Light---Science, Christmas, Solstice, Scripture

 What is Light?

Our world is ordered by light.  Think about that for a minute.  Everything we do is ordered by the sun and light.  What foods we eat, what we wear, how we travel, the activities we choose, the seasons of the year, etc. It all is because of light. Light organizes and brings harmony to our world.

It makes sense then that our The Light of the world, Jesus Christ would do the same for us.

Christmas Around the World 2022--South Africa

 We are beginning our Christmas trip around the world with countries in Africa and South America and then moving to countries in Europe because that is where our studies have been this semester. 

We are also focusing on Light in our science studies as we observe the change in light as we move to the Solstice and anticipate Christmas and celebrating The Light the World, Jesus Christ, As we travel around the world we will be looking for light and participating in the Light the World challenge.

First Stop on our trip around the world: Christmas in South Africa!

We listened to some beautiful African Christmas music first:

 African Carol: Sing Noel

Drummer Boy, Mzansi Youth Choir

Drummer Boy: Alex Boye and Genesis Choir

We have been learning about some African Instruments.  The Kalimba is a neat "thumb piano" and we enjoyed watching this performance.

We learned some things about what South Africans eat and do to celebrate Christmas here. There are many countries listed and we are looking forward to learning a lot of new things! This is a great resource!

Christmas from Both Worlds is a picture book about Armani who goes to visit South Africa for Christmas.

If you have older children:

A video of someone talking about what it is like to celebrate Christmas in South Africa,

A video of photos and how to say Merry Christmas in different languages spoken in Africa

Pumpkins

We watched a few time lapses of pumpkins growing including this giant one and this one decomposing.

We enjoyed the book, Pumpkin Jack that showed the whole process.

non-fiction Pumpkins book that we listened to while we sketched pumpkins, leaves, flowers, and seeds.

The Mayan!

 DK Findout

We watched Guatemala-Discovering Humanity video to get to know the culture better.  There are subtitles.

This Geography Now video told us more about the history and geography and gave us some ideas of things we want to learn more about!

Check out my posts about Chocolate and Corn! for more about the Mayan. 

We got a little sidetracked from this study as we moved into our Christmas around the World study.

But we finished it off with an epic chocolate poetry tea time with chocolate tasting from 40%-100% cacao. And Hot chocolate to drink, of course!

Human Body (Skeletons and Chocolate digestion)

This book sang the song Dem Dry Bones and taught us a little bit about each of the bones in the song.  A fun visual and musical way to learn!

Dem Bones is a fun song about bones that we had fun learning to sing and play on the Ukulele with this video!  

Dem Bones is a a Spiritual which was a fun tie in because we've been studying our cultural connections to countries in Africa! Here's a little more info about who wrote the song and the scriptural reference of Ezekiel 37:1-14).  We loved talking about the Bible verses and the resurrection.

Since the song got us thinking about bones and what happens after we die, we watched this video about how we will all be resurrected from Latter Day Kids

.

This short video from Latter Day Kids is about Death and the Resurrection.

We watched this video about the resurrection and finding hope through Christ.

We had fun playing the skeletal system game from abaya that helped us practice the names of some of the bones.

 "Head Shoulder, Knees and Toes: Language learning (German) for my daughter

"Head Shoulder, Knees and Toes: Language learning  (Chinese) for my son.

Questions we had:

What happens inside of bones?

What are bones made of?

How does a bone heal?

What about blood types?

How do human bones compare to bird bones?

How do x-rays work?

What about teeth bones? How are they different than other bones?

Videos that answered our questions:

This video shows what real bones look like and how they work. Very engaging for older kids.  (The Institute of Human Anatomy channel is great!)

This video shows how bones make blood and how bone marrow transplants work.  It reminded us of this Conference Talk: Be Perfected in Him

Why Blood matters tells about blood cells (Ted Ed)

How x-rays work (Ted Ed)

About Bird bones (Ranger Erin)

Where do Teeth come from? (Be Smart)

Why we brush our teeth (SciShow)--This is perfect because we are learning about bones near Halloween and Trick or Treating time!

About Teeth for kids (SciShow)

How to brush teeth well from a dentist

We noticed that bones are made from elements on the Periodic Table.

Calcium and Phosphorus

We are using a Costco chicken to look closer at bones, using this as a guide.

This book is a fun resource.

Countries of Africa!

There is so much to learn about Africa because it has so many nations! We barely scratched the surface but have a greater appreciation, understanding, and love for the people and places in Africa.

Temples in Africa! There are currently 21 temples announced or under construction in Africa! One more was announced while we were studying about countries in Africa during October General Conference 2022!! It was in Eket, Nigeria

We like playing some geography games like this one from Shepherd games that helped us practice where the countries are and get familiar with the continent. There are 7 levels to help you master countries and their capitals!

