You Tube Monday - Epic time-lapse map of Europe

Journey North - Mystery Class starts tomorrow!!!

Not too late to register!!! 

Calendar 2012

Any time Find out How to Participate Sept. - Jan. In fall 2011, monthly "Countdown" Updates are posted to help you get ready for the global game of hide-and-seek. Jan. 30 - Apr. 9 On Mondays, record your local sunrise/sunset. Feb. 3 - Apr. 13 On Fridays, sunrise/sunset data are posted for the ten Mystery Sites. March 16 The "Longitude Clues" are posted. Mar. 23, 30, Apr. 6, 13 Interdisciplinary clues from the Mystery Sites are posted each week. The final week of clues will also provide Contest instructions. (Please Note--out of fairness to all participants, we will only post the clues on their scheduled dates.) April 27 Deadline for your Answers! By popular request, you have TWO weeks to prepare your answers. No lateContest entries will be accepted (out of fairness to all participants). No exceptions. May 4 Locations of the Mystery Sites revealed! May 11 Meet Your Mystery Friends! (Pictures, background information about the sites and greetings are posted.)

Questions? Frequently Asked Questions

Professor Noggin's Card Games - Official Review

Our family has been using these games for years and they are a fun, entertaining and exciting way to learn a number of subjects in numerous categories from Science to History to Art to Geography. These fun games can take your family to the far corners of Outer Space and deep into the Ocean. You can find a complete list of titles - HERE

Each game comes with 30 cards and 1 three numbered dice - meaning a six sided die that has 1, 2, & 3 on two sides each. Each card has 6 questions - 3 easy and 3 hard - which makes it fantastic to play with the whole family regardless of the amount of knowledge individuals may have in each area. Questions come in the form of true or false, multiple choice or trivia. I truly can not say enough about these fantastic product!

Here are the titles we have on our bookshelf -

  

Journey North - Mystery Class - Time to Register and Prepare!!!

The Mystery Class investigation is an eleven week hunt in which students try to find ten secret "Mystery Classes" hiding around the globe. The changing amount of sunlight at each site is the central clue.

Students take an inspiring journey from knowing only sunrise and sunset times to discovering exact locations of the ten sites. This investigation demonstrates that, as spring sweeps across the Northern Hemisphere, daylength changes everywhere on Earth. Students see that these dramatic seasonal changes in sunlight affect the entire web of life.

Join Us!January 30 - May 11, 2012

Where oh where will the mystery classes be?
We have had so much fun with this project in the past and now is time to register and prepare again!
Follow this link - HERE - to see how to participate and register.
This year they will be adding a great new feature - Mystery Class Photoperiod Map
Here is the link to all the fabulous geography resources they have available to help the kids get ready - HERE

Oh yeah and did I mention that it is all TOTALLY FREE!!!

Where in the states is CJ? - U.S. Geography with a Twist!

With CJ going over the road now, we are going to utilize his travels to reinforce our U.S. Geography! We are using a topographical map, that though it has cities, capitals, and a very light outline of the states, their aren't named on it. So KM uses our atlas to locate the town CJ is in and then locates surrounding towns to coordinate his location! Even when he is not here he can still be part of her education!

Journey North Mystery Class Locations Revealed!

Today was the big day for the Annenberg Journey North Mystery Classes to be revealed and we didn't too bad!

We were exactly right with #2, 3, & 7 and got the correct countries for #1, 5, 8 & 10. The ones that we got wrong were off by a bit more but not crazy wrong so we are happy with our results! If you joined in on the fun please let us know how you did as well in the comments section!

Looking Ahead to High School - Part 4

If you missed 1, 2, or 3 be sure to check them out!


For History next year we are going with a series by one of our favorite storytellers, Joy Hakim! We completely enjoyed the Story of Science and after all the rave reviews for A History of US we are really looking forward to it. After much discussion we have decided to take two years to do US History, so we are hoping to get through books 1-4 next year and 5-10 the following year. 


In addition to reading these as a spine she will be supplementing with the following resources - 

• America the Story of the US History Channel Series
• U.S. History: Inventive Exercises to Sharpen Skills and Raise Achievement
• U.S. Government, Economics, and Citizenship : Inventive Exercises to Sharpen Skills and Raise Achievement 
• Freedom a Story of US PBS free resources
• For the People (Learn American Government) - Standard Deviants DVD Series
• C-Span Free U.S. President's Poster and other C-SPAN classroom resources
• Hip-Hop U.S. History: The New and Innovative Approach to Learning American History (Flocabulary Study Guides)
  

If you know of any additional resources that might of interest - PLEASE let us know!

