More Little House on the Prairie!

Can you believe it’s been five years since I wrote my first Little House on the Prairie post? I read it and am taken back to the simpler days of only having my first two kids to homeschool where we practiced a more relaxed homeschool approach. Now my oldest will be entering high school next year and the next is fully immersed in the world of junior high. How time flies. I’ve added four more kids to the mix of homeschooling with one more still to fit in the next couple of years. Gone are the relaxed, take-your-time days of yore. Now we are fully immersed in a heavy classical school load for the older two and, while the younger ones still have fun and are covering a lot of the same material as the first two, my schedule is much more structured with this next group of younger kids as I have to make sure there is enough mommy teacher time to go around to meet all the needs. Hence the sound of crickets on this here blog!

We are on round two of our history cycle wrapping up modern history this year. We began the year just post Civil War and started right in on Pioneers and the Homestead Act with my younger children. This, of course, is a perfect time to introduce another generation to my love of all things Little House of the Prairie! Oh how I wish I had more time to spend and camp out here. Even though I only had a week to fill, I made the best of it with my very kinetic learners with two great hands-on projects I wanted to share with you all.

Sometimes with homeschooling I get caught up in the wants that cost money. I would’ve loved to have had a big set of Lincoln Logs for my preschooler through fourth grader to play with. This would’ve been great to keep little hands busy while mommy was reading our literature Little House on the Prairie or our living history book selections. This was not in our budget this year. Instead, I decided to concentrate on using what I already had that also keeps little hands busy. Play dough. I decided the best way to help my hands-on learners remember what the Homestead Act meant was to immerse them in the world of sod house making. They absolutely loved this and all decided, at least the first week of school, that history was definitely their favorite subject. Score for mom! We used this play dough recipe that I had used before for a Valentine’s Day party because it smells like heavenly chocolate.

And don’t let the blog pictures deceive you. My first batch turned out horrible. I thought I could get buy without the cream of tartar and it was a disaster. So while my kids were busily, and happily, playing in the sticky muddy mess on the table, it wasn’t the right consistency to make our sod bricks out of and mommy had to do a quick run to the store in order to redo the recipe the right way. But it turned out all right in the end and they were very happy with their sod houses. Note to moms: try to gently encourage your students to stack the bricks in the staggered pattern that real builders use. Otherwise, when this project dries it will fall apart! My kids had to learn this the hard way. As their houses dried they looked great but immediately collapsed in a heap of dried sod bricks when they did not heed my warning.

We also played this fun game online that shows if you have what it takes to make it on the prairie and build a sod house properly. Both my third and fourth grader failed their first two attempts but finally got it right on attempt number three!

Our next project this week was to build this cute little pioneer peg family to live in their built sod houses. My children love to play what they learn. When we studied cowboys they played cowboys. When we studied Indians they played Indians. When we studied women’s suffrage they played making signs and voting. I love watching them play what they learn. It makes my house always chaotic and a bit on the messier side – an uphill battle I struggle with already just having seven kids living here with me all day long – but the extra effort at cleaning is worth it when I hear them ask if we can study something again because they want to play it again.

Now the crafty, OCD mommy part of me had to forcibly take a back seat on the peg project people. I modeled the project for them. I made wonderful suggestions to them. I used scrap material and yarn I already had on hand and only had to buy the peg clothespins – $2 for a bag at Michaels. But my children are nothing if not consistent and hard-headed. They had there own way of doing their dolls and mommy had to let that be okay. They had a lot of fun with this project. And, if they had listened to me with their sod houses, the houses would’ve been built high enough to use and play with the peg people. We will probably revisit making these dolls again this winter while reading “The Long Winter” for literature. Maybe I’ll teach them how to make some snow candy like Laura and Mary did if we get a dumping of good sticky snow. While this experiment didn’t quite turn out how I wanted it to with my oldest kids, it was still very yummy!

For more fun activities to pair with your Little House on the Prairie study or any history study pertaining to the early pioneers, check out my previous Little House on the Prairie Unit Study.  Also, if you wanted to expand on the activities that I listed here today, you could also try your hand at these. I wanted to get to all of them but a week is such a short time and flies by too fast.

• Make your own butter!
• What’s For Lunch pdf – lessons on what homesteaders ate, including color pages and mason jar butter recipe for above activity
• Exploring Sod Houses Lesson Plan
• Short Video on History of Sod Houses
• Make Maple Snow Candy
• Build a Marshmallow & Graham Cracker Covered Wagon
• Covered Wagon Color Page
• Westward Expansion Unit – page 1 is a Homestead Act notebook page (tracing and illustrating)
• Wild West Mega Pack for Tots

We also read a great new book that I’m adding to our list of Pioneer book must-haves. Dandelions by Eve Bunting is a picture story about two girls who move with their parents out to the prairie. I choose this particular book for several reasons. First, it was set in Nebraska – where we live. I love making history personal. It seems to stick more. Second, they build a sod house and talk about the Homestead Act, which went well with our project and notebooking for the week. Third, dandelions are my favorite under-appreciated flower! So many uses and benefits – I have a whole Pinterest Board dedicated to them – and such a bright yellow sign of hope in the spring when the winter blues have seem to permanently set in. In fact, this is kind of the point of the story. Many pioneer wives of that time, while hard and persevering women, experienced depression. While they did set out to try their hand at a new life, they also left everything behind. Being in this harsh new world without shade and trees and the beauty of flowers, without the comfort of their extended family or even neighbors and community, without their furniture (not much could fit on the wagon ride out) and heirlooms, even without wood to build a comfortable house, living in this world of dirt and nothingness must have been so hard for so many women. This story touches on that very hardship and the young girl ends up saving and planting some dandelions on her sod roof for her mother. It is a beautiful story that touches on that hope that so many prairie wives needed. I just loved it.

     

Books I would add to my first list for this time period:

• Dandelions by Eve Bunting
• Pioneer Girl by Andrea Warren (a true memoir about a Nebraska Homesteader)
• Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson (picture book biography)
• Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner
• Prairie Willow by Maxine Trotter
• Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner (and I Can Read! Level 3 book)
• You Wouldn’t Want to be an American Pioneer!
• A Pioneer ABC! by Mary Alice Downie (for the littles with beautiful illustrations)

Another thing I’m excited to do this winter with the kids is work through watching the first season of Little House on the Prairie. They really don’t make shows like this anymore and I mourn the loss of wholesome family values that this show teaches. This will make a perfect wintertime activity to binge on in evenings of our cozy house with the outside world shut out to us. But we will kick it off with this documentary The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I may be a bit of a nerd but I’m so excited about watching this. You must visit the blog Little House of the Prairie and watch the trailer. It looks just divine! While your at their site stay and look around a while. It is chock full of wonderful activities to pair with a Little House study!

They are also offering a one time savings to you homeschool moms in order to add it to your living history library as well. Just click on their Amazon link to buy the documentary and put in the coupon code (LHSCHOOL) to receive an additional 20% off!

Back to School {The First Week}

In my Back to School – Planning post I talked a little about what we were doing for the year and how we were fitting it all in. In this post I’d like to just recap our week. I’m not always good about doing this weekly but the first week is always important to me, even if I’m finally finished writing about it 3 weeks later! It is my way of scrapbooking digitally our year and there is just something indescribably special about the first week. The kids are excited for what’s to come. I’m excited for what’s to come. Everything is ripe with possibility even as we stumble through getting the daily rhythm down.

So how was our first week?

Math and Art were our biggest hits for the week.

For math we’ve switched to Khan Academy this year for our oldest son. His dad started using it to sharpen his own Algebra skills over the summer and Gabe started sitting down beside him and helping him work out problems. He absolutely loves it. Khan is self-paced, independent, and FREE! We had already been using Khan for history, science, art, and math supplementation (they have great videos and now they’ve teamed up with the guys who do Crash Course whom my kids LOVE and we use for history and science) so this was a natural carryover for him. Since Gabe is already a year ahead in math, using Khan will give him the independence to move ahead at his own pace. He may end up doing two years in one this year and be into Algebra by year’s end. We also allowed the other kids to try it since Khan does have math all the way down to an early elementary level, but we found after a few days of trying that they still preferred their Teaching Textbooks for math.

Although Teaching Textbooks is very pricey, I LOVE their program. It is set up tutorial-style so each kid is completely 100% taught on the computer without me. It is great for auditory and visual learners or for those that need someone to sit with them step by step through each problem. It does automatic grading and my kids love it. That is enough for me to spend the hefty price tag. Plus, we discovered that the book is actually just a repeat of what they are already doing during the lessons and a needless piece so we’ve eliminated that this year and gave each kid their own spiral notebook to use for working out math problems. That saves us $30 for each program. And you can use them with more than one child so we are only buying one year at a time and by next year won’t have to buy any. While the 2nd and 3rd grader are doing their math independently on the computer, it frees me up to work with Ivy and Eli with their Pre-K math and phonics.

Art was also well received this week. Mainly, because we actually did it! Every year I have these great intentions for art and music and every year life gets in the way and then they get bumped for the more “important” subjects that are required. So this year I decided no more. Creativity is a must for me to flourish and it is extremely important for my ten year old girl as well. This year we bought everyone their own sketch pad and we labeled them all pretty and are keeping them organized in an inexpensive tote from Michael’s. For the two littles, I used a primary composition notebook and  covered it in pretty scrapbook paper and then laminated the covers to keep them sturdy for the whole year. This allowed them to be cheaper (twenty five cents back to school sale!) and keeps them accessible for their age range.

