Blog Vacation - We will meet again soon

Well dear readers, we a taking a short break from this blog as we will not have a computer or internet service for a time.  We will be working hard though during our break and will share with you those things we have learned as soon as we come back.  Makes us realize how much we rely on computers when we have to do without them for awhile.  We cannot wait to see you again and to share our learning with you.  Until we meet again, my friends, may God hold you in His hands...

Vowels by Isabelle and Noah

There are only 5 vowels and they are A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.  There are short vowels and long vowels.  They make short sounds like uh and long sounds like ee.  Vowels are medium hard.  They aren't super hard or really easy, just kind of in between.  All the other letters in the alphabet are called consonants.
*Mother's Note ~ Thanks to Darla for taking Wednesday afternoons to help Isabelle and Noah with their reading.  Every little contribution helps their learning experience.  It is appreciated.

Honey Bees by Isabelle

Bees take nectar from flowers.  Bees make honey out of nectar.  They live in hives.  The Queen has the job of having the babies so the hive will have enough worker bees.  Bees are very important because they pollinate most of our plants.  Bees have "baskets" on their legs and they can carry honey there.  The female bees who are not the Queen cannot have babies but they are in charge of making the honey.  The worker / field bees bring in the nectar to the female bees.  They heat and cool the hive by flapping their wings to heat the hive and they spit water on the hive to cool it.  They are covered in fur which lets them pollinate all year. 

Your Weather by Isabelle

Look outside everyone.  It is really cloudy today!  It is even kind of chilly right now.  A cold front came into our area and it is 64 degrees right now.  The high today is supposed to be 76 with a chance of rain.  I am glad it is cooler.  It has been so hot we didn't even want to play outside but now we can.  So everybody get outside and enjoy the weather before it gets hot again.  Glenn has vacation in two weeks and we get to go camping.  I hope it is not hot then and is like it is now.  Have fun today while the weather is nice.  We are going to.

Clouds by Isaac, Noah, and Isabelle

Clouds are made of tiny drops of water.  If you want to see what a cloud is wait for a foggy day.  Fog is a cloud on the ground.  In cartoons you see people sitting on clouds but that is just make-believe.  You can't sit on clouds, you'd fall down.  Clouds aren't cotton candy either.  They look kind of fluffy like cotton candy, but they aren't.  They make shapes in the air like a dragon, a fairy, a wolf but those are just shapes the cloud made.  Yesterday we saw a dragon.  All of us and Mom always find stuff in the clouds.  It is one of our favorite things to do.  Mom likes us to use our imaginations and she does it too.  We are fixing to learn the different types of clouds and will share what we learn here.  This is just so you know, you can't really sit on clouds and they probably aren't good to eat either.

The Tower of Babel by Noah

The king ordered the people to build a tower that went all the way up to heaven.  The people all spoke the same language and worked together to build it.  They bragged and thought everyone would know them because of the tower.  So, God came down to see the tower and it made Him mad that they were so full of pride and not of God.  God made it to where they all spoke different languages and he spread them all over the world.  The tower was never finished.  God doesn't like us to be filled with pride and not to put Him first.  We shouldn't brag or disobey our Mom or only think of ourselves.  Sometimes I disobey Mom and don't think about how she feels.  God doesn't like that so I think that is something I should work on.

Franz Schubert by Isaac, Noah and Isabelle

Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer.  He died at age 31.  He had parties at his house called Schubertiades.  All his friends would come over and they would play the piano and sing.  They had games and dancing too!  He wrote 8 symphonies and over 600 songs. Sometimes he wrote 3-4 in a day. He asked to be buried near Beethoven who he had admired all his life and he was buried next to him.  The last song he asked to hear as he was dying was Beethoven's actually.  His nickname was Tubby and his friends loved him because he was so nice and friendly and fun!!  He slept with his glasses on so when he woke up he wouldn't have to look for them before he began composing.  He was called the "Master of the German Song."  His most famous work is the "Unfinished Symphony."  We all liked his music because it sounds fun and happy!


We have studied a bunch of composers and we all have our favorites but this is the first time we have studied Shubert and we liked his music so much, we wanted to share it with everyone.

Nonsense Verse by Isaac, Noah, and Isabelle

Nonsense Verse is a type of poem.  It can be something you don't know but somehow understand.  They use made-up words that you don't know but when reading you know what it means.  There can be made up creatures.  It is familiar things in unfamiliar settings.  It is wild and outrageous.  It has fantastic images.  We like this type of poem.  Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll is an example of Nonsense Verse.  We really like Jabberwocky.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson by Isaac

Lewis Carroll wrote Jabberwocky and Alice and Wonderland and other poems.  He wrote nonsense poems.  I am a fan of his poems.  They don't make sense, but they are funny and good!  Lewis Carroll had a stutter but he only had it around grown ups, never around kids.  He loved kids.  He took lots of pictures of them.  He taught math at Christ Church.  He was very smart.   His real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson but he wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll.  He was homeschooled as a child.  I like that he was homeschooled like me.  He wrote down Alice in Wonderland, after his little friend, Alice Liddell begged him to and gave it to her in 1864.  It is still popular today.  Johnny Depp was just in the new release of Alice in Wonderland so that is pretty good.  The story is over 100 years old and they are making movies about it still.  I bet all of you have read it at least once.  I like it too!!!

