Fall Break ~ Caterpillars and Remembering 9/11

We’ve been on fall break around here. For me that entails LOTS of extra cleaning and organizing around the house. (Have you noticed it’s been kind of quiet around here?) For the kids it has entailed caterpillars. You may remember our post about our monarch caterpillars? Well, after several died due to Tachinid fly parasites, [...]

Read Full Post »

The Pony Express Unit Study

We had a good first week back to school. The week was unbearably hot and humid (as in so humid my glasses fog up everytime I step outside) that it made me once again glad that I made the decision to homeschool in the summer and take a much needed spring break. It was a [...]

Read Full Post »

Play Learning in the Summer

What do you do with leftover strawberry tops after making strawberry jam? Well, the sensible thing to do would be compost them. That is, unless you have a three and five year old in your home. Then it seems much more sensible to play with them! Pretend gardening anyone? Harvesting with your “tractor”. I see [...]

Read Full Post »

Statue of Liberty Mini Unit Study

This week’s wrap up takes us up close and personal with the Statue of Liberty. We shall soon be traversing the waters of the World Wars and the Great Depression. I figured the Statue of Liberty and immigration would be a good segue from late 1800′s homesteading into a more industrial world full of people [...]

Read Full Post »

The Learning Room ~ of Mice and Men

This week was a productive school week despite our whole crew getting reinfected and having another sick week! Daddy had to go in early all this week and that always allows us to get more schooling done. (Daddy is very distracting for momma in the best sort of ways!) Between bleaching everything, boiling toothbrushes, cleaning [...]

Read Full Post »

Woods, Winter, and the Ingall’s Girls

December 13 – 24, 2010 I am just now getting a chance to sit down and write about our history and science days of last week. We officially started our Unit Study of Little House in the Big Woods. On our official “history” day we will be reading from the book, discussing, doing activities to [...]

Read Full Post »

Little House on the Prairie Lapbook Unit Study

Now that we are done with the Civil War era (will back post on books and links this winter when I have a bit more downtime at home – but notice how I finally updated the book bar on the side!) we will be moving on to the Pioneer era. And what better way to [...]

Read Full Post »

The Learning Room

April 12 – 16 United States Geography Unit Study We decided to make this last week before taking a spring break a light week. Our next history unit will be on Lewis and Clark, which will take several weeks so I didn’t want to start just yet. We spent this week reviewing our U.S. geography [...]

Read Full Post »

The Learning Room – Part II: Henry David Thoreau

April 5th – 11th We did a study  on Henry David Thoreau this week. I know, not something young elementary students usually study. Not even something I studied in high school! But I just found a fantastic kids book on it and it just fit in naturally after talking about John James Audubon. Both were [...]

Read Full Post »

The Learning Room – Part I: John James Audubon

March 19th – April 4th Because my morning sickness strikes in the afternoon and gets worse as the evening progresses (ironic that I don’t have it in the morning!), my only time to type on the computer is moot as I want only to lie on a couch at that point, not typing anything! So [...]

Read Full Post »

John James Audubon Study – Part II

Sorry this second part of the post has taken so long to get to. There are a few reasons that is…the first of which is we actually started the study this week so we have been busy with school. The second of which it is nice outside and we have been trying to get the [...]

Read Full Post »

The Learning Room

March 1-18th, 2010 It’s been a while since I’ve had a moment to really sit down and list what we’ve been studying. I’ve been trying to jot it – very rough hand – on a piece of recycled paper that generally floats somewhere around my computer. So I’m going to try and make heads and [...]

Read Full Post »

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

How many of us grew up celebrating St. Patrick’s Day? Most of us would answer yes in one way or another. How many of us grew up knowing who St. Patrick was, what he did, or why it is that we even have a St. Patrick’s Day? Probably not many of us. Of course, we [...]

Read Full Post »

Audubon and the birds, Part I

Well, spring is officially here and I am excited to do a post on our upcoming history studies. I have been waiting to do this study since the beginning of the school year…before even, when I fell in love with this book from my local library: I admit, I don’t know much about John James [...]

Read Full Post »

The Learning Room

February 8-19 I’m glad I now write down what it is that we actually do during the week. Since we’ve been sick I’ve not been very motivated to “do school” everyday and we have just done a little here and a little there formally and a lot of child-led interests informally as prompted. But writing [...]

Read Full Post »