History Projects -

We did two fun history projects today from Story of the World. First we built a cannon that after several failed attempts ...

did finally work...

Then we built a Black Plague Doctor's Mask using recycled paperboard instead of foam----

that she then wore around the house like a crazy chicken for the afternoon!

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!

Summer Curriculum Picks - Starting 8th Grade

I believe I have most of KM's 8th grade curriculum choices laid out. I have decided however to list them each session, as I had done a while back, because we do change our minds quite frequently and I want to be sure to leave lots of space for changes and new interests that are developed along the way.

We school year round in 10 week sessions so we begin our "grade" year in the summer. KM will be an 8th grader started July 5th and will be studying the following topics -

English Language Arts - there will be a very strong focus on writing over the summer utilizing our free Mondays to boast ELA up to two days a week.

Math - KM will be finishing up Algebra, utilizing the free Ko's Journey subscription we received and working on word problems -

Science is always a huge area of study for KM so we are not slowing down, but charging ahead into the time line approach -

History will also be continuing on a steady pace and we hope to have Volume 2 completed by the end of the summer -

Music will be continuing with piano, voice and some extras -

We will also be doing some electives in Financial Literacy using Brain Pop and finishing up our Ocean Study using lots of movies on Netflix. Our physical education will center around swimming and bowling - Kids Bowl Free. We will be using some free resources for Art from the National Gallery of Art.

Since I had posted about thinking outside the box KM thought it would be fun to post some of her top Wii and DS game picks that she finds very educational...

Viking Ship

Often KM will choose to pass on the art projects that go along with Story of the World, but every once in awhile a project will catch her eye and for some reason she will choose to do it! This was the case last week with the viking ship -

Beginning Middle Ages

We are getting into the Middle Ages in Volume 2 of Story of the World. I have heard a lot of people feel like they can't use this program with middle schoolers, but I think with a little tweaking and creativity it is totally possible! We are using the Activity Guide that goes along with it, as well as the student pages and quizzes, but I am beefing it up with lots of hands-on activities, more advanced work and lots of living books and historical fiction from the period.

We do more advanced map work simply by using blank maps printed from Owl & Mouse Educational Software and then giving her the same directions as in the activity pages. This way she has to know where things are instead of just circling the pre-printed words. I also have her show me different routes and such on the larger blank world wall map - that we printed from the same site - so that I know that she is aware of the perspective of location.

I also supplement using a lot of videos and classroom resources from sites like the History Channel Study Guides. Most of the videos can be found through your local libraries, ordered online and some are even available streaming online.

We tend to skip most of the "coloring pages", but every once in a while we will come across something that catches her eye. Like this illumination pattern that demonstrates the monks incredible labors to reproduce books -

Inventions & Inventors Unit Study

In History we just finished up Story of the World Volume One and decided to take a break from the series and do a 5 Week Unit Study on Inventions & Inventors. We will be using multiple sources including -

• Inventions! Inventions!
• Usborne Book of Inventors - From DaVinci to Biro
• Insiders Inventions
• The Great Inventors Lapbook
• Thomas Alva Edison Project Pack
• Design Squad
• The Twenty-One Balloons Literature Study

If you know of any interesting resources - PLEASE don't hesitate to share!

Ancient Civilizations - DONE!

We have finally completed the Giant Lapbook that we began last spring when we started studying the ancient civilizations! We have a had a LOT of fun completed this, but we are also BOTH rather glad that it is over! All graphics and cuts that were used were from the History Pockets series created by Evan-Moor. While we did not do every part from the books we did do a TON of them! KM is very proud of what she has produced!

We will be taking a break from our History Time Line for a little bit to do a 5 week unit study on Inventors! I will keep you posted and be sure to share links for any useful sites!

Winter Session 7th Grade Curriculum Picks

As we are drawing our fall session to a close over the next week, I figured it was time to look ahead and finalize the choices we have made for the upcoming Winter Session! Since we are always changing things around here, this is of course a rough guess of what we will be doing. Most of our picks for the fall session worked out rather well, but there are some areas that we needed to tweak a bit. Here is our "intended" outline -

ELA -
We have swapped out our ELA system SEVERAL times in the past two years, but I do think that we have finally made a bit of progress in this area. KM worked through Levels 3 & 4 of Writing Strands rather quickly and decided to work through a few workbooks for latter half of this past session and the next.

