Monroe County History Center.

Today was quite full for us.  This morning we went to Bloomington to a Child Evangelism Prayer meeting.  It was wonderful to be together with believers.  There were several from other churches praying together for our communities, for each other, and for revival. 

After the meeting, we completed a tour of the warehouse that will eventually become a Christian community center.  The building had been donated to a Christian media company, but that company/ministry has allowed several other ministries to use the offices.    It was very exciting to hear what they have planned.  I felt a wonderful presence the minute I walked through that door.  

After the tour, we helped our CEF director load some boxes into the new area she is going to use as a library for child evangelism materials, and we spent some time talking about our ministry and our plans for the future.  

  

I decided that since we were already going to be in Bloomington, we'd make a day of it and also have a field trip.  I chose to take the boys to the Monroe County History Center.

  We enjoyed the displays.   I decided to add the silly pictures as well as the serious ones.  

 This was a flag from the 27th (?) Regiment.  

Union uniform. Silly faces.

 Justin & Jonathan were pretending they didn't believe Ryan when he is trying to tell them a giant Kodiak bear is about to eat them.  This bear had been in one of the old local gun shops for several years.

 Posing with John Dillinger

 In an old schoolroom display.  I loved the old desks.  The boys were pretending they didn't want to be there.

 Yes, that is a dunce hat on that chair in the corner.  I can only imagine what the boys were carrying on about.

 An old cabin

 I could not get a clear picture of this for some reason.  Maybe it was the lighting in this room, but it is filled with old muskets and lots of Civil War items. Justin said he loved these guns in particular.

Memorization: The Presidents

Note: We made the cute hat & powdered wigs yesterday to celebrate finally learning the Presidents. Link credit at the bottom of the post where I got the craft ideas.




Ideas for celebrating the Presidents:
http://holidays.kaboose.com/presidents-day/presidents-day.html

Fun Project: An Edible Lincoln's Log Cabin

The boys have been learning the Presidents in order, and we have been reading about them in Eyewitness: Presidents .  So, just for the fun of it, we built an edible graham cracker & pretzel cabin.  We called it "Lincon's Log Cabin" (in winter, of course).

Now I need to clean up the mess!

*******************************************************************************

Credits to websites and books I used for the ideas, recipes, & patterns:

 :

Got the idea from: http://crafts.kaboose.com/pretzel-log-cabin.html
Found something better at the library: No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids

Online icing recipe http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,166,152161-253200,00.html

Field Trip: Lawrence County Museum of History

The boys have been doing really well with their school work , so I rewarded them with a little field trip Wednesday, October 19th.  We went to the Lawrence County Museum of History.

It was a cool, drizzly day, but that didn't diminish the fun.   We had a wonderful day.

The last two are from when I took them to McDonald's after our visit to the museum to get ice cream and mochas. 

The Tabernacle

While reading The Bible Story books, we have been reading about the life of Moses and the Israelites' journeys through the wilderness, the building of the Tabernacle, and the Ten Commandments. We also watched a short documentary about the Tabernacle that was very helpful.

When I was in the fifth grade at BMCS, Miss Stetler had us build a small model of the Tabernacle.   It was a great idea, and I can still name the "pieces" from the Tabernacle today.

Guess what we decided to do?  After several hours over a period of about 3 weeks (here and there)  of cutting cardboard, gluing popsickle sticks, molding salt dough, and painting with gold and glitter, we have our very own model.  So, what's my purpose for doing this? Making memories!  And well... it counts as art, it is fun, and I hope this will help them remember the facts as well.

Please forgive the random order of the pictures. I had a really hard time getting these pictures uploaded, and I just don't have time to rearrange them.   The pieces turned out much larger than we intended -and because of space- I just outlined the Tabernacle and tents on brown craft paper.

The order should be: 1.  The Brasen Altar 2.  The Laver 3. The Golden Candlestick 4. The Table of Shewbread 5. The Altar of Incense 6. The Ark of the Covenant (included inside the Ark are the Ten Commandments, A pot of manna, & Aaron's rod).

The Golden Candlestick 

The Altar of Incense (see the smoke?)

