Weekly Wrap-up: Weather Unit

It's been a lighter load this summer, just due to family visits, outside camps, and playdates, but we are still doing a little bit so schooling. We spent about 3 weeks on Weather, learning about temperature, cold fronts/warm fronts, air pressure, precipitation/water cycle/dew point, relative humidity, extreme weather (tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, etc.), and forecasting.  What took me by surprise was that my kids had never watched a weather report on TV! Admittedly, we don't watch much TV, so that's probably why, but also, with iPads and smartphones, we've always used weather apps to get our forecasts!

We used a variety of books to do some hands-on demos and read about various weather-related topics:

  

The National Weather Service also has Learning Lessons with printouts to use for making weather maps, so we practiced making isobars and isotherms using their maps.

Here's a couple of our projects:

Homemade Thermometer

Assembled Weather Station Kit

We incorporated other subjects into this unit with the following:

• Writing: Use weather in a story
• Math: convert Fahrenheit to Celsius and vice versa
• Computer Skills: Excel graph of temperature change
• Greek root words: meteor, bar, meter, therm, hydro. 
• Chinese words: rain, snow, hot, cold, temperature, degrees, clear, cloudy, clouds

It was a fun and practical unit!

This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's Weekly Wrapup.

Weekly Wrap-up: Trip to Utah, Native Americans, Colonial Period, and Deserts

Well, this will be more of a monthly wrap-up, rather than a weekly wrap-up, as it's been some time since I've posted. In that time, we covered Native Americans, desert animals, the Jamestown settlement, the arrival of the Pilgrims, and the starts of the Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland colonies, as well as taking a trip to Utah to explore some of the National Parks in the area.

We had planned the trip months ago as purely a vacation to hike and see the beautiful landscapes there, before we had even planned to homeschool Bunny and did not have a plan for science or history for the upcoming months. But turns out, our new history and science curricula had us studying Native Americans and desert animals RIGHT before our trip!

So while we were at Arches National Park, we saw a dessert cottontail rabbit, plenty of lizards, and flowering cacti.

Dessert cottontail rabbit

We also saw some Native American petryglyphs carved into the cliffs at Capitol Reef National Park. The tribes mentioned were familiar to the kids, because we had studied some of the different Southwest Native American cultures.

And of course, we learned about the formation of arches, spires and fins through erosion, and we learned about geological rock layers and forces that produced suck amazing views.

Before our trip, we did some fun Native American projects(we focused on the pre-colonial period): 

Pictographs

Various art projects

Pizza map of Native American cultural regions

Sampling of Native American food (various regions)

Attempting to build a home out of sticks

After we got back, we started learning about the colonial period and the first European settlers. No great activities or projects though, just some standard mapwork and timelines and lots of reading from our America the Beautiful textbook, Story of the World, the Light and the Glory for Children (tells the early history of America from a Christian perspective), and a few books from the library. We watched Disney's Pocahontas and picked apart the historical inaccuracies and read a few chapter books to get to know the era better:

• A Lion to Guard Us 
• Blood on the River: Jamestown 1607
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims

However, we hope to visit Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown, VA this summer! 

This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's Weekly Wrapup.

Weekly Wrap-up: European Explorers

We're back on to history now, after taking last week for science. We had started with Leif Eriksson a few weeks back, and now we've come to Columbus and other European explorers. We are using Notgrass's America the Beautiful  and I really like it so far. It's got a short Bible passage for each day, lots of pictures, biographies and American landmarks included in the history lessons, and short enough lessons that it's not too drawn out.

But it does focus on only American history, so I've also supplemented with Story of the World Vol. 3. I love how SOTW reads like a storybook, and the kids definitely enjoy it. We read about various kings and queens and in Europe during the 1600s...Charles, Phillip, Ferdinand, James, Mary, Elizabeth...It was fascinating to hear about the treachery and drama that went on with the various people taking over thrones and plotting overthrows!  We also got to hear a bit about the struggle between Protestants and Catholics during this time period, which the kids really knew very little about. The kids were captivated by all this! I have to admit, I know very little about European history, so I found it fascinating myself!  It also put a lot more relevance to where the names King James Bible and Jamestown came from!

