Loy Krathong

photo of authentic Loy Krathong boats made by the Thai people

For our studies of Thailand in World Geography, we studied Loy Krathong. Loy Krathong is a traditional Thai festival in which the people celebrate water and worship light. The people of Thailand celebrate this by gathering on the banks of bodies of water (in mid-November on the night of a full moon) and launching hand made boats illuminated by candles. The boats also contain offerings to make up for wrongs committed during the past year. We made our Loy Krathong boats, but because we do not worship light (We worship the one who MADE the light!), we wrote "Jesus is the light" on the boats. We took them down to a nearby pond and launched them. We wanted to light them, but the candles wouldn't stay lit in the wind.

Fall Unit Study Wrap-up

For the month of September, our unit study was "fall." Graham did lots of fun activities and projects to go along with our unit study. Among them were:

*Made fall tree cupcakes

*Made a fall "wreath" out of leaves and acorns collected outside

*Completed a "Leaf" booklet

*Made a picture frame out of acorns

*Did a science experiment to help us understand why leaves change color

*Made "Bountiful Beauty Baskets" and went on a nature walk.

Here is Graham on our nature walk:

And here is little guy along for the ride!

On our nature walk, we found these fuzzy balls on the backs of leaves.  We (I) assumed them to be caterpillar eggs of some kind.

Here's Graham looking over his "eggs" a little more closely back at the house.

We decided to put our cute little eggs in our butterfly observatory.

After a few days, nothing happened so I decided to do a little investigation.  It turns out they were actually unfertilized wasp eggs.  YUCK!  Back outside they went.

With all of our collected things from our nature walk, we made a giant graph on the cement.  First we graphed by leaf color, and then we graphed by type of item.

For this unit study, here are some of the fall-themed books Graham and I read:

Our next unit study will be on voting, elections and presidents.  Although most of my monthly units are for Graham,  this one will also involve Isaac.  I am so excited to teach the boys about our great nation and help them learn a bit more about our upcoming election!