The Brazen Altar

The Laver

The Table of Shewbread (see the loaf of bread on top?)

Inside the Holy Place

The Ten Commandments, The Pot of Manna, & Aaron's rod (see the green buds on it?)

The Ark of the Covenant (inside the Most Holy Place) with its items lying beside it.

Here it is in the actual order in which the items were placed.

I still need to even out the handles for the pieces that would have been carried.  I ran out of the long popsickle sticks and had to use what I had (which were ones that I had already cut).    

Indiana History, day 1

We are studying Indiana history!  My plan is to do an intensive unit study about Indiana history.  I am not sure how long it will last, but the reason for the intensity is because because I am using library books. 

The books we are using are the following:

Singing Indiana History by Martha Chrisman Riley, Seeds of a Nation: Indiana by P.M. Boekhoff and Stuart A. Kallen, Carole Marsh's Indiana Timeline, Indiana History, and Indiana Jeapordy

I am trying to use Youtube to look up any songs that might be mentioned in the Singing Indiana History book. I am not one to think the music part is just something that should be required, but I do think it is fun.  Perhaps it will help the boys remember a little bit about Indiana history.

********************************************************************************
 "Ah Si mon moine voilait danser!"

This song is said to have been performed by the French fur traders while paddling their canoes:



Women in old Fort Vincennes sang the song "Alouette" as they prepared chickens for cooking.  "Alouette" means "little lark: and the words are about plucking the bird's feathers from the various parts of its body. :-)



Military music was also heard in Indiana's French forts.
"Rigaudon" by Boismortier in 1730:

The Grapes Wrath

I didn't want to take the time to watch the whole film, but we watched different parts of it after reading a section in our history book about the Great Depression & The Dust Bowl. 

 

Timeline Characters: Lindberg & The Great Depression

We are still adding characters to our timeline.  These are a couple of the newer onese we have added.  I have quit making them draw the pictures for the time being.  It has just been so time consuming to do both the writing and drawing.  I may have them draw occasionally when we aren't up to our eyeballs in projects!

Lindberg & The Great Depression

Christian History/Church History: New resource

We (I read it some days; Michael reads it some days) just started reading this to the boys.  It is great because it is a short, devotional-style reading that you do daily.  We are all learning from it!  Thanks to Mom!!! 

Bunny Trails

Occasionally when we are reading a book or discussing something, we will
go on a "bunny trail."

Today was like that. We are currently reading a book called Growing Together in Courage by Barbara Rainey.
It is a fantastic compilation of stories about people who exhibited courage during extreme situations. After reading one of the stories (which are all true), we somehow landed on the topic of September 11th, 2001. As we were discussing it, I realized that the boys-especially the two youngest- hadn't heard much about that horrible, not-so-long-ago day. That led me to the computer to pull up some clips of the Twin Towers being attacked and collapsed, which led to a torrent of tears, which led to a documentary about it. Basically we spent most of the day talking about what happened and all of the courageous people involved. So what started out as a short story to introduce the topic of courage to my children, led to an all-day "study".
I think they do truly understand how important courage  is.
Bunny trails are good.

Time-line Character: Henry Ford's Model T

I was thankful to find a clipart website to help with our time-line.  Sometimes it is fun to draw the characters, and other times we are pinched for time.  The clip-art helps on these days.  Jonathan wrote and drew his own cute cartoon at the bottom.

Time-line Characters: Ellis Island, Booker T. Washington, Thomas Edison, & The American Railroads

Here are the latest time-line additions.  They are completely backwards, because I couldn't remember how the pictures would upload.  They are clickable.

The Civil War - timeline characters

We are learning about the  Civil War. Here are the newest time-line characters.

Drawn by Jonathan--- Writing by Justin--- Gluing by Ryan ;-)

We watched this interesting film about Civil war guns.  There are five parts, so if you watch this...when you finish this look for part two....


The Gettysburg Address:

Time-line Characters: The California Gold Rush & The Pony Express

Jonathan drew the little man panning for gold.

Justin used tracing paper and traced the Pony Express rider