Avoid the cave bears in the closet

We've been learning about the Nomads in The Story of the World this week and how/why they had to continually relocate to find food.  Once they traveled upon the Fertile Crescent, they learned to plant and harvest grains instead of roaming to different areas eating what they could find.  The Nomads were learning how to farm and staying in one location for longer. 

This also lead to a discussion on cave drawings and how people would draw pictures of animals they were hoping to hunt on the sacred cave walls.  We read, You Wouldn't Want to be a Mammoth Hunter! by John Malam, and there was a page showing animals that were edible and animals that you'd want to avoid because they'd eat you instead.  Madeline's semi-walk in closet was turned into a cave for this activity.  I taped paper to her walls and we used a candle, for the oil lamps, to see deep into the cave.  The first animal that Madeline drew was a Travis puppy.  Then she decided she needed to draw a cave bear so she knows to avoid that one.  By looking at the picture, I'm pretty sure this was a female bear. lol!

She really seems to be enjoying history so far, and even wanted one of the reading sections to be read as her bedtime story.  I like how the sections are read just like a story and aren't too long for one sitting.  I love the handy list of additional books that go along with each chapter, as we are able to get quite a few from the library. Maddie was excited to tell her daddy about the Nomads from way back when, but pretty much summed it up as, "they're dead." 

In science we learned about cells and examined an egg as a cell.  She filled in and colored an egg diagram page. Today will be making animal and plant cells using gelatin in a circle bowl (animal) and gelatin with green grapes, for the chloroplasts, in a square bowl (plants).  We read through Greg's Microscope again and looked at the pages of the animal and plant cells.  Madeline liked how the plant cells look like a brick wall.  We'll be looking at our plant under the microscope to see if it looks the same.

Here she is examining the egg with her magnifying lens to find the blastodisc, the small white spot on the yolk.

I think she burnt herself out on geography last week.  She hasn't done anything with it this week.  lol.