Geography Fall 2009

In addition to pulling out a map anytime we are talking about a place (especially in history) or the kids ask about a place, we have two other ways we study geography.

1. We read the Holling C. Holling books and map the journey made in the story. Last year we read & mapped Paddle to the Sea, and this year we are reading Tree in the Trail. Here is a link to the map I printed out for each of us on cardstock. I also have a quide called Geography: A Literature Approach, which has outlines of what to map for all the chapters, as well as lots of other study ideas in history and science. We pretty much stick to the geography information, but occasionally dip into the other areas as the kids show interest. This same company (Beautiful Feet Books) also sells a map pack to go with these books, but I've been able to find maps similar to these on google images.

2. We study a continent or foreign country-- right now we are studying Africa. We are watching the Wild Africa series from the BBC. We are reading a wonderful book called Growing Up in Africa: The True Adventures of Two American Children in the Wilds of Africa. I also check out other books from the library for the kids to look through on their own-- these are general books about Africa or picture books with African stories. I also have the Wee Sing Around the World CD, which has several songs from Africa that we listen to, and we may possibly memorize one if I happen to feel so ambitious.

Gambel's Oak

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Autumn Series- Oaks & Acorns

We have a favorite park nearby that has a small forest of Gambel Oak Trees (also known as Scrub Oaks or Rocky Mtn White Oaks). We are always picking up acorns, leaves, and bark strips, so we had plenty at home to examine, but that didn't stop us from making another trip to the park to explore.

Gambel Oak Leaf

We wanted to try making the ink leaf prints, but found all of our ink pads were dry (apparently its been a long time since we stamped!), so we used markers instead. This was a little bit trickier- we had to quickly color the back of the leaves and flip it over before the marker started to dry. It was harder for my kids, but they enjoyed making prints on everything, including their shirts. Hurray for washable markers!!

I happened to have my iron out (my attempt at multi-tasking ended up in a burnt piece of fabric-whoops), so we also pressed some leaves between wax paper. In addition to these instructions, I also suggest using leaves that have had a chance to dry so there is less moisture between the wax paper- the ones that worked best for us were a couple weeks old and I had kept them ander a couple books so they were flat.

While we were at the park I had the kids make bark rubbings, and they also decided to try leaf rubbings at home.

Gambel Oak Bark Many of the trees were covered in orange and yellow lichen. Gambel Oak Acorn
I cracked a couple open to see the inside, and this inspired my son to crack open the rest. We tasted the acorns as well, but they were really bitter. I'm guess that is because of the tannic acid, which can be poisonous in large quantities.You should have seen the kitchen counter- wax paper, journals, leaves, acorns, acorn caps and shell pieces, sticks, bark strips, markers, crayons, colored pencils, fabric- let's just say we were trying to cram a lot of projects in while the little 2 were napping. We really enjoyed this nature study and the time we had to be creative.

Outdoor Nature Challenge

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Autumn Series: Goldenrod or Other Autumn Flowers


We live in an area that isn't a meadow-y, and I knew we hadn't seen any Goldenrod in the past couple weeks, so I instructed my kids to be on the lookout for flowers of any kind.

There were plenty of Common Sunflowers

Lots of Bird's-foot Trefoil

Thickstem Aster

And this shrub/flower which I haven't yet been able to identify. I've been trying for a couple weeks now.

Here is a close up of the blooms:

Here is a close up of the stem and leaves:

I will probably give the kids the opportunity to journal about today's nature walk, but I don't think the flowers will beat out the other highlights of our walk. We were able to watch this mule deer grazing along the trail, and then a short time later we saw 6-8 more as they all crossed the street together. It's was weird to be in this stand of trees watching deer with the sounds of cars passing and construction in the distance.

Another highlight: as we walked by the fishing pond a nice man let the kids reel in a couple fish.

A couple more wonderful nature experiences from earlier this week:

Nyah found this beautiful spider - if you click on the picture you can see it is carrying its young on its back.

From the cattail challenge we had gathered some cattails to bring home, and they exploded yesterday as we sat around the kitchen table. I'm still finding seeds all over the place.

Literature - Fall 2009

In our home school we read a TON of books for all subjects, but we do have some books that are specifically for Literature. Some books we read in a couple weeks, and other books are spread out over the whole school year.

Literature - Chapter Book

These usually take a couple weeks to a month to read, depending on how interested we are in the story.