Our first week of art we read the Drawing Rules in Drawing in Color and talked about how their is no wrong way to draw. We read ish and Dot, which the littles especially loved and imitated immediately in their notebooks. Our first assignment was to draw whatever we liked. Each child shared their picture and everyone said one thing they really liked about each picture as well as one thing they would like to improve upon for the year. The kids did not want the afternoon to end and it has inspired Lily to check out several drawing books at the library and she has been practicing every night. This year we will be focused on learning to draw animals in pencil using a combination of youtube tutorials and Drawing Animals in Nature with Lee Hammond . This will mesh very well with our zoology science course.

Zoology, unfortunately, started off a little rocky. I was so excited to start the lesson with a great hands-on, visible way for them to understand the concept of classification through classifying legos. This ended up with mostly fighting over said legos and Norah ended up teething and crying for a huge chunk of our time. It was a bit of a letdown for me because I have such huge expectations for this year’s zoology lineup. Our second week fared way better after a trip to Fontenelle Forest to pick up our Vertebrate/Invertebrate Educator’s Trunk and the kids got to handle and feel all kinds of bones and animal skins. My favorite was the owl skull and bobcat skull. After examining everything, the older two got to dip into their first experiment and the littles played an online classification game, all was right again in our science world.

We kicked off our first week of history by diving into Columbus and the Age of Exploration. The younger ones listened to me read from A Child’s History of the World, which I just adore, while they happily constructed ships out of our magformers. They colored and notebooked and then finished off their time playing an online game about Christopher Columbus.

The older two are doing history with daddy again this year. He is a huge history buff and has a wonderful conversational Socratic method style of teaching that our kids just love. They are watching the Crash Course World History and US History videos in conjunction with their reading and then join me on another day of the week for fun history where we get to watch the Horrible History videos, watch fun songs and do map work. Favorite song of the week: Fifty Nifty United States. I learned this song in fifth grade and it has stayed with me to this day. I am giddy passing it on to my children. They are song nerds in the same way I am. Okay, maybe I’m a bit more of a song nerd but they really do love this song. This has been our constant car-schooling anthem for the past couple of weeks to go with our geography study for the year.

I’ve been most impressed with Ivy this week. Being 5 and “officially” starting kindergarten, I wasn’t sure how involved she’d be for the multi-age taught subjects like history, science, and geography. We always have stuff planned for the littles but beyond their basic 3 R’s in the morning, we don’t require them to do school. They are free to play or watch an educational video. But she’s stuck with us through much more then I thought she would. She played the Columbus history game like her older siblings, she’s colored history sheets while listening to the stories and she’s even picked up on the Latin we’ve been studying. And her coloring has taken a dramatic turn for the better since school has started. I perceive that she will show the most overall growth this year.

Latin was by far the most unexpected successful subject of the week. We discovered Classical Academic Press by accident last year through their sister site HeadAdventureland.com which is full of fun, free latin videos!!! (Check out our fave…The Three Little Pigs!) The older two have totally resonated with the DVD chants in the Latin for Children, Primer A. They love doing the activities and discussing everything with their dad over coffee. And the younger 2-4, depending on if the two littles join us, are throughougly enjoying SongSchool Latin. It is SO kid-friendly and fun that the kids can’t wait to do Latin and have told all their friends they should too. Even I have awoken in the middle of the night with a catchy Latin song stuck in my head. Makes me want to check out their SongSchool Latin Spanish.

I also enjoyed doing Bible with the littles this week. We read out of Vos’s Child’s Story Bible starting again at the beginning. And I was once again captivated by the way she conversationally draws the little ones into the story while simultaneously weaving Christ’s redemption story in from the very beginning pages of Genesis. This is by far the BEST story Bible I’ve ever read. The children sat and listened spellbound and asked for more when I was done. Can’t ask for more than that!

Some other fun highlights of our first week…

The girls temporarily dying their hair purple and pink.

Enjoying playing golf during recess time.

Building nanoblocks during free time.

Watching caterpillars emerge as butterflies!

Taking care of pet toads.

I’m so excited to see how the rest of our year unfolds.

How was your first week of school?

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, only one survived and turned into that beautiful Monarch butterfly.

It was a poignant moment. The morning of 9/11 we had read several stories dealing with the tragedy. The kids decided to make their own drawings based on the illustrations of Andrea Patel in On That Day While processing tragedy through art, our caterpillar died and broke free as a creature new, transformed, and utterly beautiful and full of hope. It was a glorious analogy for the hope that came out of that day for the still living. I’d show you a picture (I took beautiful ones of the butterfly with the kids while they were drawing) but, somehow, those pictures got accidentally deleted before I had a chance to post.

Since then, fall has dried the meadow grasses and we have had a caterpillar bonanza as woolly bears are flocking to the warmth of the concrete street. Everyday my kids are caterpillar hunting and coming home with hundreds of soft little fuzzies. And if you think I am exaggerating, proof is in the pictures. EVER DAY they hunt, EVERY DAY buckets and cups and bowls (even shoes) fill our porch with soft little pets to play with. I never knew there could be so many in one area! I think it is beginning to drive my husband crazy. Every night he dumps them out to escape to the wild or be eaten by birds and every night he finds more bucketfuls to empty. I love it. My kids are outside enjoying fresh air, playing, using imagination, and NOT playing video games. (I literally had to ban them the first week of fall break to even get them out the door.)

For more 9/11 inspiration (never too early to plan for next year…or pin it to visually remember), visit Elizabeth Foss at In The Heart of the Home.

~ 9/11 Stories for Kids ~

On That Day: A Book of Hope For Children

Fireboat

The Day America Cried

America Is Under Attack: The Day the Towers Fell

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

New York’s Bravest

I Was Born on 9/11

September 11 2001: A Simple Account for Children

The Little Chapel That Stood

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 little harder for the kids to get back into the swing of things. Gabe, who’s nine, is very aware now that other kids have a long summer break and made sure I knew he wanted one too. Needless to say, we did a lot of retraining on habits and character heart training.

That said, we used our afternoons to do more formal workbox schooling and the mornings to work together on a particular subject. This week was the Pony Express. I must admit I had been putting this study off for a while. I just couldn’t get my head around what I wanted to do. Then I found some great activities (see below) that helped shape things up for me. The only thing I couldn’t find that I wanted was a mapping activity and copywork so I made my own (see below).

Pony Express Living Books we read:

The Sweetwater Run: The Story of Buffalo Bill Cody and the Pony Express by Andrew Glass – This tells the story of a young 13 year old boy who wants to join the Pony Express but is slightly too young. Through a series of events he ends up on the trail with important news of a new president.  This one is fun to read with the right voices.

Wanted: A Few Bold Riders by Darice Bailer ~ This is the story they liked the best. Gabe did one of his best narrations ever remembering more small details then he ever has. The story line is a group of kids who visit a museum and one of the boys ends up imagining himself as one of the displays. Is very relatable and grabs the kids attention right away.

Black Storm Comin’ by Diane Lee Wilson ~ This story is about a 12 year old boy who ends up on the trail. It is a completely engaging story from the very first chapter and I aim to borrow the book from Gabe when he is done. Good novel for junior high age.

Hoofbeats of Danger (An American Girl History Mystery) – Lily loves the American Girl stories. This is her first History Mystery. A good starter chapter book for mid-upper elementary.

Postal History Picture Books:

The Post Office Book: Mail and How it Moves by Gail Gibbons – What’s more to say? It’s Gail Gibbons!

In My Neigborhood: Postal Workers by Paulette Bourgois ~ Littles favorite mail book. A little boy makes a birthday card to grandma. The card makes its trip through the postal system. Quite detailed while maintaining audience attention!

Literature ~ read historical fiction of this time period

Grammar ~ learn formal letter writing skills

Copywork ~ use the Pony Express Oath as handwriting practice

Georaphy ~ mapping the Pony Express

Math ~ learn about money (cent sign), counting money, and how math relates to the postal system through stamps and weighing mail, littles reinforced number recognition

Pony Express Free Printables and Games:

• Mapping the Pony Express
• The Pony Express Oath – Copywork
• The Pony Express Audio Book
• Rail, Sail or Overland Mail – online interactive game
• Free Pony Express Color Pages
• Free Mail Game Printables for Preschoolers – from Our Country Road blog

Now for the play!!! It wouldn’t be a week of authentic school without some playing. Bags were donned, mail made, horses found (and then some to reduce quarreling) and our riders were off!

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 the kids emulating us…playing Adam and I as we embark on this journey to grow all our own food and buy only local, in-season food.

Sometimes, especially after watching an episode of Sid the Science Kid, I long for my children to take a school lesson and run outside to “play” it, allowing the learning to sink to that deeper long-term memory center of their brain. Occasionally a history figure will capture them like Sacagawea and they do play what they learn, but mostly not. That’s not to say that they don’t use the concrete in play…like letters and numbers and reading…they most certainly do…just not those stories of history and science and art and music that I had hoped would captivate them. While they enjoyed their history, no one was outside “playing” Statue of Liberty last week!

That said...playing is an integral part of learning and it reaches us in a way no other learning can. Do you know what a three and five year old play? They play what seems of value…what is important…what they want to do and try when they grow up. Why do you think dolls never go out of style?  They see and sense what is really of value to us as an adult. We can say one thing with our lips but they are much more intent on watching our actions.

This is the secret that the unschoolers embrace and are not afraid of. This is the truth that us homeschool listmakers who want to track progress usually fail to grasp. And even if we know it we are mostly afraid to allow our children to live it. I know for myself there is comfort in the checking off of the yearly school list.

