A Brave New World

Last week we learned mostly about Christopher Columbus.  How he thought that he was in sailing to China, his ships and everything else.  It was an informative lesson about the founding of the New World.  

Along with our regular books I added in Draw Write Now books.  We've never really used this series before, but so far Dare-Devil Boy is liking it.  What we've liked about it is that it has stepped by stepped instructions on how to draw the picture.  This has made it easier for Dare-Devil Boy to draw.

Mapping Columbus's Journey

Dare-Devil Boy's Columbus Lapbook

Dare-Devil Boy's pictures that he drew this week using Draw Write Now.

Columbus as a boy.

A Map of the World

Columbus's ships.

B is for Boat

I never got a chance last week to post about what Wonder Girl has been learning.  After a weird week we just finished up learning the letter "B", before we moved on the letter "C".  So here is  small look at what we did.

The pieces to make our "little b" Boat

 

 Smiling boat

Putting it together

 

The boat together.

A little handwriting work too.

 

Viking Videos

I couldn't post with when I posted about our study of Vikings discovering America a few days ago. But her it is now.  It is a short video of Dare-Devil boy explaining about what he learned about vikings.

 

Also another video of Dare-Devil playing with his Vikings.  It was a Romans vs. Vikings battle.

Tepi, not TP

Beside our trip into the world of vikings last week we also have been doing a Native American study.  This week we focused on the Hopi and a few of the Plains Indians.  The highlight and the biggest thing that came out of this was our Tepi.  

Dare-Devil Boy and my husband did the actually building of the Tepi or the none paper one at least.  Wonder Girl and I made a paper one for her to play with.  Complete with people and other things.

Spider-Dad first tracing out the shape.

 

Next cutting out the fabric.

 

As my husband was doing that Dare-Devil Boy 

was trying to put up the poles on his own.

The final product.  Even with Native Americans.  

(I didn't mange to get the actually raise of the tepi because

the did it while I was out.)

Later Dare-Devil Boy set up his Indian guys and Viking guys

for a formal meeting.

And finally...Wonder Girl's Tepi.  She was very 

excited to have one of her own.

A Vikings Nicer Side

Do Vikings has a nicer side?  Well I would like to think so.  This week in our study we learned that Vikings were more then Raiders, most of them were farmers,  that they are exploders and they never wore hats that had horns on them.  (Yeah, I was shocked to learn that too.)  Just to mention a few other things.

This is was our 2nd week of school, but so far our favorite.  Dare-Devil boy has much loved or is fascinated by the Vikings.  He would pull out the books we had around the house that had to do with this subject and would read or look at pictures.  Then proceed to ask questions on things that at the time I could never answer.  

So when we went into this week he was a bit more excited or interested in what we were learning.  Her is a small list of what we both learned about this semi-misunderstood group of people.  We learned that...

• ... they NEVER had helmets with horns on them. 
• ... they were actually the first of discover American and not Columbus.
• ... most Vikings were farmers and not raiders.
• ... came for a place call Scandinavia.
• ... that Scandinavia was made up of three countries: Denmark, Sweden, & Norway.

To go along with our study of Vikings we made a lapbook that I got from Homeschoolshare.com and a few notebook pages too. Also we did some great hands-on paper crafts that Dare-Devil Boy like a lot.

A picture of the inside of Dare-Devil Boy's Lapbook

The paper Viking Long House & Ship we made. 

Water colored Map of the place the Vikings Discovered

The Vikings fighting the Romans

Also the Vikings meeting the Native Americans when they came to North America.
(The Tepi was made during out study of Native Americans we also did this week.)