an end soon, the boys were able to put together a cute little lantern. I am just glad the lessons itself have all those craft suggestions because I am definitely not a "crafty" person. ;) Josh and Nathan love doing art projects while listening to the stories we are reading/ listening to. It always amazes me, that they still hear what is going on in the story, even though they are so occupied with cutting, coloring, gluing and drawing. Now, our last project (at least for today) was putting together the "Ritter Sport Museum building". It will be a great memory of our field trip from last week.
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Just a few weeks ago I was informed, by my hubby, that the Ritter Sport factory is based here in Stuttgart. We didn't know how close it really is, but today we decided to go there as a family/ school field trip. :) It took us about 15 minutes from our house to get there and so that's pretty darn cool (even though that might be slightly dangerous, too). ;) It was really interesting, and we haven't even checked out the museum yet. This company is family owned and they are now on their 4th generation running this company. I have to say that's pretty impressive. I would assume, that they are doing very well financially. ;) Here are a few pictures of our fun adventure: It was really interesting to see so many different pictures and chocolates from different times. The next few pictures are just that, chocolates from different years all the way to today. They also had some fun pictures of their advertisements. The first one below was on the stairs of the train station in Cologne. I don't know if the stairs still look like that, but it is pretty cool and creative. The second picture is another creative ad from the 90ths. ;) In 2012, they celebrated their 100th anniversary. I had no idea how long Ritter Sport chocolate existed. Last but not least, we stopped in the Ritter Sport shop. They have so many different kinds and you could definitely leave a fortune there, even though a lot of the stuff there was cooler of course, not to mention some of the things they have at their shop are probably not available in normal stores. It is also a bit cheaper than it is at the normal store. It was a fun visit, and we went home with lots of chocolate of course. ;) We also bought a paper craft kit (the Ritter Sport museum/ shop and exhibition building) and we will make that in one of our lessons next week. Our boys got a small little Ritter Sport truck and, as you can see on their faces, our chocolate loving hearts were made happy. :D It is definitely a must-see if you ever come and visit us, and or are in the area for other reasons. The funniest text we saw on one of their walls was the following: 9 out of 10 people love chocolate. The 10th person is lying! :D
Last week we had the chance of hanging out with friends who are also homeschooling. The fun part about homeschooling is that we are on our own schedule and can just go to the library, in the middle of the day, for example. ;) I love when my kids pick up a book and read... and in this case also play a nice board game with a friend. :) Our topic in Geography this year is Asia and so we speak about many different things with regards to Asia. It is interesting and fun. This week, while talking about the different languages they have in Asia, the boys got to sing and learn a song in Japanese. :) It sure made all of us think of the karate lessons we took in San Diego, the many Japanese commands and words we had to know and how much we are missing it. :) One of my personal favorite subjects is definitely music. I love every lesson. We've been learning about so many great musicians and composers. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and today it was Brahms. I don't know what it is but classical music is definitely a favorite of mine. I love listening to orchestra and the different musical instruments playing together. We get to listen to so many great things during our lessons and sometimes we get a funny visual one alongside a great song. :D
viewpure.com/monaXOpmH1U Over many months we had this room mostly finished, but my desk was still not put together and we had moving boxes in here, too. Now my desk is all set up and I love coming in this room. It surely makes me happy. :) Here are the before pictures: And here are the after pictures, or how it looks now. :D
I haven't been really faithful with regards to journaling our home school journey, but that doesn't mean we aren't faithful in doing it. Homeschooling is something I absolutely love, despite the stress and tight schedule that comes with it. I am still amazed how much I enjoy it, but it is what it is. One of the fantastic things I love about this adventure is the fact that I myself learn so much about many different things. I love the many activities we get to do in our lessons and the fun we have while doing it. Of course we get on each others nerves, and our boys wouldn't be normal boys if they wouldn't complain and whine about different things, but the overall experience for all of us is pretty cool. Our school room is constantly changing and our walls are getting fuller. Here are a few pictures of the things we did during the last few months. In the picture below we spoke about Egypt, and as a fun activity the boys were able to make their own little paper pyramids. :) In Science we talked about birds and that there are all sorts of birds with so many different beaks. To make it more visual, the activity for this lesson was to use different food items and different tools to learn what it is like for birds to pick up food. So we used a teaspoon, tweezers, clothes pins and scissors as different "beaks", and elbow pasta, wild rice, corn and almonds as foods. The boys each got a small paper plate in front of them and a cup in one hand and then they had to use the different tools (one after another) to pick up as much food as they could. They had 10 seconds and then we counted how many food pieces were in their cups. In our next Science lesson we talked about what type of feathers birds have and why certain feathers don't get soaked when the birds enter the water. To show our boys why the water just glides off, the activity of the lesson was to use a crayon and color the paper as hard as they could in one spot. We then dropped some water on that spot and the results can be seen below. What a fun way to visualize the lesson. :) In Literature we listened to the audio book "Little house in the big woods" over the course of several weeks and when we finished the book, we had a little celebration in which we baked horseshoe cookies (pioneer recipe) and started making lantern out of tin cans. The cookies tasted really good and I followed the recipe perfectly, except adding chocolate chips. ;) We gave up on the tin cans eventually because that would have taken forever. First we had to fill the empty tin cans with water and then freeze it until it was completely solid. After that we used a nail and hammer to make little holes in the can. We got tired of it pretty quickly, but the cookies were a success for sure. This week we started listening to the audio book "Bambi" in Literature, not the Disney version, but the original version written by Felix Salten. The activity was being creative again, and so the boys made a little paper deer. As you can see, we are having a blast learning and being creative. I am just so grateful the lessons have such wonderful activity suggestions since I am not the most creative crafty person, but I too had fun doing the above with my kids. :)
Since our boys have their reading time every day, they received a bunch of books for Christmas last year. And our wonderful friends from San Diego send them a huge box full of books as a present. We sure feel loved and blessed. |
AuthorI am a sarcastic German-born American citizen who loves life and enjoys writing. I am a mother of two boys and we are now experiencing the freakiest adventure of our lives. Archives
November 2017
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