But if playing gardening and composting is where they are at, I think of what their futures hold and I smile and relax. I am teaching the important things even if they weren’t in a school lesson! Maybe my kids won’t remember everything I taught them about history…okay…most definitely. But maybe they will be a part of history, changing it for the better and passing that down to their own kids. That is a lesson worth teaching!

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 and problems.

I really planned this week on the fly. I knew which book from our home library I wanted to use and I requested some from the library that looked promising. Other then that, I did a quick google search the night before our study and found some cool free notebooking pages. During our reading we had a question come up about the patina so we did a spontaneous search and found a really cool (cool for me = easy to do, nothing to buy) science experiment. It was that kind of study that just came together in a nice way during the middle of our very busy week. I like those days!

This study covered literature, history, copywork, science, and a little math.

Books we loved ~

Liberty by Allan Drummond~ This was a fun book. You have to read the author’s note in the beginning. This is where the bulk of the historical fact is at but, more importantly, it is where he sets up his stage of awe-inspiring imagination with the kids. Usually my kids hate author’s notes. Not this time!

The other interesting thing about this book is the reference to the only two females allowed at the opening ceremony. It is mentioned enough times that it caught Lily’s attention. And she repeatedly interrupted me to find out why only 2 girls could go. It was a wonderful intro to discuss the women’s suffrage movement and I think it will be the next thing we study for history. It segues nicely from this study.

A Picnic in October by Eve Bunting ~ This was a book even my nine year old boy enjoyed. It is told by a boy about that same age as his family takes their yearly traditional Lady Liberty picnic. His grandparents were immigrants so this statue is very important to them. The thing that makes this book stand out is the realism. The boy deals with his own why-do-we-have-to-do-this boredom of tradition. It made my kids laugh and will probably be the book they remember best.

Naming Liberty by Jane Yolen ~ This was interesting in that it was a dual story. One side of the page told an immigrants story of coming to America and receiving a new name. The other page told the story of how Bartholdi came upon his idea for building the statue and his journey in bringing that vision to fruition. Yolen does a good job at interweaving the two stories together that doesn’t lose young readers along the way.

Books the older two read independently ~

Lily and Miss Liberty by Carla Stevens ~ Perfect for our Lily. This is a starter chapter book about a young french girl in school who is helping to raise money for the Statue of Liberty. A great story for my girl who is interested in French! This was Lily’s first time doing independent history reading. She did very well with her narrations.

Building Liberty: A Statue is Born by Serge Hochain~ Gabe wasn’t thrilled with the idea of independent historical reading…he rarely is. Yet he ended up reading this book two times. It is a picture book put out by National Geographic with fabulous detailed pictures of how Lady Liberty was put together piece by piece. This story is told from different perspectives by four different boys who each had a hand in building. Although this is a picture book it is definitely geared toward an older student. You could use it as a read aloud if it was your only read aloud for that day.

Free Statue of Liberty Resources ~

• Statue of Liberty Notebooking Pages (from The Notebooking Fairy) ~ we used these for copywork…and what better copywork for this study then the inscription on the Statue of Liberty!
• Statue of Liberty Color Page (mainly for the littles)
• Immigrant Color Page with Statue of Liberty Inscription ~ this is what they used to copy from for their notebooking page and then they got to color it in.
• Other Color Pages and Fact Sheet

Turning Pennies Green ~

The Copper Caper

We found this ultra cool experiment on how copper reacts with acid. This is a perfect instant gratification experiment that costs nothing and is a perfect demonstration of that beautiful sea green patina covering Lady Liberty. One of my favorite experiments that we’ve done thus far. We did the first part of the experiment that only involved the pennies.

How I incorporated Math ~ Since they already had to measure for the experiment, I capitilized on Lily’s learning fractions this past week and purposefully pulled out the wrong measuring cups and spoons. I gave her the chance to figure out how she could multiply or divide to get the right measurement. Real Math. We like that around here!

And I’ll leave you with this food for thought…

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to be free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Joining Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers @

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 puke bowls, double hot-washing sheets, and cleaning carpet, we amazingly started a new unit study on how our government works. And I’m so excited to share with you the books we found.

First, let me just say I will be putting together a post soon on all our resources for others to share so come back and visit us again!

I’ve been wondering when to do the whole government study thing for a while now. How do you fit that into a history schedule that you’ve got going that is rather chronological in order? But then Gabe casually walked up to me one day and asked what a President’s cabinet was if it wasn’t the kind in your kitchen. And Pop came up to me and casually asked if very soon he could take the kiddos down to the state capitol for a field trip. So I guess now would be as good as time as any to get started.

We read Vote! and We Are Citizens to start the week. These were both very helpful in getting a foundation of understanding about why all this government stuff even matters.

Then we read through this sweet little series by Peter and Cheryl Barnes that explores the three branches of our government. Why hasn’t anyone told me about these books? May I just rave for a minute about how well done they are!!! It is about a group of mice that go through the government process just as we people do. It is told in lyrical rhyme and just flows beautifully. And the attention to detail is amazing. It is a true living book that captures my youngest non-readers, who get a great introduction to concepts, and gives a great overview to my emerging readers, and provides great detail (architectural and historical) to an older child who is ready to dig in for a bit of research. It provides more complete information then I ever received in elementary social studies and it pulls everything together into a neat little package about why these things get done.

Woodrow for President takes us through the voting process including campaigning, primary versus general elections, parties, qualifications, virtues of good citizenship and so forth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woodrow, the White House Mouse takes us on a journey through the jobs of our President as well as an introduction to the White House and it’s different rooms and purposes. There is more information here then I ever learned in elementary school!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

House Mouse, Senate Mouse teaches what the Legislative branch does and how the senate and house of represantives works together to pass a bill into a law. It also gives us an introduction into the workings of Washington D.C. and where all this takes place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marshall, the Courthouse Mouse introduces them to the Supreme Court and how that works. It also takes us inside the Supreme Court and compares to a courthouse that might appear in your town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can get the teacher guide to go with (which I did) and it is a wonderful resource full of discussion ideas, prompts for activities and research projects, how to get involved (through correspondance ~ complete with addresses they will need!), additional reading and kid-friendly websites for additional research. It also has a few coloring pages for the littles to feel involved and some copy-friendly templates for activity worksheets.

My kids LOVED reading these. I’m glad I sprung for them since my library didn’t carry them. We received used copies in good condition and the kids were tickled that all of our copies were autographed by the authors. One even had a typo in the book that the author had fixed and signed “Oops!” with her name underneath.

Gabe also read How the U.S. Government Works which is a bit dry but concisely explains concepts that he will need to know more about being the oldest. Mainly I wanted him to see why the three branches of government were started and this book does a good job of explaining in simplistic, yet detailed terms. He did an oral narration to me on the book and we went over how to say each of the branch names. I laugh everytime I think of how he was pronouncing legislative!

The older two worked on their math, of course, and Lily was excited to have finished her Kumon: Counting Coins book and her Kumon: Telling Time book. And I reread all the Moncure vowel books to the littles as well as Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosuars which rekindled Luc’s first love and spurred on a conversation about the tools needed for digging up real bones. (I love this book. It is perfect for homeschoolers who are trying to teach creation-based science even though this book is secular.)

That was all we did “formally” (due to the sick thing and all). But there was a lot of unschooling going on as well.

Lily was wondering about day and night and how God didn’t create the sun and moon till after the first days of creation so how could there be day and night yet and when did the first day actually start? Man, does she have some deep thinking in there! My husband and I were just discussing this the other night concerning our version of day compared to God’s in relation to the whole young earth-old earth theories. I had her flip through What Makes Day and Night after our discussion and set up a little hands-on experiment for her to observe for herself how the sun is connected to us counting days.

Gabe decided to get creative this week. He spent days working on this project of writing his own story. (Could be that his Mario game was taken away in a discipline decision. Imagine that…imagination blooms!) He was very serious about his work and frustrated when he finally put it all together and then couldn’t read it right beacause he had no idea what a margin was. We discussed the importance of margins and he went back and took the time to redo the whole booklet in order to get it just right. I was pretty impressed at how well he did with the quotes and comma usage.

Gabe was also seen carrying around his Painless Grammar book wherever he went…the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, to bed. That boy cracks me up. Who reads grammar?

Lily’s new Highlights magazine came in the mail and she just discovered the Table of Contents. I explained to her what this was, why it is used, and how to use it. She excitedly spent the next hour looking things up in her magazine.

Language Arts…check!

Gabe also found this Word Processing book in my pile of library books to go through (you know, that pile of books you have going that need a decision on whether to write this title down for future use.) I noticed him reading it on quite a few different occasions and finally said, as casually as I could, that he could use the computer if he actually wanted to try any of the exercises. He jumped on the chance and learned how to open and save a document, create a folder, store documents in his folder, and write a letter.

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 on the Prairie. On our official “history” day we will be reading from the book, discussing, doing activities to supplement and putting together our lapbook. For our “science” day we will be studying the forest as a compliment to this book and making our own field guides.

I have to admit, I was a bit hesitant on how they would take the Little House study. I am super passionate about these books and this time period so, of course, I was excited. But sometimes history sends Gabe straight into eyes-glaze-over mode. I thought Lily would like it, as most girls who read this book do in the elementary years. I wasn’t so sure if Gabe would enjoy the book or not. To my surprise, they both loved it. Gabe even did extra reading and volunteered (hear that cyber world….volunteered!!!) a narration on his reading to put into his lapbook. Even the two smaller ones, Luc and Lilah, wouln’t hear of being left out and made me print off lapbook pages for them to do as well. Our two hour schooling window expanded to a 5 hour window (with a break for lunch of course!) and I was amazed at the enthusiasm.

