Keeping It Simple

A word about field trips: Sharing them seems to have taken the homeschool blogosphere by storm. I love it! One of my first realizations as homeschool mom is that education does not have to happen at the school table. Not only that, often more education happens on the road!  If you doubt it, I have a story. Our third year of homeschool was derailed by health problems (mine). It was very difficult to accomplish much that required being consistent or organized. I could, however, drive to a field trip where an expert on a particular subject would teach my children while I tagged along. ;) We visited museums, grocery stores, restaurants (some feed you for free!), historical sights, a marine lab, aquariums, factories, zoos,... My older girls would pack lunch, dress their baby sister, and we were off.  Now, the interesting part. My girls took standardized tests when we began homeschooling. Not that I put a huge amount of stock in those results, but...

I am thinking that I should rename my blog having something to with animal books... Morris and Buddy: The Story of the First Seeing Eye Dog by Becky Hall Learning about working dogs in our " Dog Unit Study " led us to this book. It is not only a wonderful story about Morris and his seeing eye dog, it is also about the challenges faced by Morris at a time when few accommodations were made for those with physical limitations (blindness or other). How Morris traveled to Switzerland to meet his own guide dog, Buddy, and ultimately paved the rode for the "Seeing Eye" guide dog school was an inspiring read. You can also read more about Morris here . Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine, & a Miracle  by Major Brian Dennis, Kirby Larson, and Mary Nethery My boys loved this story of an unlikely friendship between a Marine and a "dog of war". This book follows the story of "Nubs" (so named by the Major Brian Dennis because of his cut off e...

That is what James told dad when we got home. After just a few minutes of studying horses, Mark (10yo) was chomping at the bit to see a real live horse!! I emailed a friend who I knew at least had (wasn't sure that she still did have) a horse. She called the next day and invited the boys for a visit! As fast as we could, we were in the car and on our way. For you country folk, this may not seem like a big deal- for us, it is. The afternoon far exceeded their expectations.  The lovely lady leading the horse is Anne, who treated my boys to this special afternoon.  Getting the horse ready for a ride. Anne let the boys try to figure out how to get the job done on their own before instructing. After a little prompting, James was able to lift the hoof for a clean.  Ready to ride!  James was first up. Anne instructed the boys in some horse riding basics.  They each got a turn to try out their horse riding skills. Then it was time fo...

Okay, so that does not really work, but still.... Our studies have been on these animals, so that is what we have been reading about. While we have piles (I mean piles- I took my boys with me to the library) of books on these animals- I will just review our favorites. Uncommon Animals: Aye-Aye An Evil Omen - In spite of the title, this book is actually about a very sweet little primate. While my boys enjoyed the book in general (Mark said he learned lots of cool Aye-Aye facts), it is the photos that knocked our socks off- truly amazing. There are also little fact boxes on each page (in addition to the text), a glossary that defines all of the bold lettered words, an Aye-Aye fact page, a "more interesting animals" page, and some book recommendations. Skunks and Their Relatives  (a Zoobook)- While it has just a two page layout on the wolverines that we are studying, this book introduces the reader/listener to lots of animals from the ...

"Astonishing Animals" by  Download 'N Go  made up  the lion's share of our school this week: Day 1: Aye-Ayes My boys, who are absolute animal nuts, know more random facts about more obscure animals than you can shake a stick at, so it was fun for me to introduce them to something new! They, in turn, had a great time impressing dad with their new found knowledge about these fun little primates. These lapjournals are the boys' books, so if they choose to put something that may not be entirely accurate in the interest of creativity, I am okay with that. That is not always the case, but I want them to make this their own.  James is a stickler for detail and will choose facts over creativity any day. :) Day 2: Wolverines   No pictures yet, but we did find a great documentary to go along with this study on neflix instant watch! We started "Wolverines" on Weds. and will finish up on Friday. The "days" can be finished in one day, but, with our ...

Just a month ago, I wrote " stick with what you have " (more or less) in reference to homeschooling curriculum.  None the less, in this last month we have now tried two new things ! Today it was Download N Go , a complete unit study series. For our first try at this, I ordered "Astonishing Animals". My two youngest boys have been begging (yes, actually begging) to "study animals- puh-leese, mom!!" so, after hearing my sister's experiences with this product, I thought we'd give it a try. Our study guide includes links to videos, lapbook components, worksheets, links to the necessary information, and library resources (many of which our library actually has) for each of 5 days of study. We have just completed day one of our unit study, and I will say that it was a full day!! Day 1: What Exactly Is an Aye-Aye? When dad got home, he was informed exactly what an Aye-Aye is plus a few other interesting facts!  *Aye-Aye is a kind of Lemur *Lives ...

A little background- the boys were super enthusiastic about showing off their lapbook the first 5 times we tried to get this down. Each time something kooky happened and we had to start over---by the time our camera battery died, we recharged them and started for the 6th time, they were not quite so excited about the whole deal. Still, I thought they did a nice job. :) *this video is a bit long at 2 1/2 minutes **your phone is not ringing! it is our video ;) Used to create the lapbook: Homeschool Share Shark Lapbook Photos cut and glued from a poster that came with DK Eyewitness Sharks book. Just to note- it did not take a month to make the lapbook, but we did study sharks for quite a while!

For our notebook, we used the FIAR Fold-and-Learn pretty much as is. It was just the perfect amount of work for James and it fit well with the lessons presented in the FIAR manual . Cover page: Things you might need in a Salamander Room: Life Cycle of a Salamander: Scavenger Hunt Check List, Vocabulary Words and Picture of a Tiger Salamander: Picture drawn by James (6yo) and Lilly Pads Seen on Scavenger Hunt: Pictures from Scavenger Hunt that big sister, Michelle, took James and his brothers on: View of Open Notebook (you can spy the blank animal report page in back- still working on that:)) We had a great time with this book. We had a few fun read- alongs (see previous post), watched Bill Nye's video show on Amphibians, and had fun frog hunting (rather, amphibian hunting) in our back yard. I found that we were much more efficient at completing our notebook because of the workboxes . I just placed the notebook, the printout for the day, s...

Pip's Magic by Ellen Stoll Walsh Newt (I Can Read) by Matt Novak A Salamander's Life (Nature Upclose) by John Himmelman Fun Facts About Salamanders! (I Like Reptiles and Amphibians!) by Carmen Bredeson Salamanders by Emery Bernhard The Salamander Room (Dragonfly Books) by Anne Mazer

James had the most fun "rowing" The Bee Tree. We even got to visit a real bee keeper!! Most of the mini books for the lapbook came from Homeschool Share . One (anatomy of a bee) came from HOAC project pack. I posted about our bee book list here . 

Posting these pics makes me realize that I should keep better records! This lapbook was assembled sometime last year. I remember that we had a lot of fun (boys and reptiles just go together ;)). We read lots of books, visited a pet shop and even attended a local reptile show! None the less, the details are fuzzy. The boys assembled this lapbook as a team. They each chose areas that they wanted to work on and completed the mini book to go with. The open lapbook- the Major Reptile Groups mini-book has a photo to represent each group. We added one flap taped (using packing tape) to the top of the folder. This fun spiral book makes a snake when is all opened up- as it is opened, information is written on each triangle. This Alligator and Crocodile attributes booklet was a favorite. * I need to look in to this to be sure and give credit where it is due. I am almost positive that we used the homeschool share site to print up all of the mini books that are in this lapbook. I will confir...