Posted by Cindy on November 4, 2008
I love Colonial History and, after this unit, I think my children do, too. We covered everything from the first colonies of Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth to the settlement of all 13 original colonies to life in colonial times. Thanks to our “spine” books, Hands-On History: Colonial America and Colonial Kids, the unit was packed full of great notebooking/lapbooking activities and tons of hands on experiences.
Some of the hands-on activities included making butter, playing leapfrog, bb gun target practice, sewing, embroidery, knot tying, writing with a homemade quill pen and ink, making candles, knitting, decoupage, making hasty pudding and so much more.
Mahayla’s assigned reading turned into two books for this unit, Calico Bush and Indian Captive. (She is a voracious reader!) I only asked her to complete a “report” on one. I gave her a little book called Book Reports by Frank Schaffer Publications which gave her many ideas for fun book reports (mobiles, dioramas, timelines, etc.) She chose to write a book report and give an oral presentation.
Caleb’s assigned reading was Witch Hunt: It Happened in Salem Village. Among many picture books, we also listened to Night Journeys and The Witch of Blackbird Pond on tape in the car.
I was able to find lots of fun freebies online for this unit, too…..
Jamestown Online is a fun game that allows you to make decisions like the original settlers would’ve had to make. In the end (it only takes a few minutes), you see how well your colony survived based on your choices. My kids loved it!
Colonial Williamsburg Kids Zone has all sorts of historical online games that also reinforces academic skills. They are short, sweet and fun!
PBS’s Colonial House site has several fun interactive games and quizzes. Would you have survived the colony?
Quia has a fun colonial quiz.
This Salem Witch Trial Site has a neat video about the trials.
The Colonial America 1600-1775 site is FULL of great links!
I’ll be sharing a few of our favorite projects from this unit in other posts later this week. Right now, we’re off to the Revolutionary War!
Posted by Cindy on October 31, 2008
We’re finishing up our Thirteen Colonies & Colonial Life Unit this week. I’ll be posting soon about the biggest chunk of the unit, but I wanted to take a minute to highlight the 13 Colonies lapbook/notebook we put together using this book.
I had to do the legwork of locating library books about each of the Thirteen Colonies, as well as Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth. But the wonderful activity ideas were ready and waiting in the book. It turned out to be a lovely way to document a bit of info on each of the colonies we learned about.
Posted by Cindy on December 18, 2007
I am truly humbled to have been a part of the Homeschool Blog Awards. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote for my blog!! For a little while I was second only to By Sun and Candlight in several of the categories. As I told her, she is my blogging “hero” and to be second to her was an honor! lol
Many congratulations go out to the winners and especially my blogland friends Eclectic Education and One Child Policy Homeschool!
Here’s a peek at our Christmas Lapbooks that we finished last week. Mahayla’s is red, Caleb’s is green. We used many activities from the Symbols of Christmas lapbook unit from Hands of a Child. All the extra math/logic/problem solving worksheets, plus some science worksheets were stapled together inside the large panel on the right side. This keeps all the unit work together in a nice, neat package.
This week is light. We’re working on math everyday, putting together our newsletter and just having some Christmas craft and baking fun. At the end of the week, we’ll be officially halfway through our school year! And on a well deserved break for a couple of weeks.
Posted by Cindy on December 14, 2007
We finished our astronomy unit this week! The kids spent a couple of days preparing final projects and presented them in front of the video camera on Thursday. They were able to choose whatever astronomy topic most interested them. It’s no surprise that Caleb chose astronauts as his topic. Mahayla focused on stars.
Caleb’s presentation included a talk about astronaut suits (see his helmet and jet pack?), space shuttles, rockets, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, dehydrated food and thrust.
Mahayla’s presentation included information about the sun, other notable stars, constellations, how to use an astronometer to tell the brightness of stars and some information about light years.
Using Exploring Creation with Astronomy as our main text, we did many of the free notebooking pages the author offers on her website. We also added in a few lapbooking activities and lots of hands on projects. I put what we had into modified lapbooks. The lapbooking activities were glued on the first flap, while the notebooking pages were simply stapled together at the top of the other side.
Our trip to the Answers In Geneis Creation Museum’s Planetarium earlier this year was a great addition to this unit!
Here are a few of the fun website games the kids enjoyed during the unit.
Solar System Trading Cards
Problems in Space
Make Your Own Solar System
Posted by Cindy on July 26, 2007
Here’s a look at our first-ever mini offices. Mahayla made her own. I made Caleb’s. He is very excited about these, which was quite a shocker to me. I expected Mahayla to be the excited one as she loves this sort of thing.
I wrote a post earlier with links to pictures and print-offs for mini offices. I found just about everything I copied from those sites.
Mahayla’s Language Arts Office includes lots of writing helps and editing reminders, and a parts of speech chart.
Her Math Office includes – oops, a cursive chart! – a multiplication table, measurement equivalencies and conversions, a Roman Numerals chart, a place value chart, a reminder of radius vs. diameter, word problem key words, and a US map (because we didn’t know where else to put it.)
Caleb’s Reading Office includes sound reminders for all letters and many blends, a phonics rules charts, manuscript and cursive charts, an editing checklist, a punctuation chart and some tips for writing good paragraphs.
His Math Office includes a 100 chart, a coin chart, an ordinal numbers chart, perimeter vs. area reminders, a skip counting chart, spellings of the days of the week and months of the year, and that pesky US map.
