Persecution of Homeschoolers

If you homeschool, please watch the below video. Please keep these families in your prayers, and pray that this doesn't happen in our own countries that currently allow homeschooling. I have been praying for the Swedish family for over a year... if you're a praying person, please join me.

Geography Travels: New York

We did our New York unit for 2 weeks in November.  This is the 3rd state that Isaac chose to do in our US Geography studies.  Click HERE for our unit on Missouri and HERE for our Pennsylvania unit.

Week 1

Located New York on a map; found capital, major cities and borders.

Watched these YouTube videos on New York City:

Looked at vintage photos from New York City from the website Photos of Old America.

Began reading All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown, which takes place in New York City.  Isaac read this book daily during our 2-week study.

Listened to “Eastern Border United States Song” from Geography Songs.

New York State Song:

Completed a notebooking page:

Colored the New York flag (from Apples 4 the Teacher)

Using the book Geography from A to Z, we learned about waterfalls, rivers, mountains and islands

Map page from Enchanted Learning

Discussed Norman Rockwell and watched this YouTube video on his artwork:

Using this page from the Norman Rockwell Museum website (teacher resources), Isaac designed his own Rockwell-style cover for the Saturday Evening Post.  I gave him a long list of topics to choose from, and he chose to do a baseball game.

Began our Famous People chart:

Discussed Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and watched the following YouTube videos:

You can watch another YouTube video clip on Emigrants Landing on Ellis Island—it’s actual “silent” footage.  The embedding is disabled, so click on the link to see it.

Here’s the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island website:  Statue of Liberty

Isaac’s page on the Statue of Liberty

Read the book Liberty by Lynn Curlee.

Week 2

Discussed US presidents from New York (van Buren, Fillmore, Arthur, Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, F.D. Roosevelt)

YouTube video clips on presidents

Discussed the Empire State Building and watched this YouTube video clip on the construction of the famous skyscraper—this video is very fascinating.  These workers certainly had nerves of steel!

Color sheet on Empire State Building (I got this from the official Empire State Building website, but I can no longer find it.  There were several nice coloring sheets to choose from, but they’re no longer there!  They’ve made changes to the site in the past month apparently.)

Discussed Niagara Falls, using this website:  Niagara Falls Online and watching these videos on YouTube:

Discussed New York composers Aaron Copland and George Gershwin

Click HERE to listen to my favorite Aaron Copland piece on YouTube (embedding was disabled). 

Here’s a Gershwin piece on YouTube:

Discussed New York author Washington Irving and Yankees baseball player Lou Gehrig:

YouTube video of Lou Gehrig:

Watched Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (originally part of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad  from 1949).  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as you probably know, was written by Washington Irving and takes place in New York.  You can watch it on YouTube HERE (it’s in 5 parts—just follow links).  Preview first to see if it’s too scary for your child.  Isaac loved it!  (Note:  contrary to the title on the YouTube clips, the movie has never been banned.)

Discussed Jonas Salk and watched this YouTube video:

Discussed other parts of New York state, including the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the Finger Lakes; watched these YouTube videos:

Click on this link for a website and another video on the Adirondacks:  Visit Adirondacks

Read about New York from The Spirit of America, by Charles Mathes.

I highly recommend using the book American Grub: Eats for Kids from all Fifty States by Lynn Kuntz and Jan Fleming.  At the time I planned and did this unit, I had lost the book and couldn’t find it anywhere!  I finally did find it, so hopefully I can use it for our next state unit study.

I’m linking this post to “Geography & History” at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

Geography Travels: Pennsylvania

This unit was done a few months ago, so I’m playing catch-up.  I’ve never been to Pennsylvania myself (the Philadelphia airport does not count), but I’d love to visit someday!  Here’s a look at our unit studies:

Week 1

Located Pennsylvania on a map and found capital, major cities, and borders.

Watched this video about Philadelphia:

Isaac began reading The Cabin Faced West, which takes place in Pennsylvania.  He read this book each day throughout our studies.

Listened to “Northern Border United States Song” from Geography Songs.

Using Jolanthe’s Country Factsheet Notebooking Page (Homeschool Creations) as inspiration, I created this form.  However, I later asked her if she’d be willing to make a better form for me.  She did, and you can find Jolanthe’s State Factsheet notebooking pages HERE.

Flag page from Apples 4 the Teacher:

Began Famous People chart (which I made)—We listed these throughout the 2 weeks as we studied them.

Discussed President James Buchanan and watched this video about him:

Read  from Geography from A to Z about: lake, river, and mountains

Map page from Enchanted Learning:

Discussed Mary Cassatt (famous impressionist artist from Pennsylvania) and studied several of her paintings.  (Click on links to see the complete collection of her paintings and to read a short biography.)

Watched this YouTube video of some of Mary Cassatt’s paintings.  There are several paintings of babies and small children without clothing…just to let you know...

Chose Mary Cassatt painting to copy; began working on it.

Discussed Pennsylvania history.

