Week 18, day 5

Friday: Geography. Since we'd introduced a new hymn, catechism question, and memory verse yesterday, we started by reviewing those. We updated the calendar and I had P do her math 5-a-day. Then, we moved on to geography - this week, Germany. We located Germany on the Markable Map, while E documented his ocean-going adventures with his imaginary Friend Lion. They roamed from Antarctica, via Hawaii and Australia, up the Red Sea, they dug the Suez Canal (he didn't know that was what it was called, but he could see the need for it), cruised through the Mediterranean, and ended up in the Arctic. While he's describing his voyages, I try to keep up with him by identifying the places they touch at, but it can be tough to speak as fast as he moves. Eventually, we put away the map and looked at the atlas page for Germany (Friend Lion took E on an adventure up the Rhine to Bavaria). We read a library book, Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot, about the Berlin airlift in 1948 when the Soviets blocked all the land routes to West Berlin and the Allies flew in supplies, including candy for the children. We also read "The Musicians of Bremen" in Stories from Around the World. We then looked at pictures in a library book about Germany. P and E each made a book, though E got distracted as usual and his picture of a car turned into an experimental colour-combining page. P wrote "Germany" on the cover, drew the flag herself, coloured in the map I drew for her, and drew a car, a castle, a cuckoo clock, 2 sausages, and the Bremen musicians from the story (donkey, dog, cat, and rooster), labeling all of them.

After lunch, I took the kids to HMNS. We looked at the skeletons of the dinosaurs, mastodon, and giant ground sloth (apparently, part of a giant ground sloth skeleton was found right around where we live, which I thought was cool). We explored the chemistry section, which was designed for bigger kids but I explained a few things to them (while changing and nursing the baby - fun times). We headed upstairs to the gems and minerals, which are absolutely stunning. P and E both enjoyed looking at them. There is also a display of taxidermied African animals, arranged in exciting positions that you would never on your luckiest safari see in real life. Down in the basement is an exhibit, mostly defunct, on the Earth's surface, but there was a fluid flow demo with a large sphere filled with oily liquid (a bit like pearly liquid hand soap) that spun into turbulence when you turned the sphere, with more turbulence at the equator than the poles. There was also a bathymetric globe, with the elevations of everywhere on Earth with the oceans stripped off. We also visited the museum store, because I thought it was the most likely place to find magnets for the kids to play with, and I found a book entitled Bubbles, Rainbows, and Worms: Science Experiments for Preschool Children. It'll be nice to have a science experiment book I won't have to return to the library or worry about becoming overdue.