Weaver Chapter 5: Transportation and Communication

I'm finally catching up on homeschooling posts. We're getting ready to start Chapter 8 on Monday. Christmas break has been long enough to make me excited all over again for lesson planning. When we covered Chapter 5 back in November, I was suffering from some burnout. Our schedule at the time didn't seem to be working quite right, and we were still ironing out methods and timing for grading work and correcting mistakes. It's still a bit hard juggling for multiple children in different grades. We've since ironed most of that out, which is awesome- but writing about this chapter is bringing back the struggles we were dealing with at the time. It's nice to be on the other side of it. Consistency, determination, and prayer has paid off.

The Bible lessons for our new unit on transportation included Abram's journey from his homeland. I learned so many new things from a story that I thought I knew inside and out. One of the things that I hadn't realized before was that God had summoned Abram's father Terah (who worshipped idols) to move first. For whatever reason, he didn't complete the journey, stopping in a land he named after his deceased son Haran.

Other Bible lessons woven into the chapter were Jonah who delayed obedience, early Church members who moved because of persecution, Philip who was mandated to go teach the Ethiopian eunich about Christ, and our mandate to go to all the world and preach the Gospel message. I love the way Weaver ties in so much to the Bible. Everything we learn in science and social studies is linked back up to His Word.

This chapter's science lessons included gravity and friction. The toy car helped demonstrate inertia.

Two wooden blocks to show friction.

One of the fun projects was sewing a hot air balloon. We learned the history and science behind hot air balloons (Did you know the first passengers were a duck, sheep, and a rooster?) and followed a sewing project in the curriculum for our own hot air balloons.

The girls did most of the work on their own.

I don't sew often, and couldn't figure out the last couple steps of the pattern, so I took over for the girls (they had enough by then anyway) and winged it. I finished them off with hot glue. I always burn myself with the glue gun, and therefore probably not the best instructor to show my own kids how to use it. I've been known to take off layers of skin from my fingertips.

Other topics we covered included the Mayflower and early colonial life, and the westward movement in the US. Homeschooling is such a good fit for us, and we're still having so much fun doing it!