• She has been working through 5-Minute Daily Practice Grammar, she tends to do all 5 lessons for the week at once on Monday, but she is getting them all correct, so I guess I can't really complain can I.
• Quick Practice Writing Skills is a bit more of a challenge for her - well it varies day to day. There are some things that she just needs a slight reminder on and others that have never been covered, so when we come to an area that needs to be covered completely we stop and cover it. It seems to be working and she is far less weary of asking for help.
• For writing itself we have gone back to the 3 minute non-stop writing and are using 350 Fabulous Writing Prompts. Some of the prompts are not so fabulous in my opinion, but we just skip those ones and take those days to go back over and review or edit her previous days writings.
• We will also begin working through the Grammar and then Writing on BrainPop.
• For literature we will be using Teacher Created Resources for Tuck Everlasting and The Island of the Blue Dolphin. As well as a Scholastic Book Guide for Around the World in Eighty Days which will coincide with our Geography. KM of course will also be continuing her free time reading - not that I have to worry about that.

Math -

• We will be finishing up The Complete Book of Algebra and Geometry this next session so that she can feel confident when she goes back to the Teaching Textbook for Algebra in the Spring.
• I also thought that it would be fun and interesting to take a look at Women Mathematicians during this session. This book features 15 women and we will spread them out covering one or two a week for the 10 week session.
  

Science -

• We have decided to put off Story of Science again as KM wanted to slow down a bit on her Physics so that she could really investigate each area more closely. So for the next session she will continue with her Physics Workshop Kit from Thames & Kosmos. She will also continue to supplement with Brain Pop.
• We are also going to revisit Chemistry. She had done a bit of it last year at our co-op, but I think we will try to dive a bit deeper this time around. I have gotten a light textbook - Chemistry of Matter - from Paperback Swap and she has agreed to try it. I have the Periodic Table from Basher Science Books - WHICH SHE LOVES! - as a stand by in case the text flops. I have a lot of projects and kitchen chemistry things to add in as well as BrainPop - AGAIN!
  

Social Sciences -

• For history we will be working on Ancient Rome and finishing up volume one of Story of the World. This will also conclude our Giant Lapbook! I will be sure to post all the info on that when it is complete! This will be our final history pocket as well. KM is very happy that we will also be continuing with the Horrible Histories series, which despite mixed reviews from others, has been going over very well with her! We started out with the books, then I purchased the animated series on Ebay and now have been using the resources for the CBBC series.
• We will be finishing up Rand McNally's Intermediate Geography as well as doing a cultural study of each area as it is covered in the book. I am using several other resources for this including Global Trek, Hands-On Heritage series and Art Projects from Around the World.
  

Health -
KM really likes the Learn to Be Healthy site - though some of the content is a bit below her level, most of it seems to be sinking in and she is moving right along through it. They do have a high school level, but I don't think she is ready for that set just yet. She is also working through the Health topics on Brain Pop.


Electives -

• Staying with our strong Science focus - per KM's request - she will be studying weather and meteorology this session. I will be listing our resources for this in a separate post.
• For her foreign language she is going to be doing Spanish. We were lucky enough to get a FANTASTIC deal on Tell Me More by Auralog through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op last summer and she is REALLY enjoying the program. The voice recognition software is great and the homeschool edition has worksheets that you can print off to supplement with. I will be supplementing with two workbooks - Let's Learn Spanish Grades 7 & 8. I also picked up to sticker books that I thought KM & SC could do together. This would help reinforce the basics for KM and would introduce SC to a bit of Spanish as well.
• Music Alive! is still a big hit and we will continue with this through the next session. We also will be taking a look at some opera pieces from Opera for Everyone and will be going to the Boston Lyric Opera's presentation of Barber of Seville.
  
• Piano Adventures is working incredibly! She will be starting on Level 2 and I am amazed and awestruck by how well she is playing with no outside instruction. There was talk of an interest in Flute, but I am not too sure how serious that was...
• She will be continuing with Drama at our co-op and they will be working on another Shakespearean play with music and dancing, but the title has not been disclosed yet!
• We will be continuing to work through the Meet The Masters for our art practical and theory section. She will also continue on her cross stitch work and may start some sewing as she interested in working on her costume for the play this spring.
  

Again I can't stress enough how much of a guideline this is and it is in NO WAY set in stone. I am very open to changing things that are not working and try to make sure that KM feels that she can be honest with me about how she feels something is going.

Finsihing Greece...

with some theatrical masks....

