Bigger Hearts for His Glory- Unit 23

This week in Bigger Hearts for His Glory, we learned about some lesser-known figures in history.  Some of the names weren’t even familiar to me.  We learned about Horace Greely and how he worked hard to become a printer.  When he got a job in the printer’s office, he did not allow the other boys’ teasing to make him angry and eventually they grew to respect him.  To see what it would be like to set type in a printing office, we used Scrabble tiles to spell out a message.

We also learned about the authors William Cullen Bryant, Hawthorne, Prescott and Louisa May Alcott.  Bryant wrote poetry, Hawthorne wrote stories, and Prescott wrote histories.  Louisa May Alcott became a famous author who is best known for her book Little Women.  Kevin made two notebook pages about two of the authors.  I made a coloring page for him about the poem by William Cullen Bryant because we were short on time and I knew drawing the bird and copying the poem would be a difficult job for him.  (I forgot to include the author name on the sheet.)

In Science we read about how the pioneers used wool, cotton, and flax to make cloth.  We tried to see how long a thread we could spin from a cotton ball.  It was difficult to do without tearing the thread.  We also watched a video on spinning cotton with a spinning wheel.

Kevin also made a sheet showing the different plants that were used to dye the wool different colors.

 

We also did an experiment where we mixed up colors using food dye.   We mixed purple (from blue and red), green (from blue and yellow), and orange (from red and yellow).  Then we put a drop of each on a paper towel and put one end in water.  The water spread through the paper towel and separated the original colors.  This didn’t work perfectly, but it was still fun to watch.  We did each color twice.

Our poem for the week was “My Books and I” by Edgar A. Guest.  Our character trait was discipline and we talked about how the people we studied used discipline to reach their goals.  We also continued reading a non-fiction book for the storytime.

We also started learning about the Constitution using material available from The Constitution Bee.  We enjoyed the first video we watched and I’m impressed how much Kevin has picked up.

We also learned about hexaflexagons.  If you don’t know what these are, I suggest starting out with watching YouTube videos by Vi Hart. Don’t be surprised if you find that hexaflexagons are slightly addicting.  And Vi Hart’s other videos are so good. We laughed over the one about why 0.999 repeating is actually 1.  We’ve actually heard this idea before, but never heard it explained.

Thanks for joining us!