Posted by Cindy on January 29, 2010
The beginning of our semester long unit about the 20th century is off to a great start! Besides WWI (which we’re going to do next), we have covered the main topics from 1900-1919. For now, I’m only planning one small project per section of the unit. When we get to the end, a big explosion of projects will wrap-up our study. The small project for this part of the unit was to write and present a book report on their assigned reading books. Above, Mahayla is sharing about her book Thimble Summer
.
Below are the resources that have been in the sidebar. Through these wonderful books (and other sources) we covered the topics of: what life was like, early flight, early automobiles, women’s sufferage, Industrial Revolution, factory safety, hours and wages, child labor, pollution, orphan trains, John Muir and the Panama Canal. A lapbook from A Journey Through Learning called An Overview of the 20th Century is helping us to document some of the topics we’re covering. I’ll give you a peek into that lapbook when we reach Y2K.
Introduction to the 1900′s
Posted by Cindy on
Below you’ll find the list of January nature study resources that have been in my sidebar. We were blessed with several days of snow, ice and/or frost this month! We’ll probably be blessed with several more snowy/icy days as winter rolls on, but our February studies will take a turn as we focus on the wonderful world of conifers.
Books We Read
Posted by Cindy on
Seurat is such a fun artist to study! His use of pointillism was the biggest topic during the month, which made for some fun art projects. The painting above was an attempt at recreating an “Alfalfa” style painting (see below) with a mixture of strokes and styles. After using many different tools to create pointillism, we greatly respect how long it must have taken Seurat to finish any of his works created strictly with dots!
Georges Seurat
Olga’s Gallery
Paintings We Studied
La Grande Jatte
The Circus
Cows in a Field
Alfalfa
Books We Read
Lesson Ideas
Pointillism Activity Ideas
KinderArt Pointillism
Art Exercises for Kids
Posted by Cindy on
Franz Schubert
Learn and Listen
Classics for Kids
Kid’s Britannica
Book We Read
CD We Listened To
Posted by Cindy on January 26, 2010
Our homeschool group went on a wonderful field trip today to the JIF Peanut Butter Factory in Lexington, KY. It’s a tough tour to book, so we were especially thankful to the entire staff for welcoming us with friendly faces, lots of information and some really cool things to see and do!
Above you can see our crew dressed and ready to start the tour. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but they were very gracious to show us every aspect of the assembly line from packaging the fresh peanut butter all the way to the shipping dock.
The favorite part of the tour by far was taste testing in the lab. We were allowed to taste each and every peanut butter product they make at the factory and vote on our favorites. Which products were tops on our list? Their new natural pb ranked 1st, followed by peanut butter with honey, with original creamy sliding in at 3rd. Our least favorite? The reduced sodium and sugar variety. I have to say, though, the lower fat version was quite good.
They even gave each one of us a goodie bag before we left with, what else – jars of peanut butter!
What made the trip even more worthwhile was a Facebook comment from one of the teens telling me it was the best field trip she’s taken in four years! 
