Moments from MFW Exploring Countries & Cultures

We had such a great 1st year with MFW.  This was my son's first year to homeschool.  I thought I would post one of our favorite science projects from ECC this past year (2010-2011).  We are really looking forward to Creation to Greeks this fall after such a great year with ECC!

Our favorite project this year was learning how very strong the egg is.  We broke the eggs carefully toward the top to take off only a small dome off the shell...then we washed the shell and shaped it till they were fairly flat at the broken edge and about the same size.  We placed four shells on the table and began stacking books....one at a time.  (You can see in the background...my daughter was very ambitious about how many books we were going to add to the stack.)

The stack of books grew....

and grew.....

The kids made entries in their science journals...

And counted books.....

And made entries in their journals again....

And still the stack grew as they added more books!

And finally...well, they got pretty excited when the books finally crushed the egg shells...14 books (but these were fairly heavy books...some weighed well over one pound each)!

I really cherish all of the time together during the experiments we did.  We really get into some great conversations and these are well worth the time it takes setting up and cleaning up messes!  I am so thankful for this year we spent learning about the geography of the earth, as well as many other cultures.

A few other thoughts about ECC:
We completely loved each and every book we read on six different missionaries in a series called "Christian Heroes: Then and Now".  Our favorites were Nate Saint, George Mueller, and Amy Carmichael...but we still really enjoyed Cameron Townsend, David Livingstone, and Gladys Aylward.  We loved reading Kingdom Tales.  We loved the science and the global art.  It was truly a wonderful year.  I'm already planning our first month with Creation to the Greeks and I am more excited than before.  I know we are going to enjoy it...we are already excited about what is planned for the close of the first week of school!!! 

Keep checking in as I start to post some of our times in MFW 1st & CTG...we are kicking off the school year on August 22, 2011!