Last week was a busy week as always and especially with the many fun projects we were able to accomplish!

For my 4 year old daughter's alphabet box we learned the letter "J" last week.  I had my daughter color a "J" template that I got here and I drew jigsaw pieces on the template.  After I helped her cut out the pieces she glued the letter back together and I cut out a border to look like an outline of puzzle pieces.  So it looked like this:


One thing she made, along with my 7 year old, was a jellyfish.  They were super easy and fun!  We used 1/2 of a paper plate, chenille sticks, glue, tape, googly eyes and markers.


I also read books about Jesus and Jonah while they were doing their jellyfish craft.


We hung up their creations on our alphabet wall which is really on an "A frame" ceiling, hence the slanted look in this picture :)


We also continued our Apologia Astronomy studies with 2 experiments about the planet Mars.   The first experiment was suggested by Anna-Marie at Our Life's Adventures when she was studying astronomy with her children.   So I got the same book out of the library, Mars by Steven Kipp, and tried making our own martian sand to explain why the sand on Mars is red. 





After a few days the wool started to rust in the pan with water while the other dry pan did not have rust.  We explained that the dust on Mars is red due to the iron oxide which is rust.  According to our Apologia text there is some evidence that there was liquid water on Mars at one time, but currently scientists believe there is none now.

Another fun experiment we did was build the biggest mountain peak in the entire solar system on Mars, and this volcano is called Olympus Mons.

We first made the salt dough recipe that was suggested in the Apologia text that was used for our volcano.
Our volcano is in the background with rocks around it with the text in the forefront that explained the experiment.


We then erupted our Olympus Mons by combining red food coloring, baking soda, vinegar, and dish washing liquid.

We are continuing to study ancient Greek history and this past week we made theater masks as I read information about how the Greeks only used male actors because females weren't allowed to perform.  So the men also played women's roles and usually used 2 sided masks to show 2 different emotions while performing.  Before my children began their masks, we looked up images on the computer of all the different kinds of masks to get ideas.  We stumbled upon a fun game on the computer called "Face Memory" that explained how Ancient Greeks had exaggerated features on their masks to entertain several thousand people in a big theater. This memory game tests how well your children can remember features on a mask.  My children enjoyed testing their memory skills!  Click HERE to play.  Here are some pictures from our mask activity:

My 4 year old insisted I take this picture of her with her mask as she looked into our bathroom mirror :) 

So what does the moon and cookies have in common?

The answer:  The cookies can look like the moon phases and make for a special and yummy homeschool lesson as we continue our Apologia Astronomy studies this year.

Since this is our last week in our homeschool before Christmas, I thought my "cupcakes" and I would enjoy a break from the usual book routine and do this idea that I have read from different sources. 

As we discussed the phases of the moon, each child used a plastic knife to scrape the cookie icing to make it look like the particular phase.


This week, my 4 year old cupcake was learning about the "G" as in Gingerbread as we continue our Preschool Alphabet Boxes.  It was perfect timing to do fun gingerbread activities since Christmas is just around the corner!  So I printed off pages from a December issue of The Mailbox magazine that had an activity to measure the Area and Perimeter of a gingerbread picture.  We used raisins, marshmallows, and chocolate chips and each child recorded their findings. The cupcakes couldn't wait to count their treats, record, and then eat some of them!   Here are pictures from the activity.


My 4 year old was content to just color her gingerbread and decorate him with chocolate chips...

She also liked playing with the marshmallows and was having fun with the sticky treats...

And here is the house all done!

The proud artists...

The hungry artists...

The silly artists...

So far we have enjoyed our last week in the 2011 school year as we anxiously and joyfully await the celebration of Jesus' birth!

We are continuing our Astronomy lessons using Apologia text and we are enjoying learning so much about our amazing solar system!  Last week we finished up our lessons on the sun and we learned more about a solar eclipse using a flashlight, an inflated globe and a Styrofoam ball.  We did this little experiment at night with the help of my husband.  I think our kids and their friend liked making shadow puppets while learning about the solar eclipse too!


A cute book that I read to my children about the solar eclipse is this one, Someone is Eating the Sun.  The main character, Hen, tells all her animal friends that the sky is getting darker because someone has taken a bite out of the sun.  This is a humorous story and my children enjoyed the animals' reactions to what they were experiencing, a solar eclipse.   
After it rained for a week straight not too long ago, we saw some sun peek out of the clouds so we raced outside to our driveway to use a magnifying glass to focus heat.  We took small refrigerated candy bars and a magnifying glass to concentrate the energy of the sun's light into a small spot.  My kids enjoyed seeing the chocolate actually melt and smoke while doing this experiment!  It was alot of fun and it is amazing that even though our sun is 93 million miles away from Earth, it is still very powerful!  Here are some pictures from this experiment:

Can you see a little bit of smoke coming off the chocolate in the above picture?  Cool, huh? :)


It's a new month and a new opportunity to join in and link up to the No Ordinary Blog Hop (NOBH) that I co-host with 6 other bloggers.  Just click on the button below to find out more information and start linking up your posts.  We have several categories to make linking up easier and hopping more fun!