Here are some of the countries we studied in Africa:

Ivory Coast!
A missionary from our church is serving there!
Cacao is grown here! We learned more about how Cacao is grown.  See "Chocolate" post.

Ethiopia!

We listened to the Fire on the Mountain book.

And here is a storyteller telling this Ethiopian folk tale of Fire on the Mountain.

South Africa!

Mali!
One of my son's Favorites: I lost my Tooth in Africa!

Liberia!
A friend at church is from Liberia

Egypt: We have been studying the Old Testament this year with its connection to Egypt through Moses and Joseph who forgave his brothers when they found him in Egypt.  Both stories show the incredible deliverance of God.

Namibia!
A family in our neighborhood is from here

D.R. Congo!
Some friends from church are from the D.R. Congo

Kenya!
Mama Panya's Pancakes

The Yummiest Githeri inspired us to try making our own Githeri!

We made this Githeri recipe when we celebrated our studies at the end of the month.  It was yummy!

We read Masai and I about the Masai tribe of people that live in Kenya. And watched this short video about what it is like to live as a Maasai child. 

Ghana!

We watched the read aloud of the book, The Spider Weaver, a legend of Kente Cloth

To learn more about what Kente means we watched this video of a tribe leader teaching about it.

 This Kente Weaving Project

We loved this story of Emmanuel's Dream

We were so inspired by the mother love in Emmanuel's Ride: The True Story

We learned more about how Cacao is grown.  See "Chocolate" post.

One Hen is about a boy in Ghana who receives a small loan and how it changes his life.  Now he is changing the lives of others.

My kids read this one on their own (longer graphic novel): When Stars are Scattered about a family from Somalia that are refugees living in Kenya:

Sudan!
Nya's Long Walk is about a girl who walks a long way to collect water for her family.

My older children read A long Walk to Water.  It is a longer version of the story with more details.  Best for older children.  There is a scary part with lions.

Our family also likes to participate yearly in this Walk 4 Water to help more children and families have access to clean water for a better life.

Corn!

 We live in the midwest and the corn harvest is happening right now.  Corn is also a major plant and food source of Latin America (month 9) and also an important part of the Pilgrim's experience as they came to America (month 2). We also are excited about learning more about corn because of our ongoing study of Botany that we started this summer! This week we drew the parts of the corn plant into our Botany Notebook.

We watched a dissection video of corn to see the different parts of the corn seed and learned it is a monocot.

We learned that the Mayan name for Corn is Ixim. And watched this film about the creation story of the Mayan with corn.

We loved this book called Corn is Maize so much on YouTube that I ordered a copy for our family library. Amazon Link

Because corn is such an important crop for Native Americans we listened to the music of  the Corn Dance of the Pueblo Indians

And this corn grinding song and this video.  Music makes work better!

These picture books came from our LiftEd Botany study and we watched the read aloud on YouTube:

 about Roots 

How a Seed Grows

After playing in a corn pit at the farm we love the sensory aspect of corn too!

Next up is fun with popcorn

and corn meal

Chocolate!

We are studying Chocolate! Why? It started because of 3 things: 

We were studying countries in Africa (with LiftEd) and one thing we learned is that almost half of the world's chocolate comes from African countries. (Africa Month 8) We have also been talking about how slavery and child labor has a history with chocolate, including today (Slavery Month 8).  These are sobering topics to discuss.  They affect today's children so it matters to us!

We are starting to look at some countries in South America (Latin America Month 9) right now as well.  Since cacao beans grow along the equator, we have been learning about the Mayans and about their chocolate experience and how the Spanish encountered chocolate (Spanish Main Month 2 -which is where we should be on the rotation schedule, but we are loving wandering around right now!) 

We are still working through our Botany Study that we started over the summer.  Cacao trees are so cool and have been a neat plant to add into our study! (We are using this science unit in a very WEH way so that it suits our Family Academy learning style.)

And also, its almost Halloween so there are treats on everyone's mind.  What better time to learn about one of our favorite treats? We are also studying the human body (Human Body Month 9) because this time of year there are skeletons everywhere. We will look into digestion of chocolate too!

I'm sharing some of our resources for our study. These resources we found on YouTube:

We started with the picture book: Chocolate Tree A Mayan Folk Tale 

Amazon link

Then watched a short TedEd video about the history of chocolate.  This talks about some of the slavery issues with cacao harvest.

Time Lapse of a Cacao Tree is so cool from seed to plant!

Next we watched a video that shows from harvest to chocolate what the process looks like.

This harvest video of cacao is so beautiful.

We enjoyed watching how Swiss Chocolate is made.  This inspired us to try to make our own chocolate!

M read Charlie and the Chocolate factory and we tried to take a field trip to a chocolate factory.  It didn't work out so we will try again!

We had an epic chocolate poetry tea time with chocolate tasting from 40%-100% cacao. And Hot chocolate to drink, of course!