Haiku

We've been learning about China, Japan, and Korea this week, and we each composed a haiku, then illustrated them. I love how they turned out. Tuna, after this experience, thinks haiku is boring because it doesn't typically rhyme. Still, I think she did a great job writing one.

I like mine, too. Where's my gold star? 

Dynasties: Not Just for Ducks

I don't watch that show. Actually, the thought of it sort of makes me want to vomit a little in my mouth, which you will soon find ironic. But people talk about it nonstop. What is it about Americans that makes us want to watch a bunch of rednecks living their day-to-day lives on television? 

Here, I must stop and admit, fully, to watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on a weekly basis. You better redneckognize. 

Anyway, this post has nothing to do with ducks, and everything to do with dynasties. We're reading Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages, and we just finished up chapter eight: The Great Dynasties of China. In the activity guide, I found instructions for replicating a jade necklace with Sculpey. Sounded fun, so off we went. 

Materials: Sculpey in the closest shade to jade we could find, embroidery floss (or other string), something on which to string your beads (we used kebab skewers), a baking sheet, the oven

Soften the clay in your hands, then roll it into ropes and cut off 1/2" bits. Roll those into balls and skewer them. 

Baking the Sculpey at 275F for about fifteen to twenty minutes sets the beads. 

Why yes, those are pajamas my daughter is wearing. 

Then, you can browse the Internet, looking up more detailed information on jade, like we did. Here are some sites we enjoyed:

The Big Site of Amazing Facts

some jade history

Et tu, Brute?

Tuna and I love Story of the World. Many homeschoolers don't, citing its "great men" emphasis, or its author's religious tendencies. However, Story of the World is a wonderful tale of history, and treats all religions equally, so far as I can tell so far, setting all religious stories aside as just that: tales of the times. We can appreciate the myths told as such. And being as it is not the only exposure Tuna gets to either history or any of the social studies, I fear not the "great men" emphasis. 

We have enjoyed every chapter of volume one, and look so forward to volume two, which we will begin in the fall. 

Today, we read about Julius Caesar. The story was so captivating that we breezed through two entire chapters in one siting, then found this BBC series on Julius Caesar's death on YouTube. It's told in old English, but Tuna found most of it easy to understand after having listened to me reading from Story of the World. Once in context, the old English is not hard to understand. I only had to translate a few phrases for her. 

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Paper from Pulp & Hieroglyphics

Tuna already made actual papyrus last year, from reeds, in the proper manner. But we wanted to write on some handmade paper for our Egypt project, so we tried recycled paper pulp instead. It was a giant mess but it was fun and successful.

Our blender was lost in our move to Germany, so we had to use my food processor to make our paper pulp. I hate the scent of newspaper, so to mask it, I added vanilla extract and cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger (it worked). 

Oh, by the way: It's super messy. Paper goo came SPLASHING out of my food processor all over the tile, counter, stove, sink, everything it could reach. 

Nasty-looking paper pulp mess ready to be made into paper

It looks like cooked hamburger meat, doesn't it? Since I didn't have a screen, I used one of my stockings over a pan to dry our paper. We flipped it after a day so it would dry evenly. 

No more hamburger meat. Now we have paper. Tuna's writing "EGYPT" on it.

All done!

We made a cuneiform tablet, too, out of baked salt dough. 

Fun Friday

That's not a real thing here. At least, it wasn't even planned to be like this. But we had a great time today reinforcing the week's lessons through hands-on activities.

Actually, "normal" days have looked a lot like this, too. I guess it's just that we had so many projects we wanted to do that today just felt extra fun.

On an average day, we do our obligatory lessons (spelling, grammar, writing - though that is about to become a fun activity because we're working on writing a real book now - and math). Then we move along to the fun stuff: literature, art, history, and science, though not usually on the same day. We can spend hours and hours on our favorite things, and we do.

Today, since we took yesterday off, we wanted to finish out our week with our intended projects. These included whittling soap (just like the boy who whittled Paddle out of wood, but our projects were not as ornate, to say the least), painting and filling and hanging a bird feeder, and baking and decorating a cookie dough map of ancient Egypt.

Whittling soap to get a feel for whittling, as the boy who created Paddle whittled a canoe out of wood. Whittling soap is harder than I expected and we have a great appreciation for "real" whittlers now. 

We're going to start observing local birds, so making them a place to eat seems like a logical place to start. 

Ours is made from a 1/2 gallon milk container, a stick, some yarn, and some paint. 

Hands-on is a great way for Tuna to commit a subject to memory. I expect she will not soon forget her cookie dough map of Ancient Egypt. We used peanut butter cookie dough (1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg), butter-cream frosting, food coloring, and colored sugar. 

In Tuna's own words: "Today was fun, amazing, awesome, and I loved making the cookie. I pretty much loved everything about school today."