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: I had to do the legwork of locating library books about each of the Thirteen…
Well, not exactly! We’ve been doing all sorts of hands-on learning during our Colonial History unit and one of the activities I had planned was making butter. At co-op over the years, the kids have had the opportunity to shake cream in baby food jars to make their own butter, so I didn’t think we…
This week’s Fine Arts Tuesday finished our study of Monet. I’ve love his work and could probably spend many more weeks with him as our focus, but it’s time to move on. We’ve been finding and hearing lots of frogs around the farm lately, so a picture study using three of Monet’s “Waterlillies” paintings seemed…
Tuesdays are such a sweet treat! Nature study, artist study, art projects, composer study, tea time and an afternoon club are making for full and fun days. Last week’s nature study turned out to be working cattle in the barn with dad. I had planned on a nice walk to observe trees and their lines, but…
Unit studies have been a wonderful method of multi-age learning in our homeschool You can fit in so much goodness in such a nice chunk of time! This post contains affiliate links. Early American Explorers Resources In our late elementary/early middle school quest to learn Early American History this year, we began by studying the…
I’m the first to admit that “fitting it all in” is hard. And in the past, to my shame, the first things to go when “school” seemed to be pressing were the richest learning experiences of all – artist study/art opportunities, composer study, and even nature study. I don’t know why it seems like those studies…
After the last couple of living math posts, I promised to share some of our non-textbook lessons. Here are some of the fun things we’ve been doing/have planned to do this winter on our living math days. My hope is to encourage you that…. 1.) Living math really is thoughtful, meaningful math. 2.) Living math isn’t hard to…
Last week we finished up a short, but successful unit on our state. I think all involved liked the change of pace this time around. Mahayla practically completed her readings, worksheets and projects on her own, while Caleb and I tackled his work at our own pace. Here are just a few highlights. Kentucky Notebooks Using several…
I’m straying from the typical sort of unit study we do around here. This Kentucky unit will be mostly worksheet-based, with final projects being research-based. Why? Well first, I want the unit to be fairly quick. Second, Mahayla has covered this topic before at co-op, so it just made more sense to provide them each…
I love Discovering Great Artists! I’ve used it in our home and in a co-op art class. This lesson came from the book. Albrecht Durer did paintings, watercolors, drawing and woodcuts. We tried our hand at woodblock printing, which was one of Durer’s specialties. You take wood blocks and hammer metal objects into the wood to make impressions. …
Studying Ancient Greece has been so much fun! We could’ve spent many more days lingering in the Greek hillsides, but it’s time to move on to Ancient Rome. Here are some highlights from our week. On top of the regular reading about Ancient Greece, map work, timelines and such, we did lots of hands-on activities,…
We’re on a tour of ancient history right now and loving it! So far we’ve been through Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. I thought I’d share a few highlights of this week in Egypt since we had so much fun. The best part of the week was mummifying a Ken doll. Thanks Jamin for the…