Meant To Teach

We've really loved our Layers of Learning curriculum . The past two weeks we have done some map work on the Byzantine Empire as well as learned about Turkey and it's capital Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople), read Anna of Byzantium, and definitely had some fun doing some hands on art. We learned about holy halos in art, which are just circles surrounding the subject in paintings. Often this was painted on priests or other religious leaders. We did some chalk art drawings of our own. We also learned about mosaic art. The girls had a lot of fun breaking up some old plates and doing this project. 

This is the 2nd Presidential Election we have been homeschooling. You can see some of the things we did in 2012 here  when my kids were a lot younger. This year, we've really covered the election a lot deeper with watching debates, touching on the real issues, and learning about the electoral college. I'm loving how my oldest seems to really be forming her own opinions about this election and our government. She is taking her half a credit of government this year. For this election, we've played Election Bingo with vocabulary. They loved this. We played a lot. You can find these for FREE at  Growing Book by Book . They enjoyed looking at some Trump vs. Hillary campaign ads. They actually went on to the candidates' websites to see their platform on issues.  I also gave my girls an assignment of doing a Pepsi vs. Coke persuasive paper. The girls were to decide which one was better and tell me why I should think that. In writing their persuasive pa