Weeks 9-11- Brazil!

The past three weeks have been busy learning lots about South America, rainforests, and the country of Brazil.  The highlight of this time was reading aloud the biography of Nate Saint, a passionate pilot Missionary Aviation Fellowship who lost his life in Ecuador trying to share the gospel.  His story is inspiring, but what the Lord has done since and because of his death is nothing short of miraculous.  I personally watched the documentary Beyond Gates of Splendor made by his son Steve Saint. It is available to view on Netflix and I highly recommend it.  The photographs and video footage are haunting, but it is so inspiring to see how the Lord used something evil for good no one imagined.  The kids made a model paper airplane similar to the one Nate flew over the Ecuador rainforest.

We also watched an excellent documentary called Discovery Atlas: Brazil Revealed (also on Netflix).  It focused on eight different Brazilians, young and old. We learned so much about the culture, the religion, the sports, and Carnival!  Carnival is the world famous celebration held in Rio de Janeiro, of course, and we learned that is centers around the samba, the original dance and music of Brazil.  We listened to some samba and bossa nova music and made fancy Carnival masks for our own celebration.

 There was a Carnival mask project in Global Art, the book included in our My Father's World core, but it was much easier to print one off the Internet and decorate them!

We didn't have a huge Carnival celebration, but we did get the cousins together in their masks and Carnival costumes on Josh's birthday.  Nana helped Mister and Brown-Eyed Girl make pretty snazzy costumes featuring rainforest animals, piranha, and flowers while we visited her for a few days this past week.  We used simple white pillowcases for this project.

I also read the book Gooney Bird Green by Lois Lowry to the kids and they loved it!  It's a great, sneaky way to teach kids about writing stories!  They were both upset that there are no other books about Gooney Bird.

The next six weeks of our curriculum, we will be in Europe!  Our first stop is Norway, but I think we won't finish our travels through that country without taking the week of Thanksgiving off.  We've been  working hard and having a lot of fun, but we're all looking forward to a little time off.