Additional Commenter Recommendations -

• Lies My Teacher Told Me

Journey North Mystery Class - Approaching Midpoint - NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN IN

We are almost approaching the midpoint of the Journey North Mystery Class: A study of sunlight and the seasons, but it is NOT too late to join in!
Next week we will begin to receive the longitude clues, so we had to update our display area to include some useful tools. Can't wait to see how well we do locating the mystery classes!

8th Grade Fall Curriculum Picks

Here is what KM and I have decided to work with this fall -

Math -

She did a great job over the summer on the Straight Forward Algebra Book 1 and we decided to take a break from it before she starts book 2. So she will be finishing up the book Word Problems (Practice Practice)
and she completed the rest of Ko's Journey.

English Language Arts -

We love the Straight Forward Series so much that we decided to try the English Series as well, so she will be using the All-In-One English Series Master Book (Straight Forward) . For vocabulary she will be working on Painless Vocabulary. For Spelling she will be utilizing a variation of the Free Spelling program found HERE. For writing we are going to incorporate some of the review questions from Story of the World's Activity Guide as well as the questions from The Story of Science Student Quest Guide so that we are working on her strengthening her answers to open ended response questions - which in my opinion is the practical writing skill that she needs to work on write now.

Science -

We will be continuing on our journey through the Story of Science on to Newton at the Center. As I mentioned we will be utilizing all aspects of the Student's Quest Guide, but will especially be focusing on the open response questions. We also will still be using the Thames & Kosmos Milestones in Science kit as well as working on K'nex and other projects.

History and Geography -

We will also be moving on to The Story of the World Volume 3: Early Modern Times and again utilizing the review questions for writing. In case you missed how we adapt this for the middle school crowd you can check the post on that HERE.

EXTRAS -

We will also be doing -

• Music - Music Alive Classical Connections to U.S. History
• Piano -Accelerated Piano Adventures, Level 2- Lesson Set (1 Book and 1 CD Set, Lesson Book 2 and Lesson Book 2 CD)
  
• Spanish - Tell Me More and The 100+ Series Spanish, Middle School / High School (English and Spanish Edition)
  
• Health - Human Body & Health: Science Skills : Grades 6-8+ (Basic, Not Boring 6 to 8)
• Global Studies - Global Studies: Social Studies Skills : Grades 6-8+ (Basic, Not Boring 6 to 8)
  
• Computer Technology - I haven't finalized all of the resources for this one yet, but will post as soon as I have them. I do know that we will be basing the main context of the program on the Brain Pop Cool Tech spotlight. We also have a printer, laptop, mouse, digital camera, MP3 player, DVD player and camcorder that we will be dissecting throughout the session.

Adjusting Story of the World for the older crowd!

I have gotten many emails from people asking me how I use Story of The World with KM and make it challenging for an older child. I have tried to explain it several times, but people still keep asking, so I thought I would show an example of what we do so here is our history lesson this week -

We are working on Volume 2 and KM read Chapters 21 -23. She then does the mapwork by using from the Activity Guide, by using the maps that are given,but transposes the information onto blank maps from different free websites. This seems to be the part that parents are having the most difficulty understanding so I thought I would show the work here -

These are the pages that are given in the student book -

And here is what KM's completed mapwork sheet looks like -

By following the directions given for the predone maps, she is showing that she understands the actual location and uses landmarks (seas, oceans, etc) to locate the things on a different map of the same area. I also try to find maps that have varying scales as this can also be a challenge to determine the correct locations.

After the mapwork is completed KM does the activity sheets, that have multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching and/or open-ended questions. She also really enjoys historical fiction so I try to keep lots of books around that have stories about kids her age at that time. Right now she is reading and completing a book report on King Arthur, as well as reading about the Norse Viking Myths.

I give her choices of other projects and things to do out of the activity book or I will come up with other kits to supplement with for hands on projects. This happened to be a week that we didn't have one - she really just wanted to get out to the pool!

I hope this has given you a little insight into how we do it. As always, this might not work for your family, but it does for us!

Geography Fair - Antarctica

Despite the wretched cold that bombarded KM last week, we some how managed to get her exhibit finished for our local groups Geography Fair. If you missed our previous post that showed our resource list for it be sure to check it out for some very interesting information!
KM did a superb job answering people's questions as they came up and explaining what different parts of her project were. I was speaking to one of the other parents last night about how fantastic it is that she feels so comfortable with this great group of families. She NEVER would have had the courage to even ask a question of others at an event like this when she was in public school, never mind being a presenter and actually having to answer their questions on the spot! We are so fortunate to have such an encouraging, caring, respectful and FUN group of families to enjoy this incredible journey with!
The kids all did such an incredible job on their projects! All the hard work is totally worth it when you see their cute little faces running up to get their certificates!
Great Job to all the kids and parents who participated!

