The Fall Catch-All

It would be an understatement to say I have been extremely busy these last few months. Along with homeschooling, I finished my Bachelor's degree, we moved to a new home, and I have been training for a half-marathon. Whew! The first couple of weeks my camera disappeared and half the time I forgot to take pictures.

So here is my Fall Catch-All post about everything (mostly) that we've been up to this season (things are beginning to calm down now, so I'll be posting more regularly)

Fall/Cranberry Thanksgiving Unit Study

Fall words~

Fall books~

Beyond Turkey by Debbie Herman and Ann Koffsky illustrated a fair depiction of the Mayflower's journey to North America, the Pilgrims' settlement and their feast with the Wampanoag Indians.

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without reading Wende and Harry Devlin's beautiful book, Cranberry Thanksgiving.

We love the Magic Tree House series, and Thanksgiving on Thursday did not disappoint. The book is filled with Mary Pope Osbourne's research of the Pilgrims' settlement, lifestyle and clothing. It also fairly represents their relationship with the Wampanoag Indians, making no hesitation to admit Squanto's enslavement prior to the first Thanksgiving.

Fall Fun~

Reenacting the first Thanksgiving and building a Pilgrim house

Playing the "Sailing on the Mayflower" game

We also watched a Charlie Brown cartoon: The Mayflower Voyagers Netflix streaming. Here's a slip on Youtube:

 

Autumnal Apple Treats (Honeycrisp apples doused with lemon juice, slathered with peanut butter and topped with autumn granola mix and cinnamon. 

Field Trip Friday (the Fire Station!)~

We toured the local fire station with about 70 children and parents from Aidyn's home-based charter school. My camera wasn't cooperating with the lack of light in the building so I only have a few photos. The kids checked out the fire engines and fire truck and opened each and every compartment. They toured the living quarters (kitchen, bedrooms, living room, etc.) and peeked down the firefighter pole door. Aidyn said his favorite part was looking at how far down the drop was and wished he could have slid down.

What the Camera Didn't Capture:

~a beautiful and relaxed Thanksgiving holiday

~our Thanksgiving Tree we made with branches and fabric leaves (w/ words of gratitude we wrote on them)

~a beyond messy house

~a stressed out mother/wife/student/runner/worker

Storm in the Night/Weather Mini-Unit Study

We read the beautifully illustrated story, Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz (illustrations by Pat Cummings). This is the perfect cuddle-up-and-read book, especially during a storm.

We recorded the temperature from places all over the world. First, we would find them on the globe and then look them up on weather.com. 

After learning the basic water cycle, we made a cloud in a bottle!

Then rain in a bottle! (links at the bottom of post)

We read about rainbows and different types of clouds and painted our own with white paint and cotton balls.

We also worked on winter words, and Aidyn learned to spell some tricky words, including "icicle"! 

Wish I had more pictures to share!

Forecast for the Future~

I am in the middle of a huge undertaking, but we're only in the pre-planning/dreaming stages. We are heavily considering making a trip to Walt Disney World in January 2015 (we'll need a year to save for it!). This will be a first-time experience for the whole family and the furthest east any of us has ever traveled.

As we have done in the past for Disneyland, I am planning a long unit study on Walt Disney World, which includes four parks and many, many different learning opportunities. Of course, most of the unit study will have little to do with the actual parks and will touch on themes within the parks, but I would like to include some stuff about Walt Disney.

I asked Aidyn which park he wants to focus on first, giving him a quick rundown of what each entails. He chose Disney's Hollywood Studios, which will have us learning about:

• the history of animation
• the history of film
• early Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s
• early film and television stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Lucille Ball,
• classic films such as The Wizard of Oz and Singing in the Rain
• sci-fi flicks of the 1950s
• stage shows
• and more!

In the meantime, we will be playing a little catch-up, reading holiday books, and enjoying the winter break together.

We're weeks away from a family vacation, at the end of which I will be running a half-marathon in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (as a tribute to my late father). 

I am still actively fundraising for the charity, so if you are interested in donating, please visit my page: Paula's Donation Page.

Links for the unit studies above:

Both Cranberry Thanksgiving and Storm in the Night are FIAR books.

Free Cranberry Thanksgiving Lapbook/Printables

Free weather unit study printables (including cloud/rain in a bottle experiment)

Pilgrim and Eastern Native American Figures

Sail on the Mayflower Game

Stellaluna (Bats) Unit Study

I'm behind on my posts but trying to catch up!

Post-Halloween, Aidyn and I learned all about bats with a Stellaluna unit study.

