We took the opportunity on the way home to take a three day I-65 mini-vacation.  First stop, Birmingham.  We visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is a wonderful walk through the Civil Rights battles of the 20th century.  Photos weren’t allowed in the museum, so I don’t have any to post.  You’ll have to trust me that it’s an excellent field trip if you’re ever near Birmingham!  We also walked through the Kelly Ingram Park just across the street from the museum and viewed the outside of the 16th Street Baptist Church where four children were killed during a violent bombing by the KKK in 1963.  Unfortunately, we also had the opportunity to view several homeless people in the area, too.

Second stop, Huntsville.  I can’t tell you how much all of us from the two-year-old to the 39-year-old enjoyed the US Space and Rocket Center!  Real rockets, hands-on exhibits, life-size models, demonstrations, 3-D and IMax films, three rides, a playground, a rock climbing wall and more kept our attention from open to close.  This is a trip my children will talk about for quite some time!

Third and final stop, Franklin, TN.  It’s a beautiful little town with lots of character!  I wish we could’ve spent more time touring and meandering, but a Civil War reenactment was taking place at the Carnton Plantation and that took up most of our day.   Plus, the troops were beginning to wear down and we knew too much more touring and hotel hopping would send them (and us) into grump city – a place we didn’t want to visit!

Sorry for the picture-intensive post.  I hope it didn’t slow down your computer too much!

Making “painted” cookies with Mahayla.

We pulled out the beans a lot!  He loves to scoop, bury things and fill up all the wagons on his little tractors.

Mahayla is a super preschool teacher!  She came up with the idea to make little cards with body parts written on them.  She would read the body part and ask Eli to tape the card to the right spot on her!  LOL  He LOVED it!

The Dollar Tree is a great place for finding simple things to keep him busy.  Several masterpieces were created with bottles of mini glitter glue.

Foam stickers from the Dollar Tree are probably his most favorite thing to use right now.

He loves stickers in general!

Cutting and gluing – anything – floats his boat!

This is one of our Preschool Activities in a Bag games.

Yep, that’s a real hammer and nail.  Why not – as long as we’re supervising?

I’m going to make his “pwekool” time a little more structured this coming semester.  Not anything academic, but more purposeful and planned out – so I’m not rushing around like crazy trying to find something to keep him from drawing all over the big kids’ math!

Here are a few internet resources that have been useful in the past.

Cindy Downes’ Pilgrim Unit

The Homeschool Mom’s Links

LaCelle Family Unit Study

Eclectic Homeschool Online Resources

What a glorious time of year!  In my part of the world, God’s creation is singing in brilliant colors and crisp notes.  In honor of His magnificent show, I thought I’d center the theme around bits and pieces of Autumn Beauty.  Enjoy the wonderful articles!

Nature Study

Julee from Abundant Harvest shares her family’s awesome nature study that came from an injured monarch in Nature Study – Butterfly.

Alicia from La Famille gives a great tutorial for making a dye from black walnut shells in Nuts About Dye!

Ritsumei from Baby Steps shares about her family’s recent trip to their local nature preserve in Critters and Moss.

Kris from At Home Science provides a nice list of living books and such for anyone planning to study rocks, soil or the earth in Geology Study Resources.

Barb at Handbook of Nature Study shares about one of her nature challenges in Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series – Seasonal Weather.

Yours truly is sharing an article from Shining Dawn Books about Nature Study with a Toddler or Preschooler.

Art/Picture Study

Dana from Epi Kardia takes us on a how-to journey through picture study in Charlotte Mason Mondays – Picture Study.

I’d like to share a recent picture study resource review I wrote at The Curriculum Choice about Dover Art Cards as well as our latest artist study activities in The Thinker and Other Rodin Fun.

Living Literature

Keri from Sunny Scholars helps unmuddy the waters when it comes to finding good literature that’s also friendly to beginning readers in Readers.

Amber from The Mommy Earth shares how she and her children enjoyed a cozy reading time together in Book Review: Five Little Peppers.

Kris from Science of Relations provides a set of living literature for our reading enjoyment that focuses on history in Westward Expansion: Santa Fe Trail.

Jimmie from Jimmie’s Collage reminds us that even older children enjoy picture books, and she’s found several goodies in Picture Books for Middle School.

Science/History

Heather from Maple Hill Academy shares how she has implemented a family time line in Book of Years.

Barb from Harmony Art Mom shows us how she uses a traditional teaching text with CM flair in Apologia Physical Science with a CM Style.