Sick, Sick, Sick

It seems like everyone that I have spoken to this week has sick kids - mine included. KM hasn't been sick in soooo long and we have so much going on that she is trying to act as though she is not sick, but she has had a really bad cough and congestion most of the week

We have been laying low and trying to get some quiet projects finished around here including her Antarctica project for our upcoming Geography Fair ---

and her rocket for a launch that ~lucky for us ~ was postponed this week due to the weather~~~

So our spring session is starting off a bit slower than we had previously planned, but it always evens out in the end. I will be sure to post the final pics when they are completed!

Upcoming Geography Fair - Antarctica

Our local support group is having a Geography Fair at the beginning of April. KM decided to study Antarctica. After our wonderful Penguins unit we did a few months back showed the incredibly unique features of Antarctica she began to become really intrigued by it.

Here are some of the resources we will be using -

• Antarctica - An Adventure of a Different Nature
• Encounters at the End of the World
• You Wouldn't Want to be a Polar Explorer!
• The Antarctic - Water Worlds
• Antarctica: The Last Wilderness
• Discovering Antarctica - The Future
  
• Discovering Antarctica - The Land
• Discovering Antarctica - The People
• Eyewitness: Arctic & Antarctica
• Brain Pop - South Pole
• Brain Pop - Glaciers
• National Geographic Expedition
• Antarctica Middle School Lesson Plans

If anyone else has any other suggested links or resources, PLEASE let me know! I will be sure to post our final project when it is completed!

African Tribal Hunting Masks

KM finished her Geography unit on Africa by creating an African Tribal Hunting Mask -

And then got silly traipsing around in it!

7th Grade Curriculum - Preliminary Decisions

As most of you have probably figured out - as I know I have stated it SEVERAL times - I am a HUGE planner, I need to feel like I have a game plan and though I am open to flexibility and wiggle room, I NEED to know that I have something set and ready to go! So before the warm weather gets here for real, I want to make sure that I have everything planned out for next year.

For the most part I have known for a while what we would be doing, but there were some final choices that I think I have committed to. So here is what KM's 7th Grade Curriculum will look like -

Summer Session - Yes we do continue our lessons during the summer, but it is on a much lighter scale. KM and I sat down and tried to figure out what she thought would be manageable and what I would agree to as enough. Here is what we came up with:

Daily:
Summer Bridge Activities - This is a review type book that has different activities each day, but helps you kinda stay on track. Most of the things are fun activities and she has been doing them for YEARS now so she figured why change something that has worked for such a long time.

Egyptian Study - if we keep at the pace we are right now with our History timeline study we should be right at Egypt when we start the Summer session. I have TONS of projects, resources, sites, kits and books for this which I think I will list separately. This will be an ongoing thing throughout the summer that I didn't really want to schedule in so we will be working on this bit by bit throughout the session.

Mondays:
Cooking - We will be using the Usbourne Internet Linked Children's World Cookbook - to travel the globe through food. We will also be going to our local farmer's markets to get local produce of the season to cook with as well as using the bounty from our own garden!

Tuesdays:
Geography - along with our world food travels, we will be using Brighter Child Geography Grade 6 which we did not have a chance to get to during this last year's studies.

Wednesday:
ELA - we have been using Scholastics Scope Magazine since last fall, but we could never manage to get to all of it, so we decided to save the reader's plays and the extra worksheets for the summer.

Thursday:
Science - I don't know how long ago it was, but at some point I picked up a copy of Homework Survival Guide: Science and I came across it when we were cleaning out our books over the winter. We decided to use it as a review and do one chapter a week for the summer. We will also be incorporating lots and LOTS of projects to go with each one so be sure to swing by for Science Thursdays starting in July. I think that this will really bring KM up to speed with the basic knowledge that she was SOOOOO lacking from her time at PS.

Fridays:
Math - another book that we just didn't get to as much as we would have liked was Fast Finishers Math so we thought this would be a good time to finish it up!


Starting in the Fall she will be doing -

Math - Teaching Textbooks was such a HUGE hit this year that I will stray from it! She will be starting Algebra 1 in the fall.


ELA - She will be doing 5-minute Daily Grammar - which should help to straighten out some of those things that really just need some repetition to get down. Also upon recommendation by a very good friend, countless internet searches and a LONG discussion with KM we have decided to give Writing Strands a try. We will be starting her off at Level 3 and she is very excited about the way that it is truly written to the student. It also has VERY little prep work for me! I also have on the back burner, Writing Survival Skills for the Middle Grades - which the same friend recommended and I lucked out and found on Paperback Swap! Also a great Paperback Swap find was World Smart Junior which will be in place of a formal vocabulary program.