Changes Again...

Sometimes life gets a bit overwhelming and you just need to change things up a bit! We have decided that due to the craziness around here lately, we are going to cut back to 3 full days, 2 light days of lessons and NO work on the weekends! This is our first week of trying this routine and so far it is already feeling like what we needed. It basically works out that the days that we have the Littles will be our light days and the days that we don't have them are the full days.

I have changed up some of her workload as well to accommodate this schedule. One of the new things that she has been enjoying is Brain Pop! She really likes the movie clips and activities. I really like that she can email me the quizzes and it is one less thing that I have to really think about. She is using with the Physics kit and has been searching the site for the key words in her manual to correlate with the program - LOVE IT!!! She is taking her own initiative to expand on the subjects - HOW GREAT IS THAT!

She completed the Writing Strands 3 & 4 and did a really fantastic job on them so we have also decided to take a break on formal writing and focus more on prompt writing. We will be using 350 Fabulous Writing Prompts and 100 Quickwrites both by Scholastic. They are great prompts and readings that you go over and then allow a set amount of time to write without stopping or correcting. This gives very little time for editing in the head before getting it down on the paper and allows for more of a flow of writing. You can go back later and edit or redo something if you want to, but right now it is more about just getting her to write and not feeling pressure about it.

KM has also decided that she really doesn't like the Ancient Greece thematic unit from Teacher Created Resources. We have tried few different ones with varied success and I thought that she would like this one because it was a more challenging level, but there were some errors in the mapping section - like it tells you to locate Egypt on the map, but Egypt was not shown on the map - and therefore she has no faith in the content. I am also wondering if she is just getting sick of the Ancients, so we are going to stick with the lapbook, more of the multimedia things, - another reason why we splurged for the BrainPOP subscription - and of course the myths, because she loves EVERYTHING about them!

She has also begun to use the Tell Me More Spanish - which we got during the Homeschool Buyers' Co-op group buy last summer - and she REALLY is enjoying it. I think that the voice recognition is such an incredible key to her confidence in it! This program really seems to cover all aspects of recognition, memorization and understanding. She has been doing it daily without any qualms or complaints.

As always we will be constantly evaluating and reorganizing our path, but hey isn't that one of the many reasons why we homeschool - to give our kids exactly what they NEED WHEN they need it!

Ancient Greece - Unit Study Resources

We have begun our study on Ancient Greece and so far KM is enjoying it! This is such a great topic that I have put together a TON of resources from different areas and thought I would share some of our favorites -

• Horrible Histories - I finally broke down and got the DVD set on Ebay and I am so glad! I had heard mixed things about it, but KM really likes it.
• Ancient Civilizations for Children - Ancient Greece - we get this series through our library
  
• We are continuing with our History Pockets from Evan-Moor to keep our GIANT Lapbook going!
• 
• We are using the Teacher Created Resource Literature Unit to go along with D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.
• We are also using an Interdisciplinary Thematic Unit from Teacher Created Materials.
• We will be using a few of the activities from Hands-On Heritage Ancient Greece Activity Book - these activities will be done more on days when the Littles are here so that we can allow SC to participate as well.

We also have a TON of reading books, but I am not sure which ones she will choose to use and which ones will get shelved for later. I will keep everyone posted though if there are any really good ones.

Curriculum Picks for Fall Session - 7th Grade - Social Sciences

Now on to our picks for Social Science:

Social Sciences - The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including anthropology, communication studies, economics, human geography, history, political science, psychology and sociology.

History -
We will be continuing our journey into ancient cultures and first stop in the fall will be China! Though we will be continuing to loosely follow the Complete Book of World History, I was pointed toward History: The Definitive Visual Guide and I am seriously thinking about switching over to that, but I will make sure to keep you all posted on that!
For China we will be using the Ancient China Thematic Unit and focusing on Between the Dragon and the Eagle. We will then move onto the Ancient Americas.

Geography -
Our co-op will be doing a full year Geography class, loosely following the Trail Guide to World Geography and I will be supplementing with a few resources.

Cultural Studies -
As well as touching on the cultures of areas that we go over in geography we will be doing some specific cultural studies as well starting with Investigating the First Thanksgiving and Holiday's Around the World.
Investigating the First Thanksgiving website
Holiday's Around the World Websites -

• http://www.lessonplanspage.com/SSChristmasAroundtheWorldK1.htm
• http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/holidays/
• http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson213.shtml
  

Ancient Egypt - DONE!

