Advent Around the World is going nicely

If anyone would like to see all the fun things we are doing this year for Advent, please pop on over to my other blog Collecting the Moments for the details! 

Kaya - The American Girl

For the last 9 weeks Cyan has been studying the books about Kaya with a class at our co-op.  She has read 7 chapter books and the book Welcome to Kaya’s World (above) from cover to cover and answered questions about each chapter of each book.  For a girl, who just a year ago was getting rewarded for her first chapter book I was thrilled with the accomplishment! 

For a final project (and for her week off from co-op last week) I had her do a Kaya Lapbook to add to her Co-op binder.  All of these foldouts and minibooks minus the coloring sheet on the front of the lapbook were found at Homeschool Share.

It starts out with a picture Cyan colored of Kaya and her sister playing.  Above that is a fold out booklet of Kaya’s Favorite Things.

The next page is a two page spread of different parts of Kaya’s World. 

On these pages are where Kaya’s tribe lived in America, vocabulary words in Nes Pierce language, facts about the characters from the book and life with the Nes Pierce (called the Nimiipuu, which means ‘pierced noses’ in French). 

This is the vocabulary fold out:

And facts about Kaya and her tribe:

The last page talks about the series and Cyan’s opinion of the stories.  Her favorite book, what she learned, and facts about her favorite parts were all there.  The biggest part of this page for Cyan was the PLOT booklet.  She got a quick course in what a plot was and what parts were the conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution. 

For this portion of the book Cyan chose “Changes for Kaya” as the book and we had a great time talking about the story. I had no idea she was retaining so much information from the things she had read! It was super exciting for me as a mom to see this all take place without much effort from me at all. Cyan LOVES her co-op classes and I have to say, this one has truly impressed me.  After the lapbook we placed all of Cyan’s co-op work from the chapters there.  Then we placed two more card stock pages…  because Cyan said she had to do a lapbook for Josephina and Kirsten too!

They move on to Josephina next week.

We are traveling around the world for Christmas!

This year we are traveling around the world for Christmastime!  I am excited to see what types of traditions happen in other cultures during this magical time of year.  For some (Northern Hem) it is the coldest darkest portion of the year, but for others (Australia) it is mid Summer!  The traditions are just as varied as the weather this time of year and I am excited to share that with my kids. 

Our Christmas Around the World advent list:

1. Put up lights with daddy

2. Pagoda Manger & Fried Wonton cookies (China)

3. Fish tree ornament (Japan)

4. Metryoshka doll Christmas card (Russia)

5. Pamander oranges & put your shoes out for St Nicholas Day (Great Britain)

6. *Small gifts left in their shoes overnight* Christmas Party Crackers & Wassail (Great Britain)

7. Straw Ornaments and hidden bean cake! (Scandinavia)

8. Gingerbread Manger Scene (Germany) *only cooking and cooling*

9. Gingerbread Manger Scene (Italy) and making a St Lucy Wreath

10. Getting our Christmas Tree

11. Journey to Bethlehem!!

12. Shopping with daddy

13. Write love notes to parents to open on Christmas Eve (Greece/Italy)

14. Make a Christmas drum (Africa)

15. Make Christmas Stars out of whatever we can (sticks, straw, beads and wire... all kinds. Philippines.)

16. Celery Rose print wrapping paper & making S’mores (Australia)

17. *This starts the weekend of lights that leads right up to Hanukkah* Zoo lights w/ hot cider

18. Fantasy Lights w/ cocoa

19. Driving through Gem Heights looking at lights w/ warm honeyed milk

20. *Happy Hanukkah!* Dreidle for Chocolate coins and Challah bread. (USA)

21. We are sending a Christmas tree to a friend! (Canada) *cookies to neighbors*

22. Making paper poinsettias (Mexico)

23. Sawdust Ornaments (Guatemala)

24. Family Christmas Movie

25. Open Stockings!!

We got some ideas from our curriculum “Children Around the World” from Winter’s Promise, but many other great ideas come from free websites.  My two favorites:

http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/

http://www.teachingheart.net/worldmas.html

How I use tools like lapbooks and worksheets

Over the last few years I have learned that we are primarily a unit study family.  I have found it easy over the years to teach everything around what the child is interested in at the time in one obsessive month - ahem - ‘unit study’.  I like following the children’s interest and then making their studies center around that interest until the interest runs out. I have tried various curriculum’s over my years as a homeschooler and have basically decided that a curriculum is a backbone in which to play with… not a strict guideline.  I take what I want, add what I want, and then leave the rest. 

