Adventures in MFW - week 2

Week two was all about Jesus and Christopher Columbus. What fun!

Our Bible lessons for the week served mainly as an introduction to Jesus in the Bible. We looked at both Old and New Testament verses that described God's promise of His arrival and how He was named.

Our history lessons this week were fabulous. We had so much fun learning about Christopher Columbus and his ships. We read about him in our history spine Exploring American History and read a story about what sailing across the ocean would have been like for some of the earliest settlers in our other history book American Pioneers and Patriots. We made 3 ships out of foil and tried sailing them across the tub and then discussed how hard it must have been for the sailors to make it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean with no motors on the ships.

We all know there is no such thing as coincidence, right? Well I was astounded to see God's hand at work when I found out that a replica of Columbus' ship The Nina "just happened" to be docked at the marina the very same week we were studying Columbus. So the girls and I met up with other members of our homeschool group for a tour.

I read Pedro's Journal to them which is the fictionalized story of one of the boys on Columbus' ship. I was reading it at the same time as we read Columbus' journal so we talked about the differences in the entries and how that may have related to pride, morals, and/or point of view. I think they are starting to see that two people can tell the same story in very different ways (although these two books were quite similar).

We also did our first science experiment this week. We were trying to learn the effect of salt on water so we added salt to one glass, none to another and then had to guess in which glass an egg would float. We spent some time discussing the scientific method and used the experiment as a good introduction to recording our theories and observations.

To round out our studies, we did the usual art, math, language arts and also began learning the words to "God Bless America."