Elementary

Intro to the 1900’s

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…

Georges Seurat Resources

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,…

JIF Peanut Butter Tour

Jif Peanut Butter Tour 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…

Animal Signs in the Snow

We’re having so much fun studying snow, ice and frost this season!  On a recent nature walk, we were looking specifically for animal tracks.  We weren’t disappointed!  Each of the pictures below shows prints or trails made by different animals.  Unfortunately, I’m not an expert tracker yet, so I can’t identify all of them.  I’ve…

Christmas Train Ride

This past weekend, our family took a Christmas train ride at the Bluegrass Railroad Museum.  An old-fashioned steam engine pulled four antique passenger cars for an hour’s drive through the countryside.  The cars were decked out with lights and streamers, the conductor punched letters into our tickets Polar Express style, and merry music played in…

Paul Gauguin Resources

Gauguin was an interesting character!  I can’t claim that he’s my favorite artist, but we still enjoyed our time spent with him this month. Self-Portraits Below are the resources that have been in the sidebar.  We won’t be doing artist or composer study in December.  I’ll have resources in the sidebar again in January! Paul…

Thanksgiving Resources

We won’t be doing a Thanksgiving unit this year, but several books will be in books baskets and book nooks around the house.  Here are some of my favorites. 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…

The Thinker and Other Rodin Fun

We’ve had a fun month studying Rodin (despite my preference for paintings over sculpture.)  I’ve been rather slow posting our projects, so here are two weeks worth of projects. After studying The Hand of God and other hand sculptures, we completed 2-dimensional abstract hand drawings.  The kids simply traced their hands and used at least…

Pond Comparisons

Last week’s nature study compared a new pond structure to the older ponds we have been studying. The kiddos observed the differences in plant life, animal life, general activity and sounds. We also compared how the new pond was man-made, while the others we have observed were natural depressions in the land.  You can see…