Story of the World Chapter Two Timeline Review

Our Story of the World Study looks mostly like this:

1. Week One: Listen to our current chapter on audiobook. Answer the quiz questions and review all prior quiz questions. Add the current quiz questions to the girls' list of material to practice daily that week.
2. Week Two: Listen again to our current chapter on audiobook. Complete the map work from the Story of the World Activity Book. Compare the completed map to our other geography references--Google Earth, our Montessori puzzle maps, our family atlas, etc.
3. Week Three: Read a picture book or watch a documentary related to our current study. Add new timeline cards to our materials, and glue them to our big basement timeline. Order all the timeline cards covered so far, and add ordering the timeline cards to the girls' list of material to practice daily that week.
4. Weeks Four and Beyond: Read more picture books, watch more documentaries, and complete other unit-based hands-on studies and related memory work until at least one of the kids feels ready to move on.

I always think it's exciting to add new material to our big basement timeline: 

It's still not a project that the girls ever show a lot of interest in outside of the school-time study that we do with it (although they do always perk up when I suggest putting something that they're otherwise interested in, some book or myth, on the timeline), but it makes me, personally, very happy to have it, and I think that one of these days they'll grow into it and get excited about it and take ownership of it.

Since we come back to Egypt again in Chapter 4, for Chapter 2 we'll be doing projects that deal specifically with the geography and mythology of Ancient Egypt. For books, I've checked out every single story about Egyptian gods and goddesses from our public library (yes, I AM that obnoxious!), and my hope is to have the girls record some sort of family tree/genealogy for each figure, as well as a summary of some of their stories. I'm not yet sure how this will work--a homemade book with a page for each figure and brief summaries, as well as video recordings of the girls re-telling their stories, perhaps?

Other projects that are in the running, as long as interest holds out:

• cookie map of Egypt--The girls are CONSTANTLY on the lookout for things to recreate in cookie form! I think we'll do a cookie of modern Egypt, and decorate with frosting and candy to represent the boundaries of Ancient Egypt, the Nile, and the location of major ancient monuments.
• A Coloring Book of Ancient Egypt depicting tomb art (we can do more of these in Chapter 4, when the pyramids are discussed)
• map of Ancient Egypt flip book
• labeled map of Ancient Egypt coloring page
• interpretations of the myths--I want to keep encouraging the girls to think about how stories are continually re-interpreted and used to give different meanings to different times (this will help when SOTW begins to avidly re-tell the Christian myths), so I'm considering having us watch Stargate all together, or listen to the audiobook of The Red Pyramid, which both contain some really fun re-interpretations of Egyptian mythology.
• paper models of the Egyptian gods and goddesses
• posters of the Egyptian gods and goddesses for matching games and memory work
• I SUPER want to buy these Egyptian gods and goddesses toys!!! I won't, though.
• Egyptian gods and goddesses coloring pages--these would be perfect for the book that I want the girls to make.

Okay, that's a crazy amount of projects, but it's okay, because we only have to do the fun ones.

And two chapters later, we can start mummifying things!

Sunset of the Sabertooth and Story of the World Ancient Times

Still on chapter one, volume one of Story of the World! We actually haven't studied in Story of the World in a while--we were doing Disney crafts, and writing Martin Luther King Jr.'s biography, and goofing around outside instead. However, the girls are fanatically fond of their monthly online Magic Tree House Club meeting (as they are of Magic Tree House and Story of the World audiobooks, in general, even if we aren't "studying" them--so much for the necessity of formal history study!), and since September's book was Sunset of the Sabertooth, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to jump back into the time period, complete one last study from it, and then wrap it up to move on.

To prepare for Magic Tree House Club, the girls listened to Sunset of the Sabertooth and read Sabertooths and the Ice Age, the Magic Tree House Research Guide associated with the book. The Magic Tree House Club meetings are fabulous--Willow loves the leader, who keeps the kids focused and engaged, leads them through some very difficult reading comprehension quizzes (on which Willow always does MUCH better than I do!), offers a ton of contextual information on the topic, teaches them appropriate online etiquette, and presents a fun hands-on craft or two associated with each book.

The craft for this book was clay pinch pots. I bought some air-dry clay (if we'd been back at my childhood home down South, I would have known the perfect place to dig for red clay, but I don't know a good spot here--hence the store-bought clay), showed the girls a video on hand-building with clay--



--laid down some newspaper, and let them go!

The girls had a fabulous time, completely immersed in their project. They each started off with a pinch pot, sure, but I was amused to see that Willow also created for herself a long-stemmed wine glass out of the clay, and Sydney made herself an entire dinner set--bowl, plate, cup, AND fork and spoon.

Even though I KNOW how important sensorial work is for kids, and how drawn they are to it, I was surprised at how much the girls loved playing with clay. We always have a ton of play dough, since I'm always making custom orders of it for my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, and the kids go off and on it, but never anymore with the level of passion that I saw here. I wonder if it has to do with density? One of the reasons why play dough is so good for little kids is that manipulating it strengthens their little fingers and hands--it still feels good to older kids, sure, but it's no longer a challenge to their muscles. Clay, however, is dense! It was certainly challenging for my kiddos to manipulate, and I wonder if that was part of the appeal?

A local artist offers homeschool ceramics classes, which so far I've never considered, since I like to encourage the girls to instead do activities that we can't do at home--gymnastics, ice skating, ballet, etc. Better value for the money, don't you know? I'm thinking now, though, that a session of ceramics from a local artist might be something that would really strike their fancy. Of course, it will have to wait until spring, since I just moved our half-day volunteer gig to the day that the ceramics class meets to accommodate Willow's ice skating classes, and I can't shift it again because Will also does running club three times a week to train for a 5K next month, and after that the girls and I are going on another long road trip, anyway...

Guess I'm going to pick up another tub of clay from the store today!

Here are the other resources that we used to study Ice Age animals: