Week 25 Overview

We've been together for 25 weeks! Look at our studies this past week:

Bible
We discussed the "12 disciples" and followers of Jesus. 12 special disciples were: Simon (Peter), James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas. We can be disciples of Christ, too. Trust Jesus as your Savior AND obey him as Lord. We love to have a Savior, but are we ready to submit to Jesus as our Lord? I hope so!

History
The teacher has been loving the learning that is going on in history (for herself!). I wish I had learned it like this when I was a child. It would have made such a difference in my attention to history class in high school.

This week we learned about the following topics:
The Diaspora- When Judea was being ruled by Rome, the Jewish freedom fighters, called Zealots, rebelled against the Roman army that occupied Jerusalem. The Jews had initial success, but the Jews were scattered away from Jerusalem, all over the Roman empire, by the Romans after the Romans broke through the walls of Jerusalem in AD 70 and burned the Temple. The Romans took the Jews captive and decided to scatter them in an attempt to prevent another revolt by the Jews.

The Mongols devastate the East when Genghis Khan (born 1167) decided all Mongols should ban together to take over China. The Mongol empire became the biggest in the world. He was still fighting to increase his empire when he became ill and died in 1227. His grandson, Kublai Khan came to the throne in 1260 and became the emperor of China. They also took away land from the Islamic empire and conquered the Byzantine empire.

The Chinese did try to fight back with new weapons- poisonous gases! But, by 1279, Kublai Khan was the undisputed ruler of China.

Kamikaze means divine winds. When the Mongols tried to conquer Japan, they were pushed back, twice, by the kamikaze (the Mongols tried to sail to Japan). A thousand years later, the term kamikaze will come up again when the Japanese are involved in battles as fighter pilots.

Marco Polo was the son of an Italian merchant. He became a merchant and explorer. Marco met Kublai Kahn when he was in Beijing. He wrote a book, The Travels of Marco Polo, about his journey to China and the meeting with Kublai Kahn was documented in this book. Marco and his father stayed in China for 20 years. Kublai Kahn put Marco in charge of governing different cities in his empire and even asked him to judge between arguing Chinese officials. When they returned from China, their relatives didn't believe it was them at first!

Marco had traveled the Silk Road. Safety was possible because the Kahn made it so. But, after the Kahn died, it became dangerous. Mongol leaders divided and the Ming Dynasty became the new ruling power of China. These rulers built a small city within the city of Beijing. This area was called the Forbidden City because of its size and was forbidden to be seen by foreign visitors. Construction began in 1421 and took 14 years to build. About 90 years ago, the last Chinese emperors were driven out of the Forbidden City. You can now travel to see the palace that no person in medieval times ever saw!

Math
Our 6th grader is SO excited to be moving on to another topic in math! She finished a long (my whole life) study on decimals and percent in the real world. Final quiz was a fabulous 92%!

Our 3rd graders are still working on measurement. This week, we looked at gallons, quarts, pints, and cups. Check out our "gallon man" project in week in photos for week 25. We also reviewed multiplication with larger numbers times a single digit.

Science
6th grade chemistry~ substances and their properties and symbols, atomic numbers, Periodic Table, elements, atoms, ionic and covalent bonds, and more.
In Cool Stuff 2.0, how advances in technology relate to espionage, agencies monitoring activities without needing a field agent on the scene, DataDots, radar waves, echolocation, and why jets have ejector seats.

3rd grade~ plants
We continued our study on plants, to include signals that help plants grow, the effects of water and sunlight (or lack of) on plants, the life cycle of flowering plants, and how these six things found in soil help plants grow: dissolved minerals, bacteria, fungi, earthworms, insects, and water.

Reading
We started a new read-aloud titled The Shakespeare Stealer. It's about a 10 year old orphan boy. We haven't learned much yet, as we are still in the introduction stage.
All of our girls are reading on their own everyday and we are excited to share a reading challenge next week!

All the other things
We are writing letters, watching videos of the Forbidden City (what it looks like today), completing our daily math review, moving through our vocabulary book, participating at co-op (PE, composer Beethoven, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, plants in nature study, geography, and more), playing inventive games at recess, and practicing our piano pieces daily.

We hope you enjoyed reading about our learning this week and we look forward to sharing next week's learning soon.

Happy reading!