(I am trying to get caught up! We did Unit 4 in January, and it’s now March 16th. You’re going to be bombarded with posts in the next few weeks, because I am determined to get through it all!)
This is my typical view during school time…3 kids busily working on something. That something may be school work, a coloring page, a puzzle, or slicing paper into teeny-tiny pieces (Jensyn!).
This unit’s theme was the Pilgrims leaving England for Holland. They encountered many challenges in leaving England! We learned about canals instead of streets, windmills, storks, and dikes. We made our own playdough dike to show how it kept the water out of Holland. (I dropped this dish the next day, shattering it to itty-bitty pieces. It was one of my favorite casserole dishes!)
I don’t have a picture, but we added “Pilgrims in Holland, 1608” to our timeline folder.
The Bible verse for this unit is Matthew 16: 19 – 21. In the picture below, Alex is reading his Bible verse aloud.
This year, we’ve used a file in the Facebook group to print out all of the Bible verses. I then cut & laminated them, and we’re adding each verse to a binder ring. This way, all the verses are handy for review purposes.
Day 5’s Bible study reminded us to think of others before thinking of ourselves. We want to have a heart that desires to please God and serve others. 
Day 5’s grammar assignment was to read several statements that I wrote on the white board. Alex then had to find the subject and the predicate in each sentence.
Alex loves words. He won’t admit it, but he has a large vocabulary. He catches on to new words quickly, and he’s often trying out new words as he converses with us. He enjoys doing a written test (or copying his words) each day, so he had several pages like this throughout the week:
a quick peek at where we were in Singapore 1…
We read about the city of Amsterdam and the way it looked like it was floating in the water. We found it on the globe. We also discussed the horizon and directional words (north, south, west, east) and using a compass.
We finished up Gladys Aylward’s story. What a wonderful, yet intense book and adventure! Other than changing a few words (I believe the word prostitute –or something to that effect – was used to describe a setting that made Gladys uncomfortable, and I wasn’t about to explain that to my 7 year old) , I read the story ‘as is’. I think it was good for Alex to be aware of what it means to serve Christ as a missionary. As I write this on March 17th, Alex *still* mentions Gladys and her adventures from time to time. I know this story has stuck with him!
We also watched the Torchlighters video of Gladys Aylward upon completing the book. It is MUCH more child-friendly, although it only tells a small fraction of Gladys’ story. It was a nice way to wrap up our biography reading!
This week’s poem was entitled Daybreak. We’re continuing to read the poem each day, using it as copywork each day, and then have Alex illustrate the poem at the end of the week. We printed & coil bound the poems at the beginning of the school year so Alex can have his completed poetry book as a keepsake if he’d like.
This week’s art project was to make barn doors from a sheet of red construction paper. Alex had to listen to instructions to learn how to properly fold the paper and use white crayon to draw the Xs on the barn doors. After that, he had to copy his Bible verse and paste it inside the barn. (The barn goes along with Day 5’s Bible study.)
After reading about how the Dutch captain’s ship got a hole in it and almost sank, we learned about how surface tension holds up ships on the ocean. We then did our own experiments with a dropper bottle and a penny to see how many drops of water we could fit on the penny.
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