Stellaluna (by Janell Cannon) is a sweet story about a baby bat who loses her mother and lands among a family of birds. Stellaluna learns to adapt to her new life as a "baby bird" by eating insects, doing her best to perch upright, and sleeping during the night. When Stellaluna reunites with her own kind, she learns how wonderful it really is to be a bat!

Aidyn loved this story and the touching illustrations of Stellaluna's vulnerable eyes and her wacky face when she tries flying like a bird.

Reading:

We snuggled on the couch every day and read this story. After the first reading, we learned new vocabulary words with a set of cards I printed from a Stellaluna unit study on homeschoolshare.com.

Aidyn acted out each word as I read the definition, and we read back to see how Cannon used the word in her story. Then we played Vocabulary Bingo to practice the words.

The next day, Aidyn reviewed the vocabulary cards and chose a favorite word (clutched) and wrote his own sentence with it.

During the rest of the week, we read other bat-themed books like Bats at the Library and Bats at the Ballgame (both by Brian Lies), Bats (a nonfiction book by Gail Gibbons), Baby Bat's Lullaby (by Jacquelyn Mitchard) and Little Lost Bat (a sad little story by Sandra Markle). Aidyn independently read an easy reader called Batbaby Finds a Home (by Robert M. Quakenbush).

Science:

We were fascinated by bats' keen sense of smell after watching some YouTube videos about bats. Inspired by Delightful Learning, I set Aidyn up for a Batbaby Scent Experiment. I scented about six or seven cotton balls with different aromas and showed him his "baby" and let him sniff the scent. I then blindfolded him and let him try to find his lost baby.

He carefully smelled each baby until he found his own!

This scent activity delighted him. We also talked about echolocation, and he impersonated a bat navigating the night sky using echolocation.

He also watched the cartoon version of Stellaluna on YouTube.

Fun Food:

On the first day, I made Aidyn a bat PB&J sandwich with fresh fruit.

Later in the week, I made  him a watermelon bat and an orange bat.

Writing:

Each day after reading vocabulary cards, Aidyn wrote sentences with his favorite words. We also brainstormed some bat facts, and he wrote about his favorite fact and illustrated it.

Pretend Play:

Prompted by his own imagination, Aidyn donned his Spider-Man bath towel and pretended to be a bat. He called himself a "bean bat," a species he made up apparently. He flew around the house and used echolocation and his sharp sense of smell to collect beans. Throughout the day, he provided me with bean bat stats--their diets of fruit and meat, their habitats, their personality and the fact that they shifted from nocturnal to diurnal creatures depending on if they stayed with humans or not. He also said they were gliders, not flyers, and demonstrated said ability all over the house.

We thoroughly enjoyed our little bat unit study! We're still reading Roald Dahl books, and just finished George's Marvelous Medicine. Aidyn is still honing his reading skills and loving math and ukulele practice.

Here's Aidyn playing the opening music of Super Mario Bros.

We have begun a fall/Cranberry Thanksgiving unit study. Last year we covered Cranberry Thanksgiving and had so much fun we want to do it again. Check back soon to see what we do!

Halloween Reads

Halloween casts an eerie glow on our reading. We choose spooky books and read in hushed whispers. We flip through old favorites and delight in the dark and creepy tales. We let scary books creep in and give us a little chill.

Here are some of our favorite Halloween-time stories. None of these specifically name Halloween, but they each illustrate the spookiness of the season.

The Ghost-Eye Tree, by Bill Martin and John Archambault, takes readers to a quaint country home where two children must walk to town in the dark to fetch a bucket of milk for their mother. They dread passing the ghost-eye tree, so named because it appears to have two glowing eyes that stare at the children and branches that reach like arms.
                                         

 

This story has enough suspense to keep us turning the pages and enough subtle creepiness and realism to give us the chills. This is by far Aidyn's favorite spooky tale, and he loves cuddling up and reading it with me every year.

In a Dark Dark Room and Other Scary Stories, by Alvin Schwartz, is packed with intricately illustrated drawings and scary tales. Many of the stories have moments that cause us to jump but all in good fun. Some of the stories are pretty creepy and macabre, and so may be unsuitable for some children. However, Aidyn loves the stories, even if he remembers the little twist endings.

Bony-Legs, by Joanna Cole, is another favorite. A Russian folktale, Bony-Legs isn't exactly scary, but it has fantastical fairy tale elements that feel creepy as you read (like a witch that eats little children). Despite the creepiness, there are a wealth of messages within the story, like the themes of charity and bravery.

