Blog

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…

Unit Studies – More Q & A

A few more questions have come up regarding how I organize and plan our unit studies.  You can find the first post at Unit Studies Revisited and the follow-up post at Unit Study Questions Answered.  As long as you keep asking questions, I’ll keep answering.  🙂 “To clarify, it sounds like you do one unit…

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…

Unit Study Questions Answered

Wow.  Through my email, there were a lot of questions about unit studies from my original post.  I’m glad because it helps me to know what needs to be clarified or expounded upon.  I tried to combine all the questions into major themes which you’ll see below.  Please feel free to keep asking questions, and…

Unit Studies Revisited

It’s been well over a year since I posted anything about the nitty-gritty planning of my unit studies.  I’ve had several email questions lately wondering how I plan, so I thought it might be time for a new post on the subject. The emails I’ve received have all been similar in the basic four questions…

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…

Birthday Boy and Baby Jesus

My little guy will be three on December 23rd.  Time flies! Because of the busyness of Christmas and my nephew’s birthday soon after Christmas, we always celebrate Eli’s birthday just a tad early.  Three year olds have FUN partying! Our church celebrates Jesus’ birth a tad early, too.  Last night was the annual Christmas pageant. …

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…