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Science Days Both of our girls just love science, so it is never "off the schedule" for long at our house. They love to do demonstrations and experiments, explore nature, visit the science center, and make notebook pages like these.
 fossils, by Kendra.
 gravity, by Dulcie.
Bible Stories Kendra recently completed reading her Beginner's Bible, from which she narrated and illustrated each and every story. Now she has her very own handmade book of Bible Stories, and she is very proud of it. Here is one of her stories. The Lost Sheep Jesus liked to tell stories to his people. Once he told this story. Pretend you are a shepherd, and you have one hundred sheep. You take good care of them, and you show them where the sweetest grass is and the coolest water. Every night you count one hundred sheep and you close the gate, and the sheep sleep safe and sound. But once you count your sheep and you count ninety-nine. You count again, and you say, "Ninety-nine?" What do you say? Do you say, "Well, at least I have ninety-nine?" No, you go and look for the lost sheep. You look and look until you finally find it, and you carry it home on your shoulders. Jesus said, "God is like the shepherd. He loves his people."
 The Lost Sheep, by Kendra.
Drawings Kendra has enjoyed using Usborne's What Shall I Draw this year. This is one of her recent projects -- this one from the art lesson in the Sunday comics section of the newspaper.
 Dulcie enjoyed using a drawing board and some of her dad's drafting tools to create this reproduction of a Roman apartment building. Her inspiration for this piece is The Usborne Book of the Ancient World, one of the suggested resources for Veritas' New Testament, Greece and Rome curriculum.
Aesop's Fables As a fourth grader, Dulcie began to transition from oral to written narrations. Later in the year she began to rewrite some of her fables to include better phrasing and descriptions, and this is one of her rewritten works. The Fox and the Grapes
The fox stood motionless as the golden sunbeams shone upon his flame-colored coat.
Thick bunches of wine-red grapes dangled from a vine, almost mockingly, as if to say, "You can't get me because
I'm too high, safe from your clutches, am I not?"
As he hungrily looked at the swaying clusters of grapes, the fox heard the sudden snapping of a twig nearby, but
he did not take his eyes off those delicious grapes. Frustrated, the fox sniffed the mid-afternoon breeze as it swept across the sky, and the sun-warmed grapes gave
off an enticing aroma. With a snarl, the fox trusted his spring-filled legs to give him the strength to reach his heart's
desire. Up he struggled, and then down he crashed! The earth felt hard and dry beneath him.
Sadly, the fox dragged himself up onto his feet and took a long, last look at the tempting fruit. "They're probably
tasteless anyway," he thought, and he turned and padded away through the darkening woods.
Rewritten narration by Dulcie, from the book
Books, Books, Books
 book report, by Kendra. The Secret of the Wooden Lady
The Secret of the Wooden Lady, by Carolyn Keene, is an
exciting book in the Nancy Drew Mystery Series. The story takes place in Nancy's hometown of River
Heights, in and around Boston, and on the ship called the Bonny Scot. Nancy's girlfriends, George
and Bess, help her solve the mystery. Nancy's father, Carson Drew, also helps her.
The mystery begins when Carson Drew gets a letter from the captain of the Bonny Scot. Nancy
and her friends are confronted with robbery, fire, and kidnapping as they find clues. The most suspenseful
part is when they are trapped and then they escape.
Anyone who enjoys mysteries will like this book.
Puzzle Corner For science lovers, here's a printable word search puzzle about electricity and magnetism. Enjoy!
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Storm in the Night
Thomas and his grandfather and Ringo, the cat, were sitting by the fire. It was a cold evening and Grandpa
said, "We can't watch TV and we can't go outside because it's raining." Grandfather said, "I'll tell you a story of
when I was a little boy."
"When I was a little boy, I liked to lay on my bed and read things. In the morning when I woke up, the first thing
I did was get my clothes on, and the next thing I did was go down to have breakfast and go to school. When I came
home, I always liked to read before a nice, hot supper. We had stew and warm milk on cold evenings when I was
a little boy. Sometimes, if it wasn't too late, we cooked marshmallows in the fire, or we would watch a movie."
"On my birthdays, I always got the things I wanted. I always asked for a simple kind of book. My dad would always
get me a family present. He got the same thing that my mom did, which was a book. I always got a different
flavor of icing each time I got a cake. I got chocolate on my first birthday."
They went out on the front porch, because it stopped raining a little bit. They sat on the swing. The light began
to come up. The lights went on, and they turned them off and went to bed. Storm in the Night, by Kendra.
Physiology Dulcie uses Lyrical Life Science, the Human Body for her required health and physiology classes, and supplements it with other books and resources. She used the Start Exploring Gray's Anatomy coloring book to draw this labeled diagram of the heart when she studied the circulatory system this spring.
The Punic Wars
While Rome was becoming powerful in Italy, the Western Mediterranean was
under the control of the Carthaginians. Their capital, Carthage, was located on the north African coast.
It was founded by the Phoenicians in 814 B.C. The Punic Wars were fought between the Carthaginians
and the Romans because Carthage wanted to expand its territory. They were called the Punic Wars after
the Latin word for "Phoenician."
There were three Punic Wars in all. In the first Punic War in 264 B.C., the Carthaginians occupied Messana
in northeast Sicily. The Greek cities in southern Italy who were under Roman protection saw this as a threat.
The Romans sent an army to Sicily and it took them twenty years to expel the Carthaginians from Sicily.
In the second Punic War in 218 B.C., the Carthaginians invaded and conquered Spain. Then Hannibal, the
Carthaginian general in Spain, decided to make war on the Romans. He marched over the Pyrenees, across
the River Rhone, and over the Alps with 35,000 men and 37 elephants. Hannibal's troops won some of the
battles, but then the Romans defeated Hannibal and his men. Hannibal went back to Spain, but never
conquered Rome.
In 149 B.C., the third Punic War began. Rome destroyed Carthage, and the territory
in Africa where Carthage was became a Roman province.
After conquering Carthage, small city-states in Greece asked the Romans for protection, while bigger ones
were aggressive toward Rome. In 146 B.C., the Romans crushed the Greek city-state of Corinth as a
warning to others. All of Greece was put under a Roman governor, and the entire Mediterranean came
under Roman control.
Spelling Since completing the Extended Ayers List in The Writing Road to Reading, Dulcie has moved on to an individualized spelling program. She still uses the syllabication and marking system from WRTR along with weekly study drills and a personal notebook system, but most of her words now come from her own writing, from her history tests, and from her health and science units. We also look at words from her Latin vocabulary lists and choose English derivatives to add to her spelling list. In this list you'll see quite a few words from her study of Roman culture. She studies twenty words per week, with a pretest on Monday and a final quiz on Friday.
 Latin Dulcie completed Matin Latin I this year and will soon be moving on to Matin Latin II. We like Matin Latin because it takes a grammatical approach and introduces translation work early, providing a purpose for learning. We have supplemented Matin Latin I with our own written drills as well, but this original story in Latin is an exercise from the textbook itself.
 Translation: The Queen The queen lived in a palace. The queen's daughter hid her jewels. The queen demanded her jewels back. The queen's daughter carried the jewels. She walked to the table. The queen drew near and exclaimed, "This is my crown! These are my jewels!" The queen's daughter made a mistake. The queen loved her daughter.
Nature Notes We all love to work in our nature notebooks. Both of these drawings were inspired by recent visitors to our garden.
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