Yesterday, after reading the trio of spooky stories, we talked about elements of horror fiction, what makes these stories particularly creepy, what kinds of vocabulary created scary images, what kinds of illustrations gave us the chills, and the elements of fairy tales (fantasy--talking animals and things in 3s).

I invited Aidyn to think of his own scary story, and he came up with one on the fly and told it to me in his best creepy voice. We then took the idea to the dining room table where I supplied him with paper, a pencil, crayons, markers, and some Halloween music for inspiration. 

He wrote out his story and drew the illustrations. We talked about the use of color in the three books to help him decide what kind of pictures he wanted to include with his story. I also congratulated him on his use of words like "grabbed" and "tossed" because I could visualize those action much better than if he used words like "picked up" and "threw."

Hard at work.

When he finished, we took a little break and talked about covers and titles. We remembered titles of some of our favorite books and movies and analyzed the covers of the three books we read as far as their titles, cover drawings and placement of credits. He decided to title his work "Frightening Monster."

We love cuddling and sharing stories, and I am so excited that Aidyn's becoming a little storyteller himself.

In other news...

Because of my crazy school schedule, moving, and my training for a half-marathon, I am behind on posting. We have done a light chocolate unit study and are in the middle of a Roald Dahl unit study. I hope to post soon, though there won't be many pictures (the camera was lost for weeks!). We're also developing some exciting plans and a possible Destination Disney World unit study for next year. Check back to see what we do!

Ancient Egypt Unit Study

The breadth of this unit study lasted close to three weeks, so I will try to remember everything we did!

Geography:

We learned about the geography of Egypt and created a simple map. We learned that the Nile River flows northward and splits off into a delta.

Painting the Red Sea

Painting Egypt

Finished piece

Writing:

We learned about many different ancient Egyptian gods, and Aidyn created his own god: a half-tiger, half-man god.

We learned all about pyramids and what was stored in them.

Reading:

For fun, we read Who's Your Mummy? by R.L. Stine

And Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by Tomie dePaola

And the hilarious Skippy Jon Jones in Mummy Trouble by Judy Schachner.

Aidyn also learned to read some Egyptian words.

Hands-on Learning/Art:

We made hieroglyph stamps using potatoes. 

We read about how the early Mesopotamians  made cuneiform tablets while the Egyptians made papyrus. We made both to see which was easier to make and which was most durable.

Mixing the batter for cuneiform tablets.

Rolling out the dough.

Carving messages.

Then we baked the tablets to harden them.

We read about ancient Egyptians who used reed to make papyrus. Without reed around, we substituted with strips of paper.

Dipping the paper strip in the flour-and-water mixture.

Laying the strips evenly.

He loved dunking his fingers in the goo.

Afterward we smashed blueberries to make blueberry ink.

I don't have pictures, but we waited for the papyrus to dry and wrote on it using the blueberry ink. The writing was very light at first, but once it dried it was a solid blue-red color. We noted that the papyrus seemed pretty fragile and the coloring could easily be washed away if it water got on it. Cuneiform tablets, though heavier and harder to make, were much more resistant to destruction.

We also constructed our own Nile River. We put dirt in a large pan and divided it down the middle for the river. We lay aluminum foil on the bottom and used rocks to keep it down.

We planted grass seeds along the banks, and Aidyn flooded the Nile.

Again, no pictures, but now our Nile has grass sprouted on either side of it!

World Religions/Mythologies

We read about Osiris and many other Egyptian gods. We also watched some Christian mythologies, The Prince of Egypt and Joseph, King of Dreams.

Prince of Egypt trailer

Joseph, King of Dreams trailer

He watched them both a few times and absolutely loved The Prince of Egypt.

(Gross) Science Experiment:

We peeled and carved seven apples to represent mummies and set them in different variations of preservatives to see which would last the longest. We got busy around this time, so the poor apple-heads were sitting pretty for two weeks.

Isn't he gorgeous?

Not so bad.

He's seen better days.

He was our most eligible apple--a 50/50 mix of epsom salt and table salt did wonders for his skin.

Speaks for itself.

Overall, this was a pretty gross but entertaining (and educational!) little experiment. (excuse the boxes in the background; we're in the process of moving.)

We had a blast learning about ancient Egypt!

We just started a Kindness Project unit study, so check back to see what we do!

Why I Don't Homeschool...

Reasons Why I Do Not Homeschool:

1. I do not homeschool to impart my religious beliefs on my son, though many homeschoolers do (I'm looking at you, Duggars) and they should be free to do so; I homeschool to give my son a secular view, to help him find his own answers to the great question of the universe rather than burdening him with my own.

