What kid wouldn’t love a break from the regular schedule of homeschooling to enjoy a funschooling day full of candy heart lessons??? Mom, I promise that your day won’t be wasted and you’ll be able to check off just about every box in your lesson planner! Teaching with Candy Hearts Grab a big bag of…
Fridays have been {fun} for years. This past week, our Friday morning was dedicated to science fun. Besides containing all the mess of tons of experiments to one day, it gave Caleb a chance to review several chemistry concepts we’ve been learning. Science Friday Using the book Molecules by Janice VanCleave(affiliate link), I chose…
I’ve written about the importance of adding service projects to your homeschool before, but I want to reiterate how BIG making time to help others can be in the life your family. Setting up for our homeless guests at church I’m constantly amazed at the spiritual growth I see in my children as we take…
(This post contains links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) Winter Nature Study We took advantage of an unusually nice winter afternoon to catch up on some winter nature walking. You won’t believe how many wonderful nature treasures you can find in the winter! At our local cemetery we found tons… Leftover bird nests…
An Easy 13 Colonies Travel Brochure Project In an effort to share more of our project-based learning, I thought I’d highlight Caleb’s latest middle school research & writing assignment. As part of a Colonial History unit study, Caleb and I read a two great books about the 13 colonies. Afterward, I asked him to choose…
Sadly, the formal study of economics is left out of most of the curricula I’ve run across in my 11+ years of homeschooling. An understanding of economics is EXTREMELY important as our children grow up to care for a family, learn to tithe and give, and become the financial leaders of our country. Unless we took…
(This post contains affiliate links.) In this final installment of my unit study series, I’m going to share with you how to design a unit study that is fairly in-depth. For those of you new to this series, you can catch up by reading… How To Plan a Unit Study Unit Study Projects Planning a…
We’re finally into some practical posts in my series about unit studies! In my first post, I wrote about how I design unit studies for our homeschool. In the second post, I wrote about incorporating project-based learning into the units. Now, I’d like to share a very short and simple study we completed on magnets….
I’m a huge believer in project-based learning! Keep reading to learn why and to get tons of project-based learning ideas for your homeschool! Just what is project-based learning? Quite simply, it’s a learning method in which your children dive into a subject and complete a project to show what they know. Projects can really be…
From the time I used the Five in a Row curriculum with my little bitties up until now, I’ve loved unit studies. Whether they are literature, science, or history-based, unit studies weave our learning together in meaningful and often exciting ways. You can learn how to plan a unit study in four simple steps! But,…
If you live in Central Kentucky, you are blessed when it comes to homeschool field trips right outside your door! Besides the oodles of places you can visit right around the corner, there are several fabulous opportunities within a reasonable driving distance, too. Some of our best homeschooling moments have happened on field trips. In…
Target Age Range: 4th-8th Skills Covered: reading, addition/multiplication, calculator skills, problem solving, charting data (This post contains affiliate links and links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) The King’s Chessboard by David Birch is a fantastic book – both for math and character training. In it, the king foolishly agrees to doubling a gift…