Super Odds and Ends

Penny from Our Crazy Adventures in Autismland! gives us a glimpse into habit training in Bedtime Routine into Habit.

Richele from Under the Golden Apple Tree reminds us of the importance of leisure time in Masterly Inactivity.

Johnna from Living Charlotte Mason in California is the perfect ending to a cool weather carnival as she shares about her family’s adventure making Autumn Butternut Soup.

Thank you so much for visiting the Charlotte Mason Carnival today!  Richele from Under the Golden Apple Tree will be hosting next time on November 17th.  I hope you’ll consider submitting an article!  Until next time, I hope your autumn days are spent in thankfulness to our Creator for His bounty!

This is some of the poetry she shared.

Nothing like dressing up for you big performance!  (Insert rolling eyes.)  The poster in the back was a display teaching the audience (her family) about poetry forms and the tv is on because it was playing soft music.

Yummy banana bread.  Every coffeehouse poetry reading needs food!

This week and next, the kids are working on presidential projects.  I’ll share them with you soon!

Orb Web

Sheet Web

Funnel Web

Tangle Web

And I couldn't pass up this picture of spiderlings that recently emerged from their egg sack!

I tell ya, once you start looking for things in nature, God is always good to give you quite a show!

Melissa and I are currently revamping the Spectacular Spiders NaturExplorers unit to make it more meaty and add several notebooking pages.  Once we do, the price will jump – but this won’t happen for several weeks.  If you’re interested in studying spiders now, the current Spectacular Spiders unit is only $7.00!

What turned out to be THE BEST of all the curriculum we used was the Electric Kitbook.  In fact, I liked it so much, I’m going to do a review about it soon at The Curriculum Choice.

At the end of the unit, I gave the kids a test that you can find on my Homeschool Launch page.  I’ve been enjoying adding more tests to the curriculum this year.  It keeps everyone on their toes!

Below is the resource list that’s been in my sidebar.  I hope you find some treasures the next time you need to plan an energy/electricity unit!

Energy

Moving Beyond the Page Energy Unit

Electricity Lessons

Heat Lessons

Next stop – Presidential History!

Unidentified Polypore

Silky Parchment

Mustard-yellow Polypore

Tapioca Slime

Likely another image of Silky Parchment

Likely some sort of Carbon Mushroom or a Slime Mold

Likely a Jack O'Lantern or False Chantrelle

This area of fruiting body was huge!

I have no idea what this is, but it looked like a mold.

Hairy Parchment

Possibly Carbon Balls or Red Cushion Hypoxylon

Possibly Bear Lentinus

I took these pictures near the edge of a creek on rotting logs and on a walk in the woods.  They were everywhere!  Finding fungi is one of my new nature study passions ever since writing the Fungus Among Us NaturExplorer unit!  Since there are many thousand varieties of fungi, it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what you find.  But that’s okay, just seeing them is enough for me!

Last week we finished a unit on US Government and Civics using The United States Government 7th-12th grade lapbooking unit from Knowledge Box Central.  It was a great refresher for me and a super way to teach my children everything from the history of the Constitution to the design and procedures of our government to the rights and responsibilities we have as citizens.  We should all be teaching US Government and Civics anyway, but in light of so many political issues in our country right now, it’s extremely important to teach our children the fundamentals of how our government is supposed to work and what we can and should do about it when it isn’t working like it should.  (Sorry for the run-on sentence and the soap box.)

Anywho, here are some pictures of our lapbook.

To be sure they understood the wealth of information learned during the unit, I gave the kiddos a test that you can download from my Homeschool Launch page.  Mahayla scored 100% without help.  Caleb was allowed to use his lapbook when he came across a tough question.  With the help of his lapbook, he scored 100%, too!

We’ve moved on to the first of a four-part energy/physics unit – focusing on the definition of energy, heat and electricity.  Some of our resources are posted in the sidebar.  I’ll post about our fun soon!

Free Online Resources

Games to Learn States, Capitals and Landforms

Various US Geography Games

Where Is That? Game

Game that Promotes Speed in Recognizing States

We took some time to learn about famous national landmarks during the unit, too.  For a final project, I gave the kids a list of several landmarks from which they had to choose eight to research.  They created informational postcards to highlight what they learned.  You can see the front of each postcard shows a picture and the name of the landmark.  On the back, they had to write a paragraph of interesting information for each.  It was a simple project, but a nice way to ease into the new year.