So we read a lot about various explorers, and I remember learning and memorizing a bunch of facts about each explorer in 4th grade. I don't know that it really helped me in my life to memorize those facts, so I tried to just make sure the kids have heard of the explorers and the areas they explored, and we made the connection of where they came from and where they explored, to the influence that they had on the current languages spoken and culture of these areas today. We also talked about their motivation for exploration(gold, and looking for trade routes), their treatment of the Natives, and the spread of the gospel in to the New World.

We also found an iPad game called European Explorers: The Age of Discovery, which has them exploring "new" land and outfitting a fleet, and in the process, reading brief bios of various Captains that explored long ago.


This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's Weekly Wrapup.

Weekly Wrap-up: African Grasslands Minecraft Project

We did our second week of African Grasslands this week, and I asked the kids to make a project that incorporates all the animals we've talked about and their habitat.  I gave them ideas to choose from: build a Minecraft project, a Powerpoint presentation, a short story, a diorama, a painting/drawing, a report...their choice. So, no big surprise, they both picked a Minecraft project.

Bunny built a 'zoo', with signs or a book of facts, alongside each animal section. They have a Minecraft mod called "Mo' Creatures", which gives them alot more animals in the game than the regular game (but they don't have giraffes), so she penned them into sections like a zoo.

Monkey built statues of the animals, that you could climb through, and inside, there were facts posted on signs.

They both really enjoyed the project and were proud of their work. I think I will try to incorporate a project for future units, they seem to like to do that, but I'll have to have some guidelines or every one of them will be a Minecraft project. Not that Minecraft is a bad choice, just that I'd like to give them the chance to learn how to use Powerpoint or do some artwork or do more creative writing.

This post is linked up with Weird, Socialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up.

My Eclectic Homeschool Philosophy

Eclectic Homeschool has a great quiz "What type of homeschooler are you?" . For some reason, I love taking quizzes! Maybe it's because I like to see confirmation of what I think I am or maybe it's because it leads me to think more about what I think or maybe it opens my eyes to new possibilities. Anyway, I think this quiz is fairly accurate!

My top 5 (all fairly high scores) were Montessori, Charlotte Mason, unschooling, unit studies, and classical.

To be honest, I didn't know what Montessori was, so I googled it and found it's natural, child-led learning that believes a child will learn at their own pace, and that our most important job is to teach them how to learn and develop a love of learning. So yes, I agree with that philosophy. I was surprised Classical came up because generally I don't see myself as following the classical teaching method, but I think what put me higher on that scale was the question about Latin and logic, which I think is important (although maybe not so critical for Latin as true classical teachers would believe, but I do think logic is VERY important), and using great books from literature and history. However, I also scored high in unschooling which seems to be the direct opposite! I think maybe I just see the many benefits of the different teaching philosophies, one is not absolutely best, so I pick and choose to incorporate the various aspects from the different philosophies. Also, I firmly believe every child is unique so different philosophies will work with different kids.

So how do I mix all these styles?

We read a lot of living books rather than textbooks (Charlotte Mason)
We do dictations, copy work and narration (Charlotte Mason)
We do short lessons (Charlotte Mason) so we can have plenty of child-led free time, with various options that they can pursue in that time(Montessori, unschooling).
We use a textbook for math and will be using a textbook in addition to living books for history(traditional and Charlotte Mason)
I slip in Latin once a week and logic when I have time (Classical)
We read great classic books (Classical, Charlotte Mason), although I don't limit the kids to classics.
We do unit studies scattered throughout the year (Unit Study)
I've been incorporating an unscheduled week every few weeks for child-led learning. (Unschooling)
We use videos to supplement (Not any particular philosophy but it would not sit well with a true classical or Charlotte Mason method)

Any purist from each of these philosophies would probably say I'm not actually using that method at all because it's not complete, so maybe the only classification I can truly claim is "eclectic".  They all have their benefits, so it's hard to choose one that is 'best' for us.