History

Read:

• Chapters 1-4 of Little House in the Big Woods (ending with the chapter appropriately titled “Christmas” yesterday!)
• Winter Days in the Big Woods (a My First Little House)
• Gabe read and narrated from Look Inside a Log Cabin by Mari Schuh
• All read from If You Were a Pioneer on the Prairie (which delightfully grossed the children out – especially outhouses and bed bugs!)

Activities ~ Making our own butter. At first everyone one was so excited and fighting over who got to shake the cream. By the end of 20 minutes they were all trying to shove it off on each other and no one wanted to finish. We got it to the butter just starting to seperate out from the buttermilk stage before they gave up all together and were no longer interested. Gabe said he sure was glad we could just buy butter from the store now!

Lapbooking ~ picked and colored cover pages and put together lapbook folders, hotglued popscicle sticks onto a log cabin (Luc and Lilah’s fave activity), made food preservation mini books, made a mini smokehouse replica (Gabe and Lil’s fave since it involved Liquid Smoke), wrote about our Christmas versus the Ingall’s, wrote about a favorite gift and used as copywork/penmanship, made mini books about making bullets and gun safety, made a mini book on the Ingall’s weekly chores

Language Arts

These past two weeks we also concentrated on reading. That pretty homeschool picture we all have in our head of snuggling on the couch and reading great books rarely happens around here. Mainly because mommy is always busy and interrupted with the needs of littler ones and we do a lot of our reading separately by subject.  But since we have forgone stories at bedtime to replace with our Advent activities, I really didn’t want the Christmas season to go by without reading some of the classics! Plus, we needed to return some library books that were too good to not let the kids get a chance to hear read aloud! So our whole day of language arts this week just focused on reading great children’s literature. I let each of the kids pick a book and I took turns reading their selections (which they loved!!!) and then I would pick a selection and read. This took time, but it was nice time that we all desperately needed. And it fostered some great discussions. We talked about homophones (hair and hare), about hibernation and dens (science), about the real meaning of discipline and it’s oppositte meaning (dictionary skills and bible character training), and about what would truly satisfy you and make you happy on Christmas morning (Let’s just say my kids have a long ways to go! Apparently a tin cup and one peppermint stick or a new pair of mittens would not make them as excited as the Ingall’s girls. Who knew?)

Literature & Poetry Reading  ~

• Bear Snores On by Wilson & Chapman (one of our winter faves…so lyrical and fun to read!)
• Forest Child by Marni McGee
• The Little Engine That Could and the Snowy, Blowy Christmas by Watty Piper
• Santa Comes to Little House by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Rnee Graef (beautiful pictures and the book that inspired the conversation of materialism and happiness ~ also counted towards our history unit study)
• Christmas in the Big Woods (a My First Little House book)
• The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Krats
• Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet Year by Betsy Bowen
• Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
• A Charlie Brown Christmas (Hallmark interactive story – Lilah’s favorite!)

Spelling ~ Both Gabe and Lily worked on the Scripps spelling bee list for the upcoming spelling bee. They practiced alone, with each other and with mom. They picked out the words they needed to work on independently and worked on them at SpellingCity.com Lily and I talked about memorization tricks and visual learning (picturing letters as colors).

Phonics ~ Lily did several pages in her phonics workbooks concentrating on long vowel rules.

Grammar & Mechanics ~ Gabe and Lily both did a fun worksheet on alphabetizing Christmas words (Gabe’s was more intense). Lily did a Christmas worksheet on forming compound words.

Math

Gabe ~ Math U See – all of chapter 9 and test (finding the area of triangles), all of chapter 10 and test (division by 4’s)

Lily ~ Kumon Counting Coins book (adding nickels and pennies together, adding dimes and pennies together), Kumon Time book (telling time by hours, the different ways of writing o’clock)

Science

We did a lot of science reading too. Our favorites are Jim Arnosky’s books. I will be investing money in these this upcoming spring. Though Lily is pretty convinced that she doesn’t want to go back into the woods after all the precautionary talk we did, I assured her it’s a lovely place to explore but she is now hyper-worried about disease and poisonous plants!

Read:

• Creatures in the Woods (National Geographic book)
• Walking in Wild Places by Jim Arnosky
• Wild Tracks by Jim Arnosky (By far the most looked at book the past couple of weeks. We will be adding to our home library this spring. Includes fold out pages that have life-size tracks pictured. That impressed us all!)
• Whose Tracks Are These? (a fun book where you were given clues and then had to guess the animal who made the tracks – kids loved it)

Discussed: Ticks, Lyme disease, poisonous plants, bee stings, water pollution, reindeer (what kind of real deer they are), protective forest clothing and why.

Activities: All went out to the forest and prairie area and had a great time looking for animal scats and tracks before it snowed. The kids had great fun with this. We think we may even have found mountain lion tracks! And Luc was beyond thrilled to discover real deer poop! I also had kids look through several different types of field guides, plants and animals, to see real-life examples of how they are put together. They’ve looked at these a million times before (by far the most used books in the house) but were now looking with fresh eyes. Do they want to use real photos or sketch? If real, use a camera or pull off internet? If sketch, pencil or paint or colored pencil? What information to include? Bound or spiraled? Laminated or paper? I told them we will discuss their ideas after Christmas and each one would be unique to what that person wanted to do.

Gabe ~ made an illustration of a forest biome including the canopy, understory, brush, herb, and floor layers to include in his field guide; read his new National Geographic magazine

Lily ~ tried her hand at sketching a deer and also sketched some tracks (deer and mountain lion) to include in her field guide; read her new National Geographic magazine

deer tracks

deer scat

cat tracks

The much bigger mountain lion tracks!

Faith & Advent

• Read The Nativity by
• Read nightly out of The Jesse Tree by
• Made ornaments for our Jesse Tree.
• Practiced singing carols and learning words (The Cherry Tree Carol, The First Noel, and O Come Emmanuel)

Little House on the Prairie Lapbook Unit Study

Updated 10/11/15 – check below for more links including this incredible documentary! Like what you see in this post? Come join me for More Little House on the Prairie for more activities and book suggestions!

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 do this then through the Little House on the Prairie book series? In fact, I know of very little who don’t love this series.  I remember watching the TV series as a small girl and falling in love with this time period. I can’t wait to share this with my children and let it become a memory of their’s as well. We will be studying the period lazily over the winter. By lazily I mean taking our time, delving deep, letting the books speak and guide our direction and interests. I have no idea how long it will take us.

We will be continuing our use of lapbooks with this study. We have found, through a bit of dabbling in it this year, that the kids respond to my choice of books better and remember the information better if they have this to look forward to after the readings. Lily loves lapbooks because it is much like scrapbooking our history information. Gabe loves it because it frees him of the burden of narrations. I have narrowed narrations down to one main narration per time period that they will stick in their lapbook/scrapbook and it will be based on a book of their choice to read from that time period. I know this isn’t quite the Charlotte Mason way but it still fits and I have to do what is right for my family as God whispered to a dear church friend who wrote it to me in an encouraging note. This worked so well while studying the Civil War and Gabe ended up doing a lovely narration effortlessly when allowed to choose what he thought was an exciting book, not what I thought.

Luckily, Homeschool Share has a free lapbook for each of the original Little House series beautifully made by Heather L. This is the main site I used to download pdf files for our use. I have fallen in love with this site! I encourage every homeschooling mother to go there and poke around.

First of all, here are the living books we will be using:

The Little House on the Prairie Book Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

starting with

Little House in the Big Woods (perfect now that we have a forest in our backyard!)

We will also read all of the My First Little House Picture Books concentrating on the winter ones first since we are in that season.

And read a living biography on Laura Ingalls Wilder

As spines alongside our literature study we will use If You Were a Pioneer on the Prairie

as well as A Pioneer Sample: Daily Life of a Pioneer Family in 1840

and Look Inside a Log Cabin by Mari Schuh

These three books will be great sources of information for making the lapbooks and answering questions about the time period. And to delve into the science of the period we will be, obviously, studying prairie grassland habitats through these books:

One Day in the Prairie by Jean Craighead George

A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet by Claudia McGehee

Prairie Food Chains by Kelley MacAulay

and America’s Prairies and Grasslands Guide to Plant and Animals by Marianne D. Wallace

And for activities to supplement or add to the study:

• Lapbook for Little House in the Big Woods
• Additional Lapbook Templates for Little House in the Big Woods
• Watching the DVD series of Little House on the Prairie
• Cooking from The Little House Cookbook
• Crafting from the My Little House Sewing Book
• Host a Little House on the Prairie Party
• Make Pioneer Children Paper Dolls
• Make Your Own Butter
• Make Your Own Rock Candy
• Make Play dough Sod Houses
• Make Pioneer Peg Clothespin People
• Listening to Pa’s Fiddle on Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Wilder audio CD
• Maybe learning some songs from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook

Updated – 10/11/15

I’d have never guessed when I first wrote this post almost 5 years ago how popular it would become! Besides my Rock and Mineral Unit Study post, this page keeps my tiny blog afloat amid the absence of current posts that my seven kids lovingly prevent me from writing! 

And today I’m excited to add a few nuggets to the Little House extravaganza. Thanks to the generosity of the blog Little House on the Prairie, I’ve been able to add a number of free activities above such as how to host a Little House on the Prairie party, how to make rock candy, and even free printable Little House paper dolls – which are way super cute! They are also sending me a copy of their new documentary “The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder” to review which I’m super excited about. Will be reviewing and linking back to here very soon. You must go over and watch the trailer. Maybe I’m a bit of a nerd, but watching this has me like a child running to check the mailbox everyday looking for that package! 

And now you can also enjoy a little slice of this Americana too. The people behind  Little House on the Prairie are offering a coupon code which allows you 20% off the already low price of $19.95. This is an excellent addition to any homeschool living history library. Just click on their  Amazon link and add to your cart. Enter LHSCHOOL into the promotion code box when checking out. Voila! Instant savings!

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 map skills and tying in our bird theme by coloring/drawing state birds. We also used these bird drawings as a chance for penmanship practice by labeling which state the bird belongs to and then filing them in our State Binders. The kids had fun this week. They love coloring and drawing birds so it made the week easy to get through. I’m looking forward to taking a 4-week break, especially with nausea coming to an all-time high right now. I’m excited to work on getting all our gardening done and enjoying playing outside before the weather gets too hot. At the end of the four weeks I’ll post what kind of schoolish things we did (books read, field trips taken, interests followed) because that still counts towards our Nebraska state requirement hours even if they weren’t formally planned! Learning doesn’t necessarily stop just because you’re taking a break!

History & Geography

• Read United Tweets of America: 50 State Birds by Hudson Talbott. This book is one of my kids favorites. They just love the humour infused with all the facts and this is one that they beg me to read, especially the bird captions (done in a cartoon format). I will buy this for next year. We check it out too often to keep borrowing from the library!
• Colored several state birds and labeled then placed in the kids State Binder.
• Took a review quiz of labeling a U.S. map. (Find free map pdf files here.)
• Practiced learning states through Learn Disover Explore: The United States of America (a fun little book we picked up last year on the Target $1 shelf!)
• Practiced state abbreviations.

Language Arts

• Poetry ~ read The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Birding Poems by Michael J. Rosen (beautiful pictures, by the way, and useful for Gabe in reviewing what a haiku is).
• Literature ~ read chapter 6 of Charlotte’s Web.
• Penmanship ~ practiced manuscript (Lily) and cursive (Gabe) with labeling bird pictures.
• Phonics ~ Lily practiced reading independently and read I’m a Seed for me (a Hello Reader level 1 book).
• Independent Reading ~ Gabe spent a lot of his free time reading this week. Stared Charlie and the Chocoloate Factory for the millionth time. Read Franny K Stein: The Fran that Time Forgot and a Magic School Bus chapter book: The Giant Germ. Lily played outside more in her free time but spent a lot of time reading her library books (mainly Dr. Suess) before bed. She’s getting more confident every day!

Art/Music

• Colored pictures of a Meadowlark, Goldfinch, Robin, Eagle, Mockingbird, Baltimore Oriole, and Wood Thrush.
• Used original drawings of a Cardinal, Bluebird, and Robin.
• Listened to our Revolutionary Freedoms CD with an emphasis on the song “Fifty Nifty United States”.

Science & Physical Education

• Read I’m a Seed by Jean Marzollo to everyone. The kids asked for this to be read three times in a row and then Lily read it out loud to me. They loved this book because it is about a marigold and pumpkin seed, both seeds we plan to plant in our garden and both seeds we did plant last year. Luc is especially excited about the pumpkins this year and clapped everytime the pumpkin seed talked. This is a very informative book for being so simple and much in the style of Nancy Wallace’s books (which I love!).
• Did lots of gardening work this week. Kids helped with sifting our compost and bringing it to the new beds to spread. They also helped with sifting our rocks and digging out weeds.
• Gabe and Lily started rock collections. They used recycled egg cartons – just the perfect size to fit a rock in! We will have to dig out our rock field guides.
• Found (and washed REALLY well) several bird feathers for their nature shelf. We think one is from a meadowlark. I can’t tell what the other two are from. They are darker in color w/a rainbow sheen at the tip and quite large in size. (Luc has been desperately chasing the Robins trying to get one to let him pet it!)
• Read Storms by Seymour Simon and A First Discovery Book: Weather (Scholastic) after we had a sudden impromptu spring thundershower!
• Gabe independently read The Senses: Seeing when he wanted to know how a piece of glass (he thinks his lenses are just a piece of glass) can make you see better. (The answer: different shaped glass, concave or convex depending on if you are near or farsighted!)

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 from around the same time period (about 50 years difference) and both were pioneers in the naturalist/environmentalist movement for their times. I’m sure the kids won’t retain that much from their study but for me, personally, it was very eye opening. I have never read Walden before, though I have wanted to for years after I found out he was one of the first to move out of society into that – what we would call these days – sustainable lifestyle. He purposefully led a simple life. And it is to this movement that Adam and I feel drawn to. I will continue to read his book, even though we are technically done with him this week. Adam and I have proposed a little experiment to the kids based off this study (you will find out more details in an upcoming post!).

Lily’s biggest (and somewhat profound) question to his lifestyle was: “If he chose to live simply and wanted more free time then how did building his own house get that because then he just did a lot of work and had to cook and find his own food which is more work? How did he have free time?” Which I thought was a wonderful question that we should all contemplate on. What is real, purposeful work? And is that enjoyment in itself? And do our modern conveniences create more free time or put us in a continuous, perpetual cycle of bondage with respect to time and time management? Anyway, I digress. On to the work we did this week.

History

• Read Henry David’s House edited by Steven Schnur (edited by is the important part here, as this book is all from Thoreau’s original writings about building his house by Walden Pond!)
• Gabe and Lily did narrations (oral and picture to go with) on Thoreau.
• Gabe independently read A Man Named Thoreau by Robert Burleigh

Literature

• Read chapter 5 of Charlotte’s Web, which the kids are really enjoying…especially the goose who repeats everything. They think she is hilarious! We would have read more of this but kids being slow to pick up and tidy at night has earned some lost privileges.
• Listened to the audio of Ivy & Bean Break the Fossil Record by Annie Barrows. (These are just so delightful to listen to…the kids love them and so do I!)
• Read more of the Peter Rabbit series.

Language Arts

• Gabe – learned about how to use quotation marks; cursive copywork; poetry reading; picture study; creative writing story
• Lily – phonics practice; manuscript copywork; picture study; poetry reading; creative writing (wrote a wonderful story this week!); reading practice; more review of sentences and punctuation

Latin – Gabe

• New words: amicus, specto, natura.
• Reviewed flashcards.

Math

• Gabe – Math U See chapter 21 – multiplying with double digits, place value notation.
• Lily – started her new Kumon workbook: Easy Telling Time (which she is very excited about)

Art

• Worked in the craft room making thumbprint art and decorating a wooden birdhouse.

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 I am taking one morning where I am feeling okay and catching up on what we’ve been learning. I will break it into two manageable parts – a part one over our John James Audubon study and a part two over our Henry David Thoreau study.

History

• Read aloud to Gabe and Lily: The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon by Jacqueline Davies
• Read aloud to Gabe and Lily: Into The Woods: John James Audubon Lives His Dream by Robert Burleigh
• Gabe read Audubon: Painter of the Birds on the Wild Frontier by Jennifer Armstrong independently and used it in his narration compilation.
• Gabe and Lily both put together a narration on who John James Audubon was based on all the books they read. Gabe used his as a Language Arts exercise as well and Lily added a picture narration to her oral narration.
• Read Beatrix Potter by Alexandra Wallner (a biography of her life).
• Read My Dear Noel: The Story of a Letter from Beatrix Potter by Jane Johnson (a great book about how she started the Peter Rabbit series).
• Started to read The Flower Hunter: William Bartram, America’s First Naturalist by Deborah Kogan Ray (Didn’t finish – kid’s weren’t interested at all. Was disappointed in that. I loved this book!).

Science

• Read Birds at Home by Marguerite Henry (our favorite living book on birds!)
• Read Birds at My Feeder by Glen & Loates (our other most read living bird book)
• Used Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Birds field guide to identify birds in our back yard and see where in the United States certain birds live.
• Read Birds: Nature’s Magnificent Flying Machines by Caroline Arnold and discussed how feathers and flight work.
• Read An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston & Sylvia Long. The kids had most fun finding camouflaged eggs and picking which egg they wanted to draw.
• Read Birds at Night by Roma Gans – a great overall book on how birds act, what they eat, how they survive. The kids favorite I think.
• Read A Nest Full of Eggs by Priscilla Belz Jenkins – a good book to herald in spring as it is mostly about the arrival of robins returning in the spring.

Gabe's cardinal.

Lily's cardinal.

Mommy's cardinal.

Lily's cardinal after seeing mommy's cardinal and then deciding she needed to redo hers!

Luc's cardinal.

Art

• Practiced studying a bird and trying to draw it realistically. The kids enjoyed this as the best part of the week both weeks and they loved using their new colored pencils!
• Looked through The Living World of Audubon by Roland C. Clement to see samples of Audubon’s work and read journal entries.
• Used Nature Book to Color to color different birds realistically.
• Read Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister and had fun discussing the “real” art used on the eggs. Good picture study for the kids.
• Used Art For Kids: Drawing in Color by Kathryn Temple to practice drawing an egg and working on how to shade and how light hits an object.

Gabe's Woodpecker.

Lily's Woodpecker - probably my favorite of hers! Makes me giggle whenever I see it!

Lily's Bluebird.

Music

• Kids played with The Bird Songs Anthology by Les Beletsky almost daily.
• Listened to  music CD For the Birds full of bird folk songs, poetry, and bird calls!

Literature

• Read the Easter story out of the Bible.
• Read The Legend of the Easter Egg by Lori Walburg and James Bernardin.
• Read The Very First Easter by Paul L. Maier.
• Read The Story of Easter by Aileen Fisher (the kids favorite).
• Read the whole Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series.
• Read chapters 1-4 of  Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White.
• Read The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett.
• Watched the Audio story of The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson.
• Watched the Audio story of The Story ABout Ping by Marjorie Flack.
• Watched the Audio story of Make Way For Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
• Read Petunia by Roger Duvoisin.

Language Arts

• Lily – in Language Arts Lessons book: review of sentences and punctuation; copywork (manuscript practice); phonics practice; poetry reading; reading practice
• Gabe – in Language Arts Lesosns book: pronouns, paragraphs,  initials and abbreviations (also used his history narration in practicing editing and when to use pronouns and paragraphs properly in real-life writing); review of plurals, adjectives, adverbs, and capitilization; copywork in cursive; poetry reading
• Luc – phonics practice with mom in the Blue Book; Kumon cards

Math

• Lily – Filling in 100’s chart (partially blank 3x, all blank 3x); Math U See chapter 21 – addition of missing number
• Gabe – Math U See chapters 19 and 20 – skip counting and multiplying by 8

Latin – Gabe

• New words: sed, via, porto, quid, tuba, ager, paro
• Review of flashcards.

Independent Reading

• Gabe & Lily – Magic School Bus chapter books (science); Ivy and Bean audio book (literature)
• Gabe – How Things Work by David Macaulay (science) and How Do You Lift a Lion (science – about force, friction, levers, pulleys); Woollybear Goodbye (literature w/touch of science)
• Lily – There’s a Wocket in My Pocket and Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess (phonics and reading practice)
• Lily, Luc and Lilah – A First Discovery Book: The Egg (science); Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series (Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and The Tale of The Pie and The Patty Pan)

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 first of garden preparations done.

Now I have split this up into categories to be user-friendly, but we will actually be tackling the study on a much more interest-led-see-where-the-day-brings-us way. I find we actually accomplish more this way because one thing will lead into another. If I just do a “Well, children, this is what we are doing today,” I get accosted with groans and mumbles. I leave those for our formal math-latin-grammar work! Some of the books fit into more then one category but I tried to pick the category we would most be utilizing it as. And you may think that you have some books that you would add to categories as must haves, especially in the Literature section. That may be. I only listed what I had available to me that we already owned or that I could readily find at the library.

Our Bird Shelves

Activities

• Learning the history of who John James Audubon was and what he contributed to America. (History)
• Learning about naturalists ~ who they are and what they do. (History & Social Studies)
• Narrations on books read (Reading Comprehension, Assimilation & Logic, Grammar, Writing)

• Learning about the egg and its development from embryo till birth. (Science)
• Learning about the feather and how flight works. (Science)
• Learning Bird Anatomy through 3 part cards Download here for free. (Science)

• Learning to recognize bird calls and songs. (Science and Music)
• Learning to identify birds by sight. (Science Classification)
• Playing our Montessori Bird Puzzle. (Good for the toddlers to do while reading bird books to the older children.)

• Taking nature walks to practice birding skills and look for treasured feather finds. (Science, Physical Education)
• Practicing sketching and watercolor/colored pencil techniques with drawing birds and eggs. (Art)
• Playing with our Audubon stuffed birds (also helps in recognizing bird calls) (Assimilation)

• Reading poetry and children’s literature about birds and other springtime animals. (Literature & Poetry)
• Memorizing poetry about birds. (Poetry)
• Copywork on spring poetry, narrations, original Audubon writing excerpts (Penmanship, Grammar, Poetry & Literature)
• Listening to our For the Birds CD (Music, Poetry, Science)

John James Audubon History Biographies (all preread to be excellent living books although the first two are my favorites!!!)

• The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon by Jacqueline Davies (all ages – exquisite illustrations)
• Into The Woods: John James Audubon Lives His Dream by Robert Burleigh (all ages – poetry and journal excerpts and original paintings)
• Audubon: Painter of the Birds on the Wild Frontier by Jennifer Armstrong (younger)
• John James Audubon: Wildlife Artist by Peter Anderson (middle or read aloud)
• First Impressions: John James Audubon by Joseph Kastner (older – some more mature content, also shows some original paintings)
• Ornithological Biography by John James Audubon (older – his collection of writings and work)

Birds (References, Field Guides, Science)

• The Living World of Audubon by Roland C. Clement (graphic photography, original Audubon paintings and excerpts of his writing – both Art and Science Reference)
• Birds at Home by Marguerite Henry (our favorite living book on birds!)
• Birds at My Feeder by Glen & Loates (our other most read living bird book)
• Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Birds (our favorite, very-dog-earred field guide!)

• Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock (a must for every Charlotte Mason homeschooler!)
• Birds: Nature’s Magnificent Flying Machines by Caroline Arnold (Science – a superb book, will be using as our main science spine)
• Crinkleroot’s Guide to Knowing the Birds by Jim Arnosky
• An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston & Sylvia Long (A most exquisitely illustrated science book about eggs!)
• Birds at Night by Roma Gans (a great living science book)
• A Nest Full of Eggs by Priscilla Belz Jenkins (Science)
• Lifecycles: From Egg to Chicken by Gerald Legg (Science)
• A First Discovery Book: The Egg (Science ~ one that Luc carries around daily and loves lifting the transparency flaps)
• A Child’s Book of Birds by Kathleen N. Daly
• United Tweets of America: 50 State Birds (History Reference – a must have for home libraries, my kids LOVE!)
• Hobby Handbooks: Birdwatching by Rob Humes (Science)
• Spring by Ron Hirschi (Science)

Bird Music

• The Bird Songs Anthology by Les Beletsky (#20 ~ the Ptarmigan’s call is my kids favorite. They will play over and over and over and over again and always erupt into a million giggles!)
• Music of the Birds: A Celebration of Birdsong by Lang Elliot (a book with accompanying CD)
• Songbirds Bible: A Visual Directory of 100 of the Most Popular Songbirds in North America (also a book with accompanying CD)
• For the Birds (my homemade musical CD full of bird folk songs, poetry, and bird calls)
• Bird Jam (an Internet site devoted to learning and recognizing bird calls and songs)

Bird Art & Sketching

• Sketching Outdoors in Spring by Jim Arnosky
• Art For Kids: Drawing in Color by Kathryn Temple (the only art book you’ll need)
• Ways of Drawing Birds: A Guide to Expanding Your Visual Awareness by Simon Jennings
• Nature Book to Color (Rod & Staff Publishing – mainly birds – my kids favorite coloring book)
• Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister (Literature living book on art and art techniques practiced on eggs ~ goes through several famous paintings. A great book for picture study)
• Tools ~ Prisma colored pencils and Tombow brush markers (for watercoloring)

The basket that holds our colored pencils and sketchbooks.

Inside our Nature Walk basket.

Other Naturalists (Supplemental Reading or rabbit trails – these are just the ones we happened to see at the library, by no means the only good books on them!)

• The Flower Hunter: William Bartram, America’s First Naturalist by Deborah Kogan Ray (history and science living book)
• Beatrix Potter by Alexandra Wallner
• My Dear Noel: The Story of a Letter from Beatrix Potter by Jane Johnson

Literature (have included other spring animals as well for the season of spring)

• The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess (Literature & Science – great living books!)
• The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Birding Poems by Michael J. Rosen (Poetry)
• Give Yourself to the Rain: Poems for the Very Young by Margaret Wise Brown (Poetry ~ spring)
• Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series (Literature)
• Funny Frank by Dick King-Smith
• Petunia by Roger Duvoisin
• The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson
• The Story ABout Ping by Marjorie Flack
• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
• Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten
• The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
• Gentle Ben by Walt Morey
• The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett
• Spring: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur

Foreign Languages ~ French (Audubon was sent over from France to avoid the Napoleonic French War ~ Lily picked up on the French phrases in the biographies we’re reading and wnted to know more)

• Bonjour Les Amis: The Gentle Art of French Learning (Language DVD’s)
• Carla Bruni CD Quelqu’un M’a Dit (Music ~ our favorite French singer, beautiful even if I can’t understand a word she’s saying!)
• Children’s Literature in the French language (just happened to find at a garage sale when a native French girl was moving!)

And, last but never least, our Easter selections. They are included here because we will be reading them alongside this study. It goes perfectly with spring and the egg ~ the renewing of life. And we want our children to know that the only reason we get to enjoy all else is because of this most amazing sacrifice on the cross. Would love to celebrate this more formally with Lent but did not have time to research a book I wanted to put the time or money into. We will do that for next year. Am open to suggestions in the comment box.

Easter

• The Bible (God’s Word ~ Truth)
• The Legend of the Three Trees by Dahl Taylor (Literature)
• The Legend of the Easter Egg by Lori Walburg and James Bernardin (Literature)
• The Very First Easter by Paul L. Maier (Literature)
• The Story of Easter by Aileen Fisher (Literature)
• Sad News, Glad News: Easter-time Prayers for Little Children by Lois Rock & Louise Rawlings (Poetry)

Our marbled eggs that the kids love to feel and play with.