I wanted to show you how I use Lapbooks and Curriculum to make the kids Interest Notebooks.

This is Cyan’s Animal Science Notebook.  Our backbone is Winter’s Promise Animal Habitats curriculum and Homeschool Shares Animal Lapbook pages.  Everything (pretty much) stems from there.  I don’t follow a dated guideline… for example, this year we started at the end.  We were going to the beach and Cyan was currently obsessed with the beach. So we started our year with a beach study… which happens to be the very last unit study in the Winter’s Promise curriculum.

This is what that looks like:

This starts off our Ocean “Lapbook” pages.  I punched two pieces of cardstock and placed them in her notebook to start off her unit study.  Then I had her pick a post card when we were actually at the ocean to decorate the front of her lapbook section.  After that I used the lapbook idea of minibooks to bring some interest to these pages and some variety to Cyan’s daily work.

I printed minibooks about sharks, albatross, and sea stars.  As she was studying these creatures she would fill out the lapbooks minibooks and paste them inside her lapbook pages.

This section is just filled with fun factiods she discovered from trips to the aquarium, our beach trips, and her readings tucked inside neat little minibooks!

The second section is her World’s Oceans Montessori Nomenclature cards.  I had Cyan sew this pocket set on the sewing machine.  It was super simple and a fun way to store the cards in her notebook. 

This particular set of cards were from ETC Press Inc eductaional materials. It was in the free section. The control cards are the worlds oceans in words and images so the kids can correct their match ups themselves.  The holder keeps all of the cards nicely together.

The next section in the notebook is mostly the pages that she works through from Winter’s Promise. 

The various reproducible pages have so much variety that we can use them for whatever we want.  At one point she really loved reading about dolphins.  So I copied the blank Animal page and she wrote up a page about what she loved about dolphins and put it in her notebook. 

Another time we spent a week at a beach house and I was able to give her a page and print outs of pictures from the trip that she could use to talk about what she saw next to the ocean.

By the end of the year, she will have an accurate representation of her studies this year.  She gets to see how much better her handwriting has gotten, and what types of trips we took…. right next to finding out cool facts about the animals and places she is studying.

The next section of the notebook is where she is working on now.  She has been very interested in harvesting and hunting this year.  She has even expressed an interest in fishing.  For my sweet, nature loving girly this has been an interesting turn of events… and has started a unit study on deer and the Woods.  And for that unit study, we have two pieces of cardstock in her Interest Notebook ready to be filled with lapbook facts, and the three rings after it with neat worksheets… one after the other.

I have started using this general plan for each of the kids.  Years past I have always taken their best work and put it in a notebook for them to look through at years end, and I am sure that something like that will still happen… but I am guessing that most of it will be in this one large notebook they work on all year.

A game of hide and seek with Iroquois camouflage – SOTW lesson 15

The Iroquois Native Americans were masters of disguise.  The craft for today was to make our best disguise we could… and then test them out!

“Is my makeup scary enough?”

Ready for action!

 

Get ready, get set….

   

Testing our camo with a game of hide and seek!

“ONE! Two! Three!”

“Hey!  I got you!!”

Home free!!

Rest after the game.

History class

SOTW class went on for Cyan while I was on maternity leave.  My wonderful friends found a new place to have class and did the first 6 chapters of SOTW Level 3 with Cyan still able to attend.

This last two weeks we have been back to doing history class here and I am completely impressed with what the class has been doing without me.

Chapter 7: They learned about the spread of slavery in the American collonies, and made patterned stamp art like Adinkra stamped cloth.

