Christmas 08

Christmas 08

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

In case you haven't seen it (but probably all of you have!) here is our Christmas card for this year. It's the girls at Baylor, by the Tennessee River Gorge in the background. I'm working on getting holiday pictures in a slideshow to put on here so you can see all the fun we've had this year. We are so thankful for the time together and the fun we've had. Happy Holidays to you!

2nd Exhibit Night

Survivor: Ancient Egypt (1st Grade)

Here is what Katie said she liked about being on the Tyet team:
I loved being on the Tyet team because my friends were on this team with me. Survivor was fun. (Which shows that she is a girl, and more important than anything else to her is still her friends!)

Each 1st grader made a sarcophagus that represented themselves. These were life-size and made out of some kind of plywood, I think. They painted them in art class. Katie's label said:

"My sarcophagus represents me. It has gold balls on it. It has lots of red because my favorite color is close to red. My sarcophagus will help me go to the afterlife because it has a beautiful life on it."

And here is her sarcophagus: (Anyone have a good idea of what to do with it when it comes home?)

They also studied the social class structure of ancient Egypt. To demonstrate this, they made drawings of people in the different classes and created this pyramid:

On Exhibit Night, the students came and dressed as an Egyptian (some were mummies, one was a pharoah, some like Katie, were regular Ancient Egyptians)

The class also painted pictures showing what Egyptian life was like. Here are Katie and some of her mummy friends standing in front of it. Katie's part of the painting is in the bottom righthand corner, and she explained that it showed 2 Egyptian people praying to an Egyptian jackal.

Here was another project they did showing Egyptian life:

In this part of the Exhibit, the students brought in a favorite item of theirs to be in their photograph. Here you can also see their Travel Journals:

They studied mummification and the steps involved with it (which, by the way, had Katie scared to go to bed every night this quarter...) and in art made canopic jars. Here's Katie's:

And leading up to their classroom was the Nile River, with quotes from the students about the Nile. Katie's said: The Nile is important to the Ancient Egyptians because every year it flooded, so they built a ditch. When the Nile flooded, the water would go in the ditches so they could have planting land.

And here is Katie's map that she made a few weeks ago...

4th Grade: Going West!

If you are still reading this, :) 4th grade was studying westward expansion. We did a play, which was a week before Exhibit Night, but our Exhibit showed everything that was involved with the play:

In writing, we were doing Tall Tales...

Here is the covered wagon that a grandfather built for us to use in the play. This board had a picture of each student dressed in character and with a statement about why they were going west.

Here is a little collage with some fun pictures from the play: (I don't know why it didn't rotate...)

We also spent a lot of time creating a mural which showed the regions that Lewis and Clark traveled through on their search for the Pacific Ocean. Here, the Plains:

the Rocky Mountains:
and the Columbia River leading to the Ocean...
In science lab, we also built a real (not to scale) sod house....
And here were the backdrops for the play. The students made these (they are 18 feet tall canvasses) and they were hanging on thestage for the play, and we moved them upstairs to our hall and stood on HUGE ladders to staple-gun them to the wall and ceiling...
Are you still reading this? :) If you are, thanks for hanging in there! You won't see another post like this til the next Exhibit Night in March!

Where Does the Time GO?

OK, this is going to be short. Even shorter than I imagined, because I just checked our November pictures and Thanksgiving is not even downloaded to the computer yet. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Atlanta with our friends the Burdens. The friendship was wonderful and relaxing and the food was delicious and plentiful! One day I will add a picture to this. In the meantime, we've been living our busy lives and trying to get ready for Christmas in the meantime! I figured it would be here before I even got anything up for Turkey Day.

We are eagerly anticipating this next week, which means the beginning of Christmas break (after Thursday) and also Exhibit Night...the craziest time of the quarter at our school. Will post pictures next week so you can all see what we've been up to!

May you all enjoy the upcoming days and weeks with family and friends...

Have you ever wondered about Ancient Egypt?

For those of you who enjoyed seeing what Katie learned about during FirstModule (social studies/science during First Quarter) here is a sneak preview for Second Module...all about Ancient Egypt!
Yesterday afternoon, the other 4th grade teachers and I were working in the hall hanging paper for our next Exhibit Night. I gave Katie an extra sheet of butcher paper, and she sat down and drew this map of Egypt without even looking at anything for a reference. She's got the shape of the country, the Nile River with the Delta, the pyramids, an Egyptian person, Egyptian homes, and cropland! I was so impressed by all she knows, and you know I have to share with all of you so you can be impressed too!

Tonight she was explaining her drawing to Daddy, and it grew into a videotape of her telling all about Ancient Egypt. This first video is her explaining about the types of jobs Ancient Egyptians held. The second one is her explaining about Ancient Egyptian homes.

Enjoy the first report from the future Travel Channel reporter, Katie Nelson!

Around the House

So here are a few things we've been up to lately around the house:

Our new knife block: There are no slots, you just put the knife in wherever, so it can hold as many knives as will fit! Plus, you can take the inside out and wash in the dishwasher when you need to.



Here's Ben showing off our Christmas present to ourselves: a new washer and dryer. Now, they say right on the front of them "QuietPack"...but I guess "quiet" is a subjective term. Good thing we can close the door to the laundry room while it's going. Otherwise, they're great...huge and hold lots and lots of clothes in one load! :)

Fall colors in the yard out back by the swing set:

8 gallons of primer and 18 gallons of red barn paint later...Here's a picture of the barn (garage/shed) Ben's Dad and Uncle Jerry and Pat built on the slab in the side yard:

And here are a few views of Signal Mountain from the front yard. The leaves have since fallen off (or at least started to) but the colors were really beautiful while they were still up. We should have gotten a picture of the crepe myrtle in the front yard with its one red leaf left on it. It looked like a poor little Charlie Brown tree!

Out front and looking to the right:

Out front and looking to the left: