Give up, Ben-Hadad!

We finished our first week of school! A long week, but a successful week! Not only that, but we finally got to use our timeline :) Charles V was the first "entry" and Sammy got to do the honors.

I have to say that I am really enjoying the overview of history we are getting with the Story of the World. I especially love the suggested library books that go along with it so you can delve deeper into whatever historical event or people interest you. The extra activities also make it so fun and interactive. To wrap up week one in which we learned about Charles V, Philip II, and Spanish conquistadores, we played a great game called "Steal the Spanish Gold".

One player is the pirate and the other is the Spanish.  On a paper, the Spanish player designates a certain amount of it's 12 daubloons between it's 6 ships. The Spanish player tries to get all 6 ships across without taking too much loss from the pirate. The victor of each encounter is determined by the roll of the dice. The game ends when either the pirate steals all the gold or the Spanish ships get across to "Spain". As you can see by the pics, the kids had a blast playing this game and I had a blast watching them! More funny to me than it would be to you is when Sammy (who was the pirate) yelled out upon approaching one of the Spanish ships, "Give up, Ben-Hadad!" which was NOT from our history lesson but rather our bible lesson from this morning. He quickly realized his error when Alyssa started laughing at him. (Although later it was me laughing at her when, during our science lesson, she said the 7th planet was "Urine".)

Pay up! The pirate won this roll of the dice.

A Scary Sight

    A wall scary you ask? How can this be so? Though this may look like an ordinary wall to you,  I see  an entirely different picture. Take a good look at this wall and you will notice one thing- it is completely empty. That is where the terror lies! Let me explain.
    For a couple years now, I have been playing with the idea of  making a historical timeline as we study history. How to create this, nonetheless, has eluded me. It seems simple enough, but for some reason I have put it off time and time again.  This year I have decided I will be paralyzed by fear no more! The first step was deciding what type of timeline we would make. I looked at countless websites before I finally made my decision. Would it be on the computer, in a notebook, contained in a scroll? No, my friend, none of those will suffice. Confirming my family's suspicions that I am homeschool crazy, we will take up yet another wall in our humble little home with our adventures in learning.  I will have it no other way.
    Now, deciding how to perform this is where the anxiety stems from. I have the supplies, the timeline clipart and even an awesome history curriculum to go by and yet they are all sitting in a little pile sad and untouched. Today, however, is a new day! A day that I will conquer this empty wall and our dreams of what history can be with the aid of a timeline will come to fruition.