 

Chapter 8: (Happily back in my homeschool room!)  We learned all about how many groups of people took over the land that is now modern day Iraq.  For craft we built the bridge of 33 arches.

Chapter 9: We learned about the Thirty Years War in Germany and made paper lanterns to share in the festival of lights.

A lot of catching up to do...

Hey guys... this blog has been put on the back burner for the last two months.

Just in case someone stumbles upon this and doesn't know, I consistently write on my other blog Collecting the Moments... one by one, and that one has been updated more frequently than this.

We are still doing school in a very basic sense. Currently I am a day overdue with our latest babe and feeling very overdone. It is hard to be enthusiastic about homeschooling when you can hardly change the laundry. The kids are weathering it well, even if many of their lessons come from Brain Pop and worksheets found online. :P

History class has started up again without me... My dear friends have been nice enough to allow Cyan to continue even though I am not participating. They say they consider it Maternity Leave. And thank goodness... because I doubt I would actually finish anything I start at the moment.

Preparations for the baby are in the works and Logan and the baby's room has taken on a beautiful turn. I have been waiting for a few finishing touches to take pictures and post them... but I am pretty thrilled with the outcome. It is quite the change! It's amazing what wood floors and curtains can do.

I will try to keep this more updated... as I realized the last post I had was for advent. lol! It will be much easier once I have this baby and things start ticking along as normal again.

Grains of the World ~ Corn

You can very clearly see which direction the wind was blowing in my garden. On one hand, we have a nice full corn cob... on the other, we have a nearly completely unpollinated corn cob that was just on the other side of the stalk from the nice full cob.

Corn, I will not be growing again. It is very clear to me (and the kids) why corn is grown in huge fields. The wind can carry the pollen of one plant to many of the other plants at one time. And because they are in such large groups, they all drop pollen on each other. With only 4 corn plants in one small spot, we got these two ears that didn't rot the entire season. And one of those was very underpollinated.

In other GOTW news... the rest of the grains have rotted completely while curing in the carport. This was more frustrating for me than it was for the kids. They really enjoyed the project even though I consider it only 'mostly done' without my loaf of bread to show for it. But Alex did point out that we could get all of the grains again from the same places we got our starter seed from and make bread from those. They don't HAVE to be the ones from the garden for us to have the experience of grinding them for bread.

I am raising a problem solver. :)

The rest of our experiment with the Grains Of The World.

A bit of African fun (SOTW Chapter 29)

In Story of the World we slowly travel around the globe and each event that marked the turning point of a society we follow for a little while and become invested in. Sometimes we focus on the culture, sometimes we focus on the events, and sometimes the animals.

This story was a favorite of mine and I was lucky to have inherited my mother's copy for my own kids. They love it! It is about Anase the Spiderman (Logan calls it "the real Spiderman story") and about how he brought stories to the people of the world. Wonderful symbolism, fun illustrations, and lots of great cultural tidbits.

We have passed the African Kingdoms chapter some time ago (now on 32 and that was 29) but it is always nice to review with a little bit of culture and fun.

And just to get your wiggles out, check out this great video:



How fun is that??

SOTW chapter 30: The Moghul Dynasty in India

Craft: miniature of Babur's garden in a pie plate.

The kids filled a pie plate with soil, then decorated with rocks and shells. After that we added some 'quick grass' seed and they sprayed it with my plant water bottle.

It won't be as beautiful as the garden in India, but wow... they sure were proud!

For wiggle time, we played Elephants and Horses. It is a reenactment of the war in India when the Moghul's gained power. In the game there are twice as many elephants as horses, BUT the elephants are slow and labored (have to hop on one foot and have one hand on the opposite shoulder) and the horses are free bodied.

The smaller, but less hindered horses getting ready to start the battle.

One of the larger, stronger elephants.

An elephant in the process of her flag being captured.

Victory dance for the horses!!!

One cute little elephant tried to hide behind the camera mama. It didn't work out very well. ;) They still got invaded. However, the Hindus of India were welcomed into the new empire without any requirement for a change in their religious practices and that was the start of the Moghul Dynasty.