Our first year

Our first year of home schooling was interesting. David was in first grade and Ethan was preschool age. At the time, we were living in Turkey and enjoying all that it had to offer us as a home school family. It was a bit of a blessing to start there since we didn't have to be monitored by the state. It gave us some breathing room and a chance to get a feel for how it was going to work. We had some wonderful adventures.

We use the Christian Cottage Unit Studies curriculum for our history, science, and geography lessons. Our first unit study was called Roots and Relations. We learned about the creation, made a Jesse tree, talked about cells, ancestry, genes, and made a family crest.

In addition to making the Jesse tree, I found that the Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible series helped to illustrate each part of story.

Here is David's "cell-in-a-baggie". The cytoplasm was made of Jell-o, the nucleus was a prune, the mitochondrion were cooked rigatoni noodles, the ribosomes were black peppercorns, the endoplasmic reticulum were made of twizzlers, the vacuoles were little bubbles from bubble wrap, the lysosomes were lima beans, and the cell membrane was the plastic ziplock bag!

Can you believe this is first grade stuff!?

Next, came the Light and Matter unit study. We learned about energy waves, the light spectrum, rainbows, lenses, mirrors, atoms, mixtures and solutions, and weight.
WHOA!




Daddy came to help from time to time.



The boys definitely enjoyed making a periscope and used it to spy on Cumaziye, our Turkish nanny.


She was always tickled at the funny projects they came out with at the end of the day. How could I explain to a woman that barely speaks English?


Here, David is checking the weight of different objects that are close to the same size.



I think he enjoyed all the hands on stuff. The math, phonics, and reading were all book related, so it was nice for him to be able to jump out of his seat and really see and do some of the things we talked about.


Then came the Ancient Civilizations unit! This one was a personal favorite for me. We had a great time coupling our unit study with the Evan-Moor History Pockets book on ancient civilizations. What a great way to learn! I have come to absolutely adore Evan-Moor publishing.

One of the big projects in this unit was making the Tabernacle from Exodus. It was a tedious chore and required a lot of adult help. It was made of paper and after all was said and done, it was sad to fold it up and put it away in a bag. After moving, it's been squished and ruined. The curriculum we use doesn't have the best one, but I have a hint for that later on. In the photo is David and his friend from down the street. Our favorite cocker spaniel, Cookie, was never far away, so he cuddled his way into this photo also.



We also had some smaller projects that were fun. We made an oil lamp out of tin foil which wasn't very sturdy and kind of hard to work with. When I get around to posting this year's photos, I'll be sure to add one of the clay version I helped Ethan make. It worked much better. We burned olive oil and that seemed to work well.

We also made some Phoenecian ships! The hulls are made from walnut shells.

We got to go to Egypt and visit the real-life Pyramids of Giza and see King Tut's treasure. The boys journals were fun to look at after that trip. They sported pictures of clay butt-shaped jars they saw in the museum, airplanes, pyramids, Nile cruise ships, and more. It was an exciting trip to take. To have the opportunity to not only teach these wonders of the world to my children, but to also SHOW them! A blessing for sure. Before we left, we made a bunch of crafts from this book we got from Chick-fil-A in a kid's meal. The whole set came in handy through the first two years.

We came back from the Egyptian market with some costumes for them to play with. They look so pleased, don't they?


Many wonderful memories from this trip included our Nile cruise, the amazing food, the strange and amazing sights, our journeying partners (both grandmas), the beautiful hotel, and the insanity of the marketplace where one Egyptian seller yelled out to Mark, "I am ready to take your money!"

One of the other major projects that we undertook during this unit was the performing of the play "The Brave Queen." The play was based on the story of Esther. We rounded up a batch of children in our neighborhood, named them the Konya Court Players, came up with some costumes, taught them their lines, rehearsed a few times, and then sent out really cute invites to all the moms and dads for a night of fun, fellowship, and refreshments. We even wrangled some adults to help out.


We made hamantaschen, cute little 'fig newtons' shaped like Haman's three cornered hat, a common dessert for Jewish folks to have when celebrating Purim. A good time was had by all...the parents especially.

At one point, we made our own Middle Eastern feast. We followed our curriculum's recipe for humus (which David enjoyed thoroughly...see below), had flatbread from our favorite local Turkish restaurant, and tried some olives and white cheese. We also got some humus from the local restaurant and compared it to our homemade version. Ours was much better by far. The kids were all so brave to eat such odd things. Remember, we're Scandinavian and Cajun!


Also, in this unit, we talked about ancient inventions. One particularly interesting invention was called the shaduf, the ancient version of our modern irrigation system. We made one out of a soda bottle, a stick, some string, and a plastic baggie. Could've been better built, but it worked and demonstrated the basic gist of it.
We took more than a few field trips while we were in Turkey, and some when we came home on vacation as well. It was a fantastic place to learn about ancient life. We went to Tarsus, which was only about 30 minutes away from our home. It was amazing to see the birthplace of Paul, see what could have been the plot of land he lived on, and sit at the well he mostly likely visited regularly.

Oceanography was our last unit study of the year. It wasn't as involved as the ancient civilizations one, but still a lot of fun. We found ways to bring it to life by making some otters,

sea stars,

and a rubber octopus that sits above the kid's shower to this day. He's sort of falling apart now, but he'll stay with us for a while.

How we made them:

Sea Stars~lay a sheet of wax paper on the table, make the shape of a star out of Elmer's glue, add a paper clip for a hook if desired, sprinkle sand on it, let it dry, and peel it off

Otter sock puppet~brown sock, flesh colored felt cut in the shape of the mouth area, black felt cut in the shape of the nose (use cotton balls to stuff under the nose to give it shape), buttons for eyes, and heavy fishing line for whiskers; felt can be glued on with craft glue or sewn on

Octopus~a rubber bath mat with suction cups served as the tentacles (just cut it into strips), the head was made out of a rubber roll of drawer liner cut and sewn into shape, we stuffed plastic bags inside the head to shape it, eyes were made from buttons and felt

We were lucky enough to have an opportunity to go to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science when we got back to the US on our summer vacation. The kids really enjoyed touching everything and I finally got into a few of the photos!

sea star

sea urchin

baby crabs

I chose to add the dissection of a fish to this unit (supplemented by a step-by-step guide from a site no longer available) even though it wasn't in the 1st grade list of things to do. No photos available for this one, though. My hands were really nasty. This online fish dissection game might be a better option for those who don't appreciate that sort of thing. We read an abbreviated version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and then bought the movie to watch. That made a fun family night.

And here ends the tales of our earliest adventures. Stick around for year 2 and even more field trips!