I’m afraid it’s been a while since I last featured what’s happening in our family. Once Gary returned from Brazil, we hit life at full-speed-double-time. The only way I was able to catch back up around here was to order a gigantic snowed-in snow-week!
As soon as Gary returned, we unveiled our big surprise for the boys…
Monster + Jam + Las Vegas, NV = Monster Jam World Finals 2015
In March we are indeed headed out west… to see the real-life Monster Jam World Finals in Las Vegas. While this is not necessarily the intended highlight of our Wild-Wild-West trip (I am looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and all the beautiful handiwork of God over on that side of the nation!), the boys are super-duper excited about watching the grand finale of the Monster Jam Freestyle competition. Maybe they will remember seeing the Grand Canyon when they went to Monster Jam World Finals? Maybe?
This month we headed west one weekend to see Gary’s family in Northwest Tennessee (top photo in this post) and then headed east another weekend to go to Wilderness of the Smokies for David’s birthday.
Notice that I took something educational along (haha). Not only did we play Scrabble in the evenings, we listened to the entire audiobook of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch on the way over to Sevierville. This has got to be one of our all time absolute favorite books!! If you’re wondering what it would look like to enjoy a real-life, classical, Thomas Jefferson education, I think this book comes pretty close to experiencing an adventure of learning just for the joy of learning. Wonderful! (By the way, audiobooks have been our lifeline for keeping on top of reading this year. It has been extra-tough to have our normal read-aloud times with the boisterous baby in our midst. We even finished up Story of the World Volume 4 while on our trips this past month.)
David asked for some interesting things for his birthday this year. He is very much a weather man, so he ended up with weather kits, along with a microscope and slides (with things like “Dog Stomach”), and a grossology lab that comes with a toilet mixer (shown below upper right).
We even made fake snow with one of the weather kits, after which we experienced real snow here in the “holler.”
An entire 5 days of sledding! These boys were just beside themselves, overcome with joy! They have waited five years for this! The view off the front porch was simply amazing. {Thank you, Lord, for all of this.}
So… it is taking me much longer nowadays to collect my thoughts and memories. I can’t seem to sit down for long to write up posts about what we’ve been doing. So, here’s another three weeks in review!
Educational Pursuits: A Three Four Week Overview
As we ventured into studying the Periodic Table of Elements…
Stephen read (cover to cover!) The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe and Molecules: The Elements and the Architecture of Everything by Theodore Gray. He even took them on our trip because he did not want to have to wait to finish them. These books are so engaging and down-to-earth! I consider these to be “living books” for chemistry and am definitely glad to have them in our personal library, as I know we will return to them often in the coming years. We also added the matching Photographic Card Deck of The Elements to our homeschool supplies, but given the choice between the two, I would opt for the books rather than the cards. After all, you can make homemade flashcards, or you can even download these from the EllenJMcHenry Basement Workshop (which is what we did last time we were in Cycle 3).
At the other extreme, we have David, who prefers the more playful Periodic Table: Elements with Style! book and cards. He enjoyed “building” the periodic table with the cards, and then singing the first twelve elements of the periodic table by atomic number, element, and atomic mass.
I’ve found that this book is much shorter and easier for younger children to understand overall, but instead of a photograph of each element (as in Gray’s books), it has a cartoon illustration for each of the elements. (It also does not include all of the elements – just a selection of them.) Note: We found the corresponding cards for $3 at an Ollie’s, (along with other Basher Science cards).
Other books we enjoyed during Week 16 when we studied immigration were The Memory Coat, and When Jessie Came Across the Sea, two precious picture books that give a glimpse at what it may have been like to be an immigrant coming to America.
As far as week 17 and 18 (World War I & II) were concerned… let’s just say I’m glad we had a snow week to “catch up” on some reading!
Written by the discoverer of the Titanic, Ghost Liners: Exploring the World’s Greatest Lost Ships is the most fascinating book I have come across related to World War I, with stories about real passengers who boarded the Lusitania, Titanic, Empress of Ireland, Britannic, and Andrea Doria, along with images from the shipwreck investigations. An added benefit: We now have a presentation topic for each of the next five weeks!
Remember the Lusitania is an engaging account of the Lusitania as well, but it is emotional and a bit too graphic for young children. DK Readers: Disasters at Sea is a great reader that includes an account of the Lusitania’s tragic end.
The only book that we struggled with finishing was Minn of the Mississippi. It just has not been as engaging for us as Paddle-to-the-Sea was, although the illustrations and geography-science-history connections are great.
Two of our books for this week are books we stored on the shelves from last year’s study of WWI: Where Poppies Grow: A World War I Companion and In Flander’s Fields.
While In Flander’s Fields is more of an illustrated children’s book (with background info at various points in the book as shown in the photo on the left), Where Poppies Grow offers an overview of various aspects of WWI, including the poem “In Flander’s Fields:”
Finally, we arrive at Week 18…
Our favorite books for World War II were 26 Fairmount Avenue, which isn’t about the war but is a hilarious account of Tomie DePaola’s childhood during that time period, and Franklin and Winston: A Christmas That Changed the World, which is a favorite picture book for our family. The boys were also very interested in The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey, a biography about the authors of Curious George, which happens to be one of their favorite children’s book series.
Garfield is a major “thang” in our family, so another must-have in our collection is In Dog Years I’d Be Dead: Garfield at 25. My mom bought me this book years ago because of my own obsession with Garfield. What I did not realize until this year is how the book ties in to Norman Rockwell…
Other books for Week 18 included DK Readers L4: D-Day Landings: The Story of the Allied Invasion, Pearl Harbor (National Geographic Collector’s Edition), and a short biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In addition to reading, we do a lot of brainstorming on the whiteboard together. I have discovered that… when Essentials (or any other subject) is becoming tedious for us, the whiteboard is such a great tool to use! It is so much fun to discuss books or grammar or writing together! Not only that, it is such an excellent tool for keeping up with the independent reading our oldest child is doing.
The above photo is called a “Plot Diagram,” where you list (or your child lists) the setting, characters, events/plot, climax and resolution. It’s a great way to keep up with your independent reader and stay connected with what they’re reading. Find out more about it in the program Teaching the Classics.
About Community
I love our homeschool group. They are some of my best friends. They are like family. I hurt when they hurt. I rejoice when they rejoice. We sometimes have disagreements and have to seek or offer forgiveness, just as families often do. But through it all they remain my best friends (and my children’s best friends), and I love to share joy and laughter with them.
Because I am not a tutor, I can easily fall prey to the false idea that I don’t matter much. But… the strengths I offer are not tied up in whether or not I tutor – they lie in the fact that I love to host parties, and I love to help behind the scenes, and I love to plan field trips. (Of course planning made it in there, right?!?) We have taken a few field trips this year and have enjoyed our moments of exploring together inside and outside of our co-op day! Our trip to the Nashville Symphony gave us a chance to explore a bit of Tchaikovsky and then visit over Chick-fil-A sandwiches and IceDreams on the way home. If arranging field trips is your gift, it is a wonderful one to give to others! If it is not, maybe your gift is offering a genuine smile or word of encouragement, or making a pot of coffee, or writing a note to send through the mail every now and then? I have discovered the more I give to our homeschool group, the more a part of it I become. Just a thought I’m considering as I think of how much my community means to me!
Well, it looks like I’ve made it a tradition to write a post about our family every three weeks now, which makes for some awfully long posts! Nevertheless, here’s hoping you have also enjoyed the past month! Stay warm!