We started reading The Princes and the Goblin by George MacDonald, but the kids were worried about the idea of goblins (their previous exposure to goblins being The Lord of the Rings), so I read the book and found these goblins to be stupid, awkward sort of fellows, but my kids aren't buying into my reassurances, and freak out when I bring it out. So we are listening to the Redwall series by Brian Jacques (currently Mattimeo - book 3) which we started listening to on our recent family trip to California. This is one thing I love about homeschooling - when something doesn't work for us we change it! But I would still recommend The Princess and the Goblin to anyone who may be interested and doesn't have a fear of goblins.

Literature Tales

These are books we will read over the course of the school year. We usually read one chapter spread out over a month or one story per week depending on the length of the chapters/book.

American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenberg - For example, this books has 8 chapters, so we will read several pages once a week to read an entire chapter in a month.

Little Pilgrim's Progress by Helen L. Taylor - The chapters are short enough to read one per week. This is a beautiful children's version of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and we are really enjoying it. I was amazed that my kids understood my explanation of what an "allegory" is and were able to point out some of the symbolism from the first few chapters (King, Celestial City, etc.)

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit - This will be the third year we have been reading from this book. We do one to two plays a month. We've read Romeo and Juliet more times, because it is Nyah's favorite (She loves all that drama!). Next year we will move on to Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, which have a little more detail and story complexity. I am hoping we will catch some live performances of Shakespeare's plays this year, but we'll see what happens. And ever since I watched the movie Tea with Mussoulini I have wanted a miniature Globe Theater with puppets, and I finally found one!! Shakespeare's Globe is on my Christmas list!

Ambleside Online and Milestone's Academy (two curriculum guides I use) both recommend reading Charles Kingsley's The Heroes, which are Greek myths, but instead I am using a beautiful book I already own called A Children's Treasury of Mythology by Margaret Evans Price, which are Greek myths with some Roman tales as well. We read one per week and the kids are really enjoying these as well.

Sketch Tuesday

We missed doing last weeks assignment so I gave Austin & Nyah two options: Sketch something you see at the library OR Sketch an animal that can climb.

I love how Nyah combined the two and drew a picture of a book about "How Things Can climb" with monkeys on the front cover.

I love how Austin always uses arrows to show the action of his pictures: the squirell climbing the tree to get to its hole and the bees flying into the beehive.

Outdoor Hour Challenge

Autumn Series - Fall Tree Study

Due to the wind and rain we have today we didn't get to do all the activities we had planned for our tree study, such as sitting by our trees or the bark rubbings. Hopefully we'll get to do those sometime soon. So today we looked out the window and the kids braved the outdoors to find some leaves, and then we did our journal pages. I look forward to watching our trees all year long.

Nyah and I both picked a maple tree in our front yard:

Nyah's journal page:

My journal page:

Austin picked a japanese maple in our backyard:

Austin's journal page:

Natuer Study/Science - Fall 2009

Nature Study

We have been doing the Handbook of Nature Study blog Outdoor Hour Challenges, and plan on continuing this as long as Barb keeps posting challenges! Sometimes we do write and draw in our nature journals, but mostly we enjoy learning about the world around us.

For nature tales (fictional nature stories), we are currently reading Pagoo by Holling C Holling, and we will read Secrets of the Woods by William J. Long next.

Science

For science experiments we are trying out the Backyard Scientist series for the first time. We've only done it once so far (our official school start was September 16th), but the kids really enjoyed it and have been asking to do more.

We will be finishing up God's Design for Life: The Animal Kingdom this year as well. It is a short book, but with all the other things we do we moved through this really slow last year. I like that it is told from a christian viewpoint (acknowledging the world and all its creatures are God's creations), but there are some ideas that I'm not completely confident about, so I carefully pre-read and leave out what I don't want to include. Also, it can be "textbook-y" so I keep it really short- Yesterday it wanted us to label a pie chart - why? Nothing against pie charts, but I can just say insects make up the majority of arthropods, we don't need to label a pie chart to get it.

I am still waiting on a couple books from amazon, and Science: 100 Scientists Who Changed the World is one of them. It gives (can you guess?) a brief biography of 100 scientists whose work changed the world.

We are also reading another book that is similar to 100 scientists, called The Story of Inventions, but this focuses on inventors and inventions of the last 200 years, while the 100 Scientists includes other time periods (such as the one we are studying this year - the Renaissance & Reformation).

For science tales we will be reading Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather, which is a collection of stories about "a single air mass traveling from the Canadian Rockies to the northeastern United States (back cover)."