2. I do not homeschool to cripple his socialization (though so, so many people target that stereotype); I homeschool to socialize him well, to see beyond the exclusivity of his peers' approval and limited views, to converse with people of all ages, backgrounds, creeds, and beliefs. I do not think he "needs" to be surrounded by others who are EXACTLY the same age as he. Where else does that happen?

3. I do not homeschool because I hate teachers; I love teachers, but I feel like they are given too little power in their own classrooms. If they were given more freedom and resources, public school wouldn't be such a terrible option for us.

4. I do not homeschool because I believe everyone should homeschool; every involved parent "homeschools" to some degree. To wrest control from the government over a child's education is just not possible for many people. We have been raised to believe that public school is normal but disregard the downward spiral of academic achievement, school violence, overcrowdedness, and the suffocation of ridiculous peer pressure.

5. I do not homeschool to teach him the way I want him to be taught; I homeschool to discover how he learns best so that I might use this time wisely and help him learn effectively. I don't believe that he (or a great many people) learns by sitting passively, by jamming a bunch of information in his head on a week-by-week basis in order to pass some standardized test (that won't benefit him anyways), or by wasting his time pretending to be interested in whatever is going on in the classroom. I homeschool to have one-on-one Socratic discussions with him, to let him speak his own thoughts and wrangle out his own logic, to let him explore freely and find his own interests.

6. I do not homeschool to reenact some terrible, stereotypical Nurse Ratched role (the most ignorant and asinine comment I received was this lovely remark); I homeschool to continue a loving and supportive relationship with my child.

7. I do not homeschool to create some "weird-speaking" child; I homeschool to help him escape the mindless conformity of his peers, who to me can sound quite weird ("Omigawd, I LOVE Miley Cyrus, LOL, hahaha, omg."), if they fall victim to it. I want him to have an authentic interest in the things that appeal to him and to embrace his Nerdom (embrace of things he loves).

8. I do not homeschool to rebel; if he were enrolled in public school, my rebellions would be more apparent: fighting the bad influence of peers, fighting the bullying, fighting the treatment of my son as just another sheep in the flock, fighting the ridiculous rules and regulations (no gun gestures with your hands, or you're expelled!), fighting, fighting, fighting. If parents are involved with their public school kids, there would be a good deal of fighting with the school, and I am not up for that.

9. I do not homeschool because I am "better" than public school teachers; I homeschool because I know my child best and have the best intentions for his education. Public school teachers work their asses off, are underpaid and underappreciated. If they could, they would care about every single child, but sometimes there are too many students, too much acting out, and too little time to see that quiet child who might need more.

10. I do not homeschool to bogart my child or cover him in bubble-wrap: I homeschool to take him OUT into the world rather than keeping him all wrapped up in a brick-and-mortar facility in which they sometimes treat students as budding criminals. I push him to try new things out there, to hike up a mountain, spelunk in a cave, to talk to strangers (gasp!), to use a knife appropriately (instead of being disciplined in the principal's office for carrying fingernail clippers that JUST MIGHT BE A WEAPON). And though I love spending time with him, he isn't a perfect child by any means. Where we live, he plays outside for the majority of the day with kids of all ages and talks with the older ladies in the neighborhood who just love the heck out of him.

11. I do not homeschool because it's "easy" to "stay home in pajamas all day and eat bon-bons" all day; I homeschool because the work is worth it. It's never easy hearing snide comments, answering the socialization question for the bajillionth time, and suppressing the laughter from truly ridiculous comments (Ok, the last one is pretty fun). It's not easy pulling together curricula that best suits an individual person, teaching it in a way that reaches that individual person, and squelching all those old ideas about what schooling should look like. Parenting isn't easy, unless every aspect of it is outsourced.

13. I do not homeschool to hurt your feelings, put you down, or criticize the way you do things; every single friend I have who is a parent is doing exactly what they should for their children, and I am proud to have such friends. Some have harder roads than me to traverse, and they handle their specific circumstances with determination, resolve and the dedication to their children in primary view.

14. I do not homeschool because I am the Saint of Neverending Patience, though I wish she or he would gift me with extraordinary patience at times; I homeschool because I simply care about my child's education. I have just as much patience as the average parent, which is usually not much. It's a continuous reminder to breathe a little, relax, and let it be. I just try to remember that the days (and lessons) are long, but the years are oh, so short.

 15. I do not homeschool to displease you; I homeschool because it pleases us in the way we want to live, with freedom, fun and enjoyment of this one life we have.