living books

Human Body Systems

Human Body Systems

Considering God’s Creation has been the spine curriculum for our 6th grade human body study.  As always, I added a few things here and there to amp things up a notch.  So, besides the {wonderful} notebooking pages that come with Considering God’s Creation, we did the activities and worksheets below, too. Sadly, I don’t have…

Middle Ages Study

Middle Ages Study

(This post contains affiliate links.) While Mahaya (9th grade) was busy with Romans, Reformers and Revolutionaries, Caleb (6th grade) and I enjoyed a shorter, simpler unit study about the medieval era. Middle Ages Study His “spine” curriculum was the Middle Ages lapbook from In the Hands of a Child.  Since Caleb really hates handwriting, I…

Dr. Seuss in Middle School

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!  In honor of his birthday, some of my blogging friends and I would like to share some fun ideas for teaching from Dr. Seuss in middle school.  The content of so many Dr. Seuss books is far more rich than you might imagine! Dr. Seuss in Middle School: The Sneetches Our…

Teaching Values with Books

Teaching Values with Books

Welcome to Day 2 of my 10 Days of… series on Teaching Values in your homeschool! One of the easiest things you can do in your homeschool is teach values with books and that’s exactly what I’ll show you how to do! This post contains affiliate links. Teaching Values with Books Today I’m writing about…

Dawn Publications

I’m in love! I’m in love! After reading LOTS (and I mean lots) of books to weed out the best of the best to include in our NaturExplorers units, I have to tell you that it’s very hard to find books that meet all my criteria: Living, interesting, inspirational Factual without being dry Don’t address…

Smithsonian’s Backyard

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to review the Smithsonian’s Backyard and Oceanic Collections. This wasn’t the first time I’d enjoyed picture books from the Smithsonian Institution as many of them had previously visited our home from the library. Whether reading titles to tie into nature study topics, or just wanting well-written books full of…

Christmas Nature Books

There are so many great Christmas books to read with your children! I’ve posted about some of my top favorites from years past.  But, since I write nature studies, I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite Christmas picture books that relate well with nature study. Really good ones are few and far between, with…

Mountain Press Review

Mountain Press kindly sent us two books to review that we’d like you to know about! The Charcoal Forest by Beth A. Peluso is an informational picture book about how forest fires actually help plants and animals in some instances. Each two-page spread teaches you about a particular animal or plant and how it benefits…

Henri Matisse Resources

We spent much of our month with Matisse completing art with scissors since Matisse’s later works were often collages or realistic and abstract art constructed from cuttings. The artwork below was actually harder than it looks.  I asked the kids to use rulers to measure the desired sized blocks of color for the background.  The…

Charles Russell Resources

We’ve been so immersed in our 1900’s history studies, that Charles Russell took a bit of a back seat this month.  We did find the time to practice a little horse drawing, though.  Enjoy the resources below! Charles Russell About Charles Russell Paintings We’re Studying Round-up on the Musselshell Lesson Ideas How to Draw a…

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,…

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