The Color Red by Jake

Red is a pretty color.  Red and blue are my favorites but I like all different kinds of colors.  My chair is red.  Apples and ketchup are red.  Firetrucks are red.  Flowers are red.  Red makes me feel happy.  I like red koolaid and red popsicles.  Red is Mommy's favorite color.  I like butterflies.  I wish I could see a red one.

Environments by Isaac, Noah, and Isabelle

What are environments?  Environment is a habitat where animals and people live.  Fish have to live in water, that is their environment.  If you take them out of water they die.  Earthworms live under ground.  We couldn't live underground because we couldn't breathe in that dirt.  We couldn't live under water either because we would drown.  People survive better in different environments because we can grow our own food and we can put on clothing and build shelter.  Animals can become extinct when their environments are destroyed by mankind.  It is sad to think about the animals that are now extinct because their environment was destroyed.  Their are some animals that even have to live in a specific region because that is the only place the food they need to survive is found.  It is important not to destroy environments because animals live in them and we live in them too. 

Verbs by Noah

A verb is something you do like playing baseball, or playing football, walking, running, or playing outside.  It is an action word.  So if you want to be a verb you have to do something like move, draw, exercise.  They are different from nouns.  To have a complete sentence, you have to have a verb in it.  Tomorrow we are going to the fair.  We will be going which is doing something...then we are going to have fun.  I can't wait to DO that!

The Colonists by Isaac, Noah & Isabelle

The British king was not nice to the colonists who came to America.  He raised taxes and passed acts like the Stamp Act that made the colonists mad.  The people came to America because they wanted freedoms they did not get in England and other countries.  They wanted a chance to make their lives better.  They wanted to be able to have freedom of religion and to own their own land.  The first colony was called Jamestown.  Towns built that had a good harbor prospered.  They could trade then.  They would trade things they found here for things they needed.  Originally they built houses like log cabins and built homes in hillsides.  As they got more money they built better houses, like the Georgian homes found in the Southern 13 colonies.  People, called delegates, from each colony met and decided to declare their independence from Britain by the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

Earthquakes by Isaac

Earthquakes are one of the deadliest natural disasters on earth.  Earthquakes can create huge waves called tsunamis if they happen in the ocean and cause horrible flooding.  Earthquakes can knock down tall buildings, like a sky scraper.  If they are powerful enough they can leave almost no buildings left in a city.  They can cause deep cracks in the ground and can rip buildings in two.  The earth can even swallow buildings when an earthquake happens.  They can shake up your house, knock tv's and stuff down and can make cracks in your walls.  The most powerful Earthquakes are 9.0+ earthquakes.  We watched a video about an earthquake in Japan.  It was a 9.0 Earthquake.  I didn't like it because it was so sad.  People were dead and buildings were gone. It showed the real power of an Earthquake.  I posted it here so you can see it too.

The Phoenix in Mythology by Noah

The Phoenix can live up to a thousand years and then they turn into ash and a new phoenix is born from the ashes.  It can live as long as the old phoenix.  They make their nests out of twigs.  Very rarely, phoenix's turn into humans.  Phoenix's are usually on fire in pictures you see, that is probably because they catch fire and burn before they get reborn.  The phoenix is a bird with red and gold feathers.  I like phoenix's because they are cool and they look cool on fire.  Their heads look like eagles heads and eagles are my second favorite bird. 

Cain and Abel by Isaac

"Am I my brother's keeper?"  Genesis 4:9
Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel.  God told Adam and Eve to sacrifice a sheep to Him to regain his love and trust after what they did in the Garden of Eden.  So they told Cain and Abel to sacrifice a sheep.  Abel chose his very best sheep and sacrificed it to God.  Cain tried to sacrifice straw but it just sizzled.  Cain got really angry with his brother so he decided to take his brother out into the woods.  Cain killed his brother Abel.  God started talking to Cain and asked him, "where is your brother?"  Cain said he didn't know.  After that talk Cain started feeling guilty and knew he had to live with that for the rest of his life.  This teaches us that God always wants our best.  God knows everything, sees everything, hears everything and if we have a problem we should talk to God about it.  Mom says me and my brothers and sister should be nicer to each other.  I think God would want us to be nicer too!

A Midsummer Nights Dream Scene 1-Act 1 by Isabelle

This part of the story is where the King tells Hermia to marry someone her father wants her to marry but she doesn't want to marry him because she loves someone else.  So Hermia and the guy she loves, called Lysander, decide to run away and meet in the forest.  They tell Helena that they are going to run away so they can get married to each other and Hermia won't have to marry the man, called Demetrius, she doesn't want to marry.  Helena loves Demetrius and Demetrius loves Hermia.  So Helena decides she is going to tell on them to Demetrius so he might love her.  They should have never told Helena that they were going to run away together.  I don't think it is going to be good for them.  They are going to get in trouble and then Hermia will have to be a nun forever.

Franz Josef Haydn by Isaac, Noah, and Isabelle

Haydn was a composer during the classical period.  He died when he was 77 years old.  We found that this was out of ordinary because most of the composers we have studied so far have died young.  His parents could not pay for him lessons for music so his cousin took him away to live with him where he could learn music.  When he was 4 he pretended that two sticks were a violin and he played them.  He was known as the father of the symphony and the string quartet.  It is very cool that he was close friends with Mozart.  Mozart even called him "Papa Haydn."  Haydn was very religious and at the beginning of many his compositions he wrote the words, "In the name of the Lord."  We like that he was a practical joker.  In his composition, Symphony no 94 in G Major "The Surprise" he wrote in a loud part which would surprise and wake up the people in the audience.  That is very funny.