We have completed our Ancient Egyptian study ahead of schedule! YIPPEEE!!! Here are some pics of her projects and pockets -

Is that a hat...

or a ziggurat?


actually it is a K-nex step pyramid, but since we were studying Mesopotamia last week, she thought it would be better if we said it was a ziggurat!
I have to say that I did not pay full price for this K-nex set, but totally would have! If you ever see it on sale anywhere I highly recommend getting it for ANYONE that you think may enjoy it. It has offered more options and entertainment than I ever could have imagined!

Another Busy one!

We had another rather hectic time last week, but it was again doing lots of things that we really wanted to do - which is always good!

We had some HOT days and since the pool looked like....

They decided to fill up the kiddie pool on the deck.

We couldn't get to the water toys so they went digging through the craft closet for things they could recycle into squitters, scoops and floaties!

We went to a local park to do our nature journal pics for the week - TAKE A PEEK!

of course SC was attached to KM, per usual...

they couldn't help wading in a bit

then it was back to the house for a picnic lunch...I was not cool enough to sit at that table!

We experiment with some new bread recipes...

KM said that these were better than the restaurant bread
and she can be a tough bread critic!

We worked on Ancient History and decided to turn the History Pockets into a giant lapbook!

Using this scholastic box as a tri-fold presentation board...

and pieces from different History Pocket books...
we think it is going to work rather nicely
We will let you know how things turn out as we progress through this one...but it will take us a while as we plan to work on the ancient at least through this next year!


Finally our homeschooling group did a benefit performance of Midsummer Night's Dream
for the museum where we have our coop classes.
They had another spectacular performance!
KM's favorite part is the fight scene, though she had a bit of trouble staying in character!
This is the cast mascot, who must be fit into each set!


All and all it was another GREAT week!

Egyptian Resources

I got asked about our history plans 3 times over the weekend and twice today on a wet hike so I thought I would get myself together this afternoon and get them posted! Here is what we have so far -

• Complete Book of World History by School Specialty Publishing - this is may all time favorite spine. I am very impressed with how this book lays things out and although it is listed as grades 4-8 it could easily be used for younger or older children with very little modifications as a spine/timeline guide.
  
• Pocket Timeline of Ancient Egypt by Helen Strudwick - this will be our guide to the specific point in history. It has a beautifully done timeline that folds out of the book and looks like it will be a good read for KM.
• History Pockets: Ancient Egypt By Evan-Moor - We are really liking the looks of this series, we have experimented a bit with the lower level ancient civilazation kit when we got it as a free download from currclick a few weeks ago. I wish that I had known about the ebooks beforehand as this is basically a reproducible book, that will need to be photocopied/scanned, but hey at least I get to give you guys the recommendation - right?
• Egyptian Kid Kit by Usborne Books - this is another great hands-on thing and of course this is KM's favorite way to learn.
• Horrible Histories - The Awesome Egyptians - by Terry Deary and Peter Hepplewhite - we came across this series during our Prehistoric Study when KM read and loved Who are You Calling A Wooly Mammoth.
• Egyptology Code-Writing Kit - by Emily Sands - As many of you may remember KM LOVES anything that has anything to with codes, so we had to grab this kit when I came across it on clearance at a local book store.
• Pyramids: 50 Hands on Activities by Avery Hart - You can never have too many hands on things around here!
  
• Ancient Science by Jim Weiss - we have been using this book for a few months now and it has GREAT activities
• Websites that look rather interesting -
  

Ancient Egypt for Kids
Kids Konnect
Eternal Egypt
Mummy Tombs
Ancient Egypt Thematic Unit

I will continue to add to this list once we start the study itself as I know that we will be adding more as we go. If you have any favorite Egyptian resources PLEASE feel free to share!

This week's experiments - week of 5/11

We did some Ancient Science this week and saw how soap seperates and clings to oil, as well as the differences in using hot and cold water


iThen while KM was working on her Nature Photo Journal for our blog - CJ caught a mosquito and they had to pull out the new microscope to check it out...

If you can see the laptop screen that is a super close-up of the mosquito's proboscis - the part that actually goes into the skin. For some reason I could not get the computer to catch the image that it was streaming, but I am going to figure out how it works this week!

We then did some bubble experiments to see what type of solution works best for different types of wands and pipes - the hardest part was getting SC to use the correct end of the pipes!