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 tails of it today and put it into a list. I want to get it down in a permanent place before officially starting our Audubon study. Sorry if this is long-winded.

History

We have been wrapping up the Colonial & Revolutionary War period. I keep thinking we’re done and then I find another great book to read on the topic. I just recently got a paid membership (because I live outside city limits) to the Omaha Public Library and am so excited to be able to resource their books now as well as the Bellevue Library’s.  We also worked a bit of seasonal history in with the study of St. Patrick.

• Read Katie’s Trunk by Ann Turner (a wonderful story from the oppositte viewpoint of a “Tory” – a heart tugger and written in beautiful literary style)
• Lily did a narration of Katie’s Trunk and drew a picture to go with her narration.
• Read Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? by Jean Fritz (delightfully funny and kept the kids interest despite the longness of the book – wonderfully written.)
• Gabe read What’s the Big Idea, Benjamin Franklin? independently (also by Jean Fritz) and did a narration.
• Gabe copied the Preamble to the Constitution in cursive for penmanship and filed it under the proper time in his Book of Centuries. Lily did the same, but only copied the title and date and did it in manuscript.
• Both copied the title and date of the Declaration of Independence and filed it in their Book of Centuries.
• Worked some more on colonial paper dolls but they kind of petered out on this.
• Read, as a family, Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie de Paola and discussed the reason we celebrate St. Patrick’s.
• Reviewed through their Book of the Centuries notebooks.

Literature

• Read The Last Snake in Ireland: A Story About St. Patrick and discussed the literary style of a legend versus fictional and nonfictional work.
• Started reading I Samuel from the Old Testament with Dad this week. He wants to take the kids personally through a Bible Study of I & II Samuel and I & II Kings so they can hear the many wonderful stories that most kids don’t hear in church to broaden their view. The kids are enjoying this because daddy makes storytelling come alive and seem adventurous that just doesn’t work when I read.
• Dug out all the Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit series for the spring/Easter season and the kids have been requesting them regularly. I’ve only collected them when I can at thrift stores because I want the tiny handheld size that the kids cherish. I could easily get a big anthology book of them at any discount bookstore but there is just something about them being pint-sized that the kids adore. Also listening to the collection on audio.
• Started Funny Frank by Dick-King Smith.
• Read Winnie the Pooh’s Easter by Bruce Talkington
• Read many, many poems from My Poetry Book about spring, mud, birds…a little of everything.
• Gabe and Lily have been doing lots of reading on their own. Gabe is currently on a Roal Dahl kick and picked up BFG and James and the Giant Peach for this week as well as finishing a “Choose Your Own Adventure” that dad has introduced him to as well as rereading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Lily is practicing hard in any spare moment on whatever book interests her. I see her reading improving everyday and she is wanting to be more grown up and read chapter books like Gabe. Her top pick for the week: A Pickle for a Nickel by Lilian Moore (a chapter book she borrowed from a friend.)
• Gabe has been reading Where the Sidewalk Ends and memorizing his favorite poems.

Grammar & Writing & Phonics

• Gabe and Lily both did copywork to improve penmanship (see History above). Lily also finished her Kumon: Uppercase Letters book and worked some in her Kumon: Lowercase Letters book. Gabe is doing extremely well with his cursive. Although, he has naturally good penmanship.
• Lily also used the Kumon letter cards and practice paper to particularly work on the capital ‘N’ (as she is still doing it backwards) and the lowercase ‘g’ (getting the tail below the line).
• Gabe worked in his Language Lessons book with sentence combining and how to break up run-on sentences.
• Lily worked in her Language Lessons book with more phonics work, copywork, reading practice, sentence practice, and poetry with picture narrations.
• Luc worked on phonics intensively. He sat down and practiced Hop on Pop with me and we also played a phonics game together. He worked with the Kumon letter cards and short word vowel cards almost daily. Him and Delilah both watched Talking Words Factory several times and are enamored of the sticky-icky-rama vowel machine.
• Gabe was asked to do a short essay by dad on 6 things that he will not be mastered by.
• Gabe dictated to me a first draft narration for his independent history reading and we will be using next week as a chance to practice editing, using editing marks, when to use pronouns, and when to break up paragraphs.
• Both Lily and Gabe started Commonplace books this week. They are notebooks that the kids can write special book/poetry/music/inspirational passages in, journal in, take notes on nonfiction books in, draw pictures in, etc. It is a pretty open-ended project. We will be doing it officially on Friday afternoons but they spent most of the night with them and then took them to bed to sleep with. What I am hoping to accomplish with this is twofold: 1) to encourage writing, penmanship, grammar usage, spelling practice and promote higher level thinking skills of reading comprehension at pulling and assimilating information from books (a study skill that will benefit them in all walks of life) and 2) to do purposeful work – that is, have a place where they can record or write about things that are not required of them but that they think is important or worthy enough to be recorded on paper. Gabe has already made a science diagram summary after reading a new science book and Lily has recorded two poems and drawn several pictures.
• Lily has been writing her own poetry and drawing pictures to go with them.
• Lily and I used a new system to help practice her reading. Will write about soon. She used the system with much success with the book Red Fish, Blue Fish.
• Lily read Word Bird’s Spring Words and decided to make her own word flash cards (spent 3 hours on this project of her own choosing!).

Math

• Gabe did chapter 17 and started chapter 18 in his Math U See book (multiplication of 6’s and 7’s).
• Gabe independently read (3 times at least that I saw – and it’s a chapter book!) Do You Wanna Bet: Your Chance to Find Out About Probability by Martha Weston. He greatly enjoyed this book as it expanded on his dad’s conversation of what statistics are.
• Lily did her Math U See Primer book about solving unknown equations in addition problems and learning place value with tens and one hundreds. We used her new Montessori number tiles with the place value exercises and these helped out SO much! Loved them!
• Lily practiced her Kumon Number Flashcards (numbers 1-30 with extra emphasis on 2, 7, 9) in order to master writing the numbers the proper way and to help with number recognition. Still having a bit of trouble turning around numbers like 12 and 21.
• Lily finished her Kumon: My Book of Numbers 1-30 book and recieved her certificate. She worked really hard at this and did about 20 pages (4-6 hours worth) in two days time of her own accord. This just clicked for her and she wanted to really work on accomplishing the book. She wants to start the Kumon: Easy Telling Time book next so I think that was her motivation.
• Luc read (with me) Can a Dinosaur Count & Other Math Mysteries by Valorie Fisher – a great living math book that we will come back to. Depending on child’s ability, this book can be used at multiple levels.
• Luc has also read the How Do Dinosaurs Count to Ten? book almost daily and practicing counting on all the pages.
• Gabe and Lily watched Cyberchase videos: Equations ~ A Battle of Equals and Patterns ~ The Poddleville Case

Latin

• Gabe learned new words: navigo, memoria, fortuna
• He also practiced his flashcards (with new words and dipthong sounds) every school day.

Science/Art/Music/Gardening – interchangeably life!

• Gabe has been reading Rocks and Minerals and collecting rocks outside with a specific interest in the softness or hardness of rocks and whether they can write or not (all based on a question he had one day about his pencil).
• Lily had me read certain portions of Pandas: A Portrait of the Animal World after getting a new stuffed panda with her own money at the zoo gift shop. We learned that there are only 9 pandas in all the zoos and only one of those is in the U.S.!
• Luc has been collecting “fossils” outside – basically any rock he finds that is jagged, not smooth that looks bonish-sorta-colored.
• We’ve not really ‘officially’ started our bird study, yet birds seem to be abounding everywhere. We’ve been listening to bird sounds for identification (through some birding CD’s we have and googling those we don’t have). We’ve been reading field guides galore on our favorites (more the kids doing this…especially Luc). The little ones have been playing with our Audubon stuffed birds (Did I say playing? I meant fighting!) from morning till bed time. We’ve taken walks and listened to see what birds we could identify (so far only a Mourning Dove, a Cardinal, and a Woodpecker). The balcony windows have been another flocking place for the kids, especially first thing in the morning, as they are shouting for me to come look and see what bird it is (mainly cardinals – the kids favorite right now – the stuffed bird most fought over). The kids are going crazy with drawing birds, especially Lily. And I haven’t even introduced the watercolor/colored pencil sketching we’re getting to with that. And we’ve been reading lots of bird poetry and listening to songs about birds which inspires more bird drawing. Even made a mixed bird CD (will tell about in the Audubon Study – Part II post)!
• Read chapter 4: The Robin of Birds at Home by Marguerite Henry (one of the best living books on birds we’ve found. This has been their favorite so far…comes out and stays out all day along with the field guides) and Lily did a volunteer narration and picture of it.
• Been starting work in the garden, uncovering mulched beds, looking for new perennial growth, planting seeds indoors (our broccoli is the first to sprout).
• Been looking through DK’s Visual Dictionary on Skeletons (not just human, all kinds!) which is an amazing book and is hard to tear your eyes away from! Will have to own this one…is going on my Amazon wish list. Must see what the others in the series are like.
• Gabe and Lily have officially taken the sketchbooks outside to start capturing spring.

The Project Room

Gabe and Lily are loving using their project room. They have been in there almost every second of the day making and crafting. The only time they emerge is to eat, play outside, or (for Gabe only) to get his computer time (Lily is more than happy to give her’s up for more craft time). Things they have made:

• Day One: made goody bags for each other with cards and homemade toys specific to the others interest. Was very sweet really and I tried not to cringe at how much tape was used. That’s what the Dollar Store is for, right?
• Using recyclable bin to refurbish into new uses.
• Making caterpillars and “squirmels” out of pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and pom poms.
• Making mosaic pictures out of the dried beans (suppose to be used for preschool math counters!).
• Scrapbooking.
• Reading.
• Journaling in notebooks.
• Drawing and coloring pictures.