Literature/Reading Comprehension - For fiction we will be using literature units from Teacher Created Resources. To start we will be doing The Cricket in Times Square, Island of the Blue Dolphin, Bridge to Terabithia and Tuck Everlasting. For non-fiction we will be using a workbook called As a Matter of Fact which seems like it will be a very good fit.

History - We will be continuing our timeline study using the Complete Book of World History as our time-line spine and we will probably begin with Ancient China in the fall. I will list these resources separately as well.

Geography - Our coop group is thinking of doing a full year Geography program, focusing on a different continent each session. This will be a GREAT way for the kids to learn about this in a group setting! I will be sure to post more about this as it develops as well.

Cultural Studies - In the fall we will be focusing on a Thanksgiving Unit that we got from Plimoth Plantation called Investigating the First Thanksgiving which helps to clarify what really happened at the first Thanksgiving and what it was really like for the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Then we will use several resources to dive deep into the cultures of Southeast Asia, Japan, and Mexico and Central America.

Science - We have a large mismatch group of things that KM really wants to cover for Science next year. We will be starting out with the Basher Series which looks like they are going to be rather enjoyable reading, then we will be using the MOS designed Engineering is Elementary Program, a variety of free electricity resources that we ordered from National Grid and a unit on Inventions and Inventors. We will also be supplementing with a new site that I found through Homeschool Buyers Co-op called Adaptive Curriculum. Once she has all these things done I think she will have a very good basis to start some of the higher level sciences.

Foreign Language Studies - We will be sticking with Latin next year and will be using Minimus Secundus: Moving on in Latin as well as Learning Latin Through Mythology. I am already seeing a huge improvement with KM's word recognition and decoding roots since we started the Minimus: Starting out in Latin.

Art - we will be using a program that looks really intriguing called Meet the Masters. KM is a bit nervous about having to reproduce masterpieces, but I think once she starts and sees that it is really more about the techniques that she will really enjoy the program!

Music - KM is still loving the keyboard so we will be continuing with Piano Adventures. I also came across this rather interesting classroom magazine called Music Alive and for $9 I got all 8 issues of this past years magazines, which feature a current artistic from a different genre each month. KM is so into music that I couldn't pass up a deal like that! We will also continue to utilize the incredible monthly content at Classics for Kids. I am seriously considering signing her up for private keyboard lessons, but I am worried that this may deter her natural drive that she seems to be following. She reads music incredibly and truly enjoys playing, so I will just wait and see if she starts to peak off or has trouble just using the books on her own.


So that is our 7th grade plan - I hope we will stick to it, but if you are a regular reader I would guess that bets are being placed as to when the first change will occur! It feels good to have it all laid out in front of me though and I think that I have found a really good balance of what KM wants and what CJ and I feel that she really NEEDS.

Homeschoolmania

We were finishing up a unit on geography, mapping, and archaeology, before we begin our study of the prehistoric periods, so I though it would be fun for the kids to design their own islands!

I took out the Crayola Model Magic, paint and let them have at it.....

KM decided to draw out a plan for her island on the whiteboard first.
Then they formed the bases and began painting.
Next she formed the higher points, painted them, glued them on and stuck toothpicks in to be able to label them after it was dry.
She named her island "Homeschoolmania" and declared that EVERYONE WOULD BE HOMESCHOOLED HERE!

SC's was a bit less structured, but I believe it would be a very interesting place to visit!

Holidays Around the World

After we finished our election study we decided to learn about Holidays from around the world that are celebrated in December. It was a great History/Geography/Cultural Studies project and here is our outcome:

We used a ream of finger-paint paper for the back ground, some coloring pages we downloaded and lots of clip art and doo-dads to make if fun!

We colored in each holiday's origin on the map that we printed out from - here - this site is great for all sorts of maps in a huge assortment of sizes!

KM's favorite one was Santa Lucia Day, which is celebrated in Sweden, because "they were daredevils!" balancing the candles on their heads.
I was rather surprised to discover that although Kwanzaa is a celebration of African ancestry, it
was created here in American. It was also rather interesting to hear about all the different ways that kids around the world leave some sort of "footwear" out for "someone" to leave them candy and presents in! We were unable to figure where exactly this footwear phenomenon started, but they seem to do it in some form or another on every part of the globe!!!

The Great Turtle Race II

This is a great site to engage kids in this very important topic! It just started today and looks like it is going to be really cool!

We signed up and KM is cheering for Shelby, CJ for Jing Jing, and I am rooting for JK Turtling! Take a peek and let us know who you are cheering on!!!

http://www.greatturtlerace.com/