Johnny Appleseed, Rosh Hashanah, & CTG Week 3

This past week was a full week of school for us. We learned a lot, and had some fun while doing it. Here are a few of the things we took part in...

For Science, We did an experiment to see how sugar can be turned into light energy. Go into a completely dark room, use pliers to squeeze a mint Lifesaver until it breaks. You should be able to see a small flash of light as the candy breaks apart. We saw the flash of light several times, which was really neat. (I always love it when Science experiments turn out right!)

Our History lessons included learning about Noah and his descendants, and the Tower of Babel. We also learned about the first written language (pictures called cuneiforms), and made our own cuneiform sugar cookies.


We enjoyed making the cookies (and eating them), even though they didn't turn out as clear as we had hoped. The upsidedown triangle is supposed to be the symbol for a J.

Since September 26th was Johnny Appleseed's birthday, we took a some time to learn more about him.  Here is a link to a Weekly Reader site that tells the story of Johnny in cartoon form, and also gives a short quiz for the kids: http://www.weeklyreader.com/interactivestories/appleseed.html

On Friday, we visited an apple orchard with our homeschool group. We took a tour, went through a cornfield maze, saw a worker picking apples, got to pick an apple of our own, saw how the apples are cleaned, petted some animals, and took a taste of apple cider.

We began learning the books of the Old Testament through our curriculum this week, and our AWANA program has also been helping with this.“The Bible Book Bop” song from The Go Fish Guys is a fun one to help learn the books. For flashcards, we are using a suggestion from another CTG family... Go to SUNDAY SCHOOL SOURCES to print out a flashcards PDF for free!

Another big part of our week was learning about Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish celebration. Basically, it is the Jewish New Year, also called the Feast of Trumpets; and it is believed that God created the world at this time of year, so the Birthday of the World is also celebrated.

To help us celebrate this feast, and understand it better, we made our own Shofars on Thursday and blew them at the start of our meal on Friday evening.

We decorated the table with our best dishes, and placed a crown in the middle to remind us that God is the King of the world. (I used a Burger King crown, as that was all I had on hand). After I lit the candles, David blessed the wine (which was grape juice for us) and we all drank. Then, he blessed the bread (in a round shape to show our hope for a full and round year), and we all tore some off and ate it.

Then, we dipped apples slices in a bowl of honey and ate them, to symbolize the hope that this year will be a sweet one. 

We then ate a meal of lemon chicken, green beans & corn, fresh bread, sliced cucumbers, and honey cake for dessert. We also tried a new fruit, called a STAR FRUIT. It is a juicy fruit that sort of tastes like a mild orange with a little bit of lemon thrown in. Adding some salt to it helps bring out the flavor a little more.

We enjoyed learning about Rosh Hashanah, and it was fun to take part in this meal together.
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