Field Trips

• The Henry Doorly Zoo (exhibits: the cat complex and the aquarium)
• The Rose Theater to see There’s An Alligator Under My Bed (a play adaptation of several of Mercer Mayer’s books).

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 all know it has something to do with the church…with “those Catholics” most are thinking. We know there is a shamrock involved and the color green. Some of us are brave and try the food fare of corned beef and cabbage. Most of us just know it from others around us who use it as a day to party and binge drink.

It wasn’t until I started homeschooling that I really dug into the history. Two of my favorite homeschool blogs: By Sun and Candlelight with Dawn and In The Heart of the Home with Elizabeth Foss are unabashedly (and rightfully so) Catholic. It was through the testimony and daily writings of both of these upstanding Christian women of faith that the scales fell from my eyes concerning all my biases of the Catholic faith that I ignorantly grew up with (along with much prayer and seeking after God). And it was through their wonderful book lists that I discovered my first real St. Patrick’s living history book: Patrick: The Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie de Paola.

And it was through this wonderful book that I learned about a faith that would not be shaken in this Irish shepherd-turn-missionary. Where I learned that a man who loved Christ so much felt compelled to share Him and His grace with everyone he met and found the perfect way to illustrate to the Irish people the mystery of the Trinity through the common shamrock. A beautiful illustration of Divine three in one as he pointed to each leaflet from a single clover leaf and said, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit… separate yet one.” And, I’ll admit, I cried the first time I read it. Then I eagerly shared the story with my children (who forgot by the next year) and eagerly explained it again the next year (who forgot by this year) and continued the story this year (we’ll see if they remember next year) and will continue to retell every year so that the world’s ways will not become their ways. So that the idea and mystery of the Holy Trinity will continue to grow inside of them as God woos them into relationship with Him.

And as Lily (my deep thinker) is continuing to ask me about holidays and what they mean and continuing to want all the stories (the more fanciful the better) about every holiday legend and myth (she is my storyteller), I will continue to indulge her in the fun, made-up stories of all the seasons and use it as the perfect springboard for discussing what truth is versus a legend or a myth and what the path of righteousness is versus the world’s way of doing holidays. I’m glad they will grow up knowing the real Saint Patrick  – a man who loved God, a man who was sinful because he was human but was a saint because he was a child of God.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

A verse from the prayer on Saint Patrick’s breastplate:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

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 Audubon except that he did draw exquisite pictures of birds that I have loved looking at since a small child. I can tell you, I am very excited to learn all about him! It reminds me of a pivotal childhood moment that I wish had been capitalized on for me. Our neighbors, for reasons I cannot remember, invited me to attend a seminar on Lewis and Clark. I was the only child out of my six sisters who went and the only reason I think they invited me was that they might have been more in tune with my true nature then my mother was as I was always at their house collecting rocks and looking for mysterious fossils and real Indian arrowheads. Regardless, I don’t remember much about what was talked about, but I do remember the feeling I had which was of pure, utter enjoyment. They let me roam among the book tables afterwards and allowed me to purchase one book. I found the Golden Guides field guide to Butterflies and was smitten. I came home and secretly looked through that book more times then I can count.

Why, this story has nothing to with birds! you are surely saying to yourself. What this story encapsulates for me is that love of nature. I was born to be a naturalist – in the career form of the word. I love nothing more then traipsing through woods, taking pictures, sketching, learning about flowers, growing and using herbs, studying botany, etc. etc. etc. And, when it comes to history, the parts that most fascinate me and capture my interest is any part that includes these passions of mine…hence the Audubon, Lewis and Clark, Thoreau, Pioneers, etc. There were many more childhood moments that should have clued me into this – collecting old gardening magazines they were tossing from the library, ripping out photos in National Geographic Magazines that captured my interest, finding and buying with my own money a copy of “The Girl of Limberlost” at an antique store and then reading it out loud secretly in my room as my tongue rolled over the spellbinding words, playing “Little House” and foraging for food in the wild, walking along the banks of my neighborhood creek to explore, sitting for hours in the springtime in any woods I could find looking for new growth under old, dead leaves…and the list could go on.

Surprisingly, I never had a garden. My parents were too busy to notice my interest. The school certainly wasn’t aware of them and there was no guidance counselor directing my career path toward something…anything…having to do with this field. I did eventually (after my freshman year of college) grow my own garden and fell in love with it.  I did eventually end up working at a Garden Nursery (as a cashier and receptionist) and loving it. It was enough to just feel and handle the plants as people rang them up. I did eventually (after already graduating college) go back to school for horticulture only to not be able to continue due to starting a family. But I think of all the things I could have done if anyone…anyone at all…would have shown an interest!

I want to be that for my kids. Not that they are necessarily going to grow up and love gardening or botany like I do, but that they will get to grow up in their interests, that I will get a chance to cultivate that in them – whether it be electronics or dinosaurs.  That I will actually get to help them open up the doors of possibility down career paths where they will be doing meaningful work that they are passionate about. How many of us get that possibility?

My children are in love with birds right now (as is their grandmother) and have collected a number of stuffed birds over the years. We have a field guide that we regularly consult as we are spotting a glimpse of red or patch of blue here and there in our yard. When the kids do crafts they make insects and birds…repeatedly, in many different ways…and play with them and talk to them for hours on end. We have a birding sounds CD that we check to see if we can learn which bird is saying what. So naturally, I am so excited to learn about a field I am interested in but know very little about and expand a field that they are interested in as well. I envy them in that they get to actually study this for history if they want. What I would have given for that over a dry textbook full of boring facts!

Tomorrow (or the next depending on Ivy’s teething) I will come back with Part II and tell you about our study we are planning. It will be an all encompassing unit study and pretty much take over all our other subjects. I am pretty excited and can’t wait to share the book list with you!

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 it down today – even if it pans two weeks instead of one – let’s me know that we did just fine and that I really don’t have to stress about getting it all squeezed in!

History

• Finally finished Betsy Ross: Designer of Our Flag.
• Read A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution.
• Practiced memorizing the 13 colonies by singing them to the tune of Yankee Doodle (and Lily was pretty proud that she actually memorized the words to Yankee Doodle as well!).
• Made Colonial Paper Dolls including: Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Washington, a Redcoat, a Patriot, Betsy Ross, and a colonial boy.
• Read IF You: Lived in Colonial Times (kids thought there were some pretty weird things people did – a very kid-friendly book).
• Narrations of the colonial times.

Math

• Gabe – finished chapter 15 practice pages and test, watched video 16, did practice page 16A (multiplying by 8)
• Lily – watched video 21, did practice pages 21A & B (finding the missing sum); worked on abacus
• Luc – working on counting (and I mean counting EVERYTHING!); counting puzzle

Language Arts

• Latin ~ Gabe learned new words non, ad; reviewed flashcards
• Literature ~ Read more chapters from Pippi Longstocking and Return to the Hundred Acre Woods; Audio ~ started listening to Artemis Fowl
• Grammar ~ Gabe ~ worked on alphabetizing and synonyms, practiced using a thesaurus; Lily ~ learned about the question mark and practiced reading and writing sentences with question marks
• Penmanship ~ Gabe ~ cursive X; Lily ~ capital and lowercase E, F, G
• Phonics ~ Lily ~ has really taken off with practicing reading on her own with all kinds of books around the house and is more interested in trying to read to the little ones. Luc ~ has blossomed in ways that I didn’t see coming. All of the sudden he is putting the letter sounds he hears together and asking what words spelled. The other day he spelled cat for me after figuring it out in his head. He will be reading before we know it! Delilah ~ has still wanted to watch Letter Factory every day and we have added in Talking Words Factory to supplement her learning and Luc’s desire to spell and make words. Both Luc and Lilah received an alphabet puzzle and that has been the highlight of their week. Luc is using it to spell words and Lilah is using it to practice letter sounds.

• Book Reports ~ Lily read an I Can Read Book ~ Fancy Nancy: The Dazzling Book Report and was so taken with it (was on one of her favorite historical figures – Sacagawea) that she wanted to do her own book report. And, of course, she wanted to do in in the Fancy Nancy over-the-top artistic way so out came the ephemera and markers to create an elaborate picture book to which she narrated orally to me (I dictated for her) and added her very first book report to her beautiful pictures. This was a project she did completely on her own account with no prompting from me!
• Independent Reading ~ Gabe finished Matilda; started (again!) on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator; read Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes; read various Ramona books; read his first Choose Your Own Adventure Book: The Green Slime

Science

• Everything Dinosaurs ~ Watched all three Jurassic Park movies. (That’s educational right? I must say I actually knew what every single dinosaur was called this time! And it did inspire me to reread the books again.) Then watched the Nova special The Real Jurassic Park, which Lily kept informing us was boring but Luc wouldn’t let us turn it off.
• Listened to my new mix of Science songs (kids favorites: Electricity, The Elements, The Sun song, and the Friction song – all of which I’ve heard them humming around the house while playing!).
• Gabe – played Snap Circuits electricity set.
• Gabe – made pretend snot and discovered what mucus is used for in the body with his Disgusting Science Kit.

Art

• Practiced watercolor painting.
• Made play-do short film animations.
• Made home-made Valentine’s cards and banner.