Week 10, Venus and China

Did you know that Mercury is not the hottest planet? It turns out, Venus reaches significantly higher temperatures than Mercury does!

This week we got back into our school routine after taking last week off for an early fall break. That means we have to do school next week before and after Thanksgiving, but that’s okay — we’ll do Thanksgiving stuff. 😉 After not doing very much with history and science the past few weeks while we were taking turns being sick, it felt good to pick those back up again. We did school in the house, so that I could catch up on post-sick-housework at the same time, and that actually went really well. Still, I’m ready to move back out to the school room next week (because we don’t mess up the house during the day, among other things.) 😉

Bible:

We continued with our Westminster Shorter Catechism for Kids and this week we studied Question 2:

What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him?

The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.

We didn’t learn any new memory verses this week, instead we reviewed all the verses we’ve learned up to this point, since we neglected to work on any verses last week.

Math & Language Arts:

Math was math, uneventful but better that than dramatic and traumatic! Grammar is grammar. Reading is reading. Not really anything interesting to see here… Moving on!

Science:

We began our chapter on Venus – hence the trivia at the very beginning. We all found it very interesting that Venus has an atmosphere SO THICK that the side of the planet facing away from the sun is just as hot as the side facing the sun! (And nights on Venus lasts 122 Earth days!) Temperatures on Venus can reach over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Yowza!

History:

This week’s lessons covered Hammurabi (I knew the name but had no idea what he was known for), Israelites in slavery, and the Shang Dynasty in early China. I don’t know about the kids, but I was really impressed to learn that silk was made by carefully UNWINDING silk worm cocoons. I knew that silk came from silkworms but had never investigated the process. Silk was such a commodity for China that they kept their process secret for hundreds of years. Impressive!

I had really hoped that our History Through the Ages timeline would arrive this week, since I’d ordered it last weekend. Alas, it did not. =( It should be here soon, though, and I can’t wait to get our timeline up! However, our Usborne Level 2 Reader “Weather” DID arrive! Drama Queen read the whole thing to us, and there were a lot of really interesting facts in there. Since we’re doing astronomy this year I thought I’d supplement with weather here and there and study that a little bit at the same time.

All in all in was a good week for school – what about you?

Weekly Wrap Up is hosted at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!