Dig, Sow, Grow!

Today, the kids started a 12 week, bi-weekly homeschool class at a farm that will give them hands-on experience and learning about growing plants. Today was our first day, and they each took home a little tomato plant in a mini-greenhouse made from a soda bottle. They also started seeds to grow in the farm's greenhouse, and eventually, they will get to plant vegetables in their own little plot of land and tend it and harvest it, and make some food with harvest, along the way learning about soil nutrients, photosynthesis, insects(good and bad), etc. I'm so excited, because I want to learn too, for the sake of our garden, that we have been trying to establish for years.

Weekly Wrap-up: New Beginnings - Zoology and Early American History

This week was our first official week of homeschooling Bunny.  I tried a schedule that was much more defined, in order to try to keep some semblance of organization through the day:

• Bible
• Math
• Language Arts
• Science or  History (sometimes both)
• Chinese during lunch
• Free time in the afternoon to explore their own interests

I'm doing most of it together, except for Math and Language Arts, except for this brief moment when they both worked on LA together:

So not only was it a new beginning in terms of Bunny being homeschooled, we also started new units for Science and Social Studies

Science

We began using Sassafras Science Adventures: Zoology with Animal Classification and African Grasslands .  We've just been doing science based on Monkey's interests for the past year, but with both kids, I wanted to try to do something they would both be interested in- Animals! I found some online games that covered animal classification:

• Backyard animal classification game 
• African river animal classification game
• North American animal classification 
• Brain Pop Quiz 
• PBS Nova Classifying Life Game

We read the book "Do Cats Have Family Trees?" to explore the different classification categories of animals and watched a Brain Pop video.

We learned about Lions and Cheetahs in the second chapter of the Sassafras Science Adventures. This curriculum is a different approach to science-using a story to impart the facts, and it's alot less dry than reading a textbook with animal facts. The story is 2 kids who are staying with their eccentric Uncle for the summer, and this uncle has a cool invention that allows them to go on an invisible zipline to locations around the world, where they will encounter and learn about all kinds of animals. We will supplement with short books about the animals from the library and DK's Encyclopedia of Animals to learn more facts about each animal.

History

I had started with Ancient History a few months ago with Monkey, but it wasn't quite 'exciting' and didn't seem to capture the kids' interest (I was including Bunny after school when we did History), just felt very forced and unnatural. Maybe it was just too distant to feel relevant? I was also concerned about ancient practices being a little too intense for Bunny (sacrifices, mummies, etc.) so I decided to just do a different period of history now that Bunny is home-Explorers/American History. I love the idea of using living books so I got the, TruthQuest History Early American History for Young Students I, which is a very open-ended guide of History, with no planned schedule, just a list of great living books, and a commentary, and we are free to explore those periods of history. I will supplement with videos and a timeline. (In the meantime, I've also discovered Notgrass's America the Beautiful, which I think I will add to this, even though this is a textbook and I prefer to use living books.  Notgrass's textbook looks great and covers daily life, biographies, American landmarks, and a biblical worldview when looking at history, but also as a literature component corresponding to the periods in history).

So we started with the Vikings and Leif Ericsson(or Erikson, Ericson, Eriksson) as the first to 'discover' America, reading:

• D'Aulaire's Norse Myths
• Viking Explorers
• Magic Tree House - Viking Ships at Sunrise
• Leif Eriksson - (I wanted to get Leif the Lucky  but the library's copy was lost. There's lots of kid's biographies about Leif Eriksson, so I jus randomly picked one).

We also watched the Crash Course video on Vikings. The kids love the Crash Course videos, but most of it goes over their heads. They might catch a brief overview and general idea of a topic, but they talk so fast and cover so much, and make jokes that are beyond the kids, so I don't think they learn that much from them, but they love to watch them.

But, after this first week with both kids and also doing a planned science and history unit, we've decided to just focus on one at a time. We'll do Science only (zoology) next week (and incidental history, if we come across it in our reading or everyday life), and at some point we'll switch to History (explorers) again (and do incidental science based on interest)

This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.