Reviewed “Northern Border United States Song”

Discuss Hershey chocolate and watched this video:

Snack: Hershey chocolate bar (of course)

Finished Mary Cassatt painting (I let him use colored pencils, as we didn’t have the best paint or paper):

Week 2

Discussed Louisa May Alcott.  We meant to watch the movie Little Women.  However, we were back in England by this time and discovered that our dual-player VCR was no longer working.  My Little Women movie is an American (NTSC) VHS tape.  My husband went and bought a used VHS player, but sadly it doesn’t play my NTSC VHS tapes (I have a boxful of them here).  I’m now in the (slow) process of purchasing those particular movies on DVD from Amazon.uk.  I did order Little Women, but it was well after we finished studying Pennsylvania.

Page on the Liberty Bell:

Watched a YouTube video on the Liberty Bell:

Discussed Stephen Foster and watched this video:

Discussed Robert Fulton and watched this video:

Discussed Quakers and Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish and Mennonite)

Discussed Gene Kelly and watched this video:

Discussed George C. Marshall and watched this video:

NOTE: In order to have enough products to add this Amazon carousel to my post, I included the movie Singing in the Rain (which I do have) because it has Gene Kelly in it and also It's a Wonderful Life (which I also have) because it stars Jimmy Stewart, who was also from Pennsylvania (Isaac chose him as his famous person for the notebooking page).

I’m linking this post to “Geography/History” at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.  Click on that link for more posts about geography and history!

Stay tuned for our travels to New York, Kentucky, and Florida!

Tot School: December 6-10

A look at our Tot School this past week:

1.  Letter of the Week (Confessions of a Homeschooler) --Aa ant match.  We also used this to learn colors.  I spread out the ants and asked her to find a certain color.  By the end of the week, she was remembering most of them.  The matching is easy for her.  Remembering what the letter is called is more challenging.  I’m wondering if she’ll be more like Isaac and learn what the letters are called at an early age or more like Moriah who found learning the letter names difficult but was fantastic at learning their sounds.  I really enjoy watching my children grow and learning how each one is so different and unique!

2.  Christmas patterns—Tree and candy cane foam stickers!  This is a favorite activity for her.

3.  Ballerina Dress-Up Mix ‘n Match Peg Puzzle (Melissa & Doug)

4.  Letter A Bowl—I have all kinds of letters: magnets, rubber stamp, puzzle pieces, cutters, Scrabble letters, beads, and more.  I also have letter matching games and wallpaper letters I created myself.  I like to put them altogether in a bowl for Gabriela to play with.

5.  Reindeer clothespins—I love this one!  A friend of mine was going to throw away this box earlier this year, and of course I begged to keep it.  When I found these cute reindeer clothespins at Hobbycraft, I knew they would be perfect with this box.  Gabriela has never had a clothespin activity before, so this was new to her.  At first she struggled, and I had to show her several times how to open them.  By the second day, she was a pro!  She put all 8 reindeer on the box, then took them off, put them inside the box, and put the lid back on.

After writing this post, I happened upon another blog with a similar (but better) activity:  Visit A Little Learning for Two to see!

6.  Find the star!  This was pretty simple, so I don’t know if there is any kind of skill involved.  However, Gabriela enjoyed it and wanted to play several times.  I used peanut butter lids from my lid stash and hid foam stickers under each lid.  I mixed them up and told her to find the star.  Gabriela turned each one over, searching for the star.  After finding a match (the reindeer or the candy canes), she put them on top of the lids.  

7.  My Farm Collage.  This is a collage kit Gabriela received for her birthday.  She did the pig several weeks ago.  This week she did the cow.  I need to get more collage-type kits for her, because she really loves doing them.  I hang the finished animals on the bulletin board, and she’s VERY proud of them!

8.  Pouring activity.  The first day,  I tried using water, and she did quite well.  Because I didn’t have as much time to supervise her on other days, I substituted colored rice.  I think she was actually more careful with the water and enjoyed it more too!  She wanted to drink the water after pouring it, but I hadn’t washed the little cups ahead of time.  I’ll definitely have to repeat this activity because it was obvious Gabriela was very proud of her ability to pour her own drink!  She begged for this activity daily.

9.  Letter of the Week (Confessions of a Homeschooler)—Aa poking page.  Using a carpet square for backing and a toothpick for poking holes, Gabriela poked along the outline of each letter.  Since sitting still is a bit of a challenge for her, I was surprised to see how focused Gabriela was on this activity.  She was very careful to poke the holes just right!  By the way, the yellow lines on the Aa page are not supposed to be there…my printer was acting funny that day.  

10.  My World in a Suitcase.  This is one of my charity shop “finds” (a few years ago).  The cardboard suitcase opens to find 24 little board books, each one about a different part of the world.  The books themselves are very nice and give basic information about a particular country or region.  They would be perfect for continent boxes.  As an added plus, you can build a map of the world by turning the books upside down and putting them together like a puzzle.  The spaces that hold the books have matching parts of the puzzle, so it’s also a matching game!   

11.  Magnetic Gears.  This is yet another charity shop bargain!  My older kids enjoy this one, too.  

12.  A few years ago, we found a small Christmas tree…at a charity shop of course!  We decided to buy it for a “classroom” Christmas tree the kids could decorate themselves.  They’ve even made a few decorations for this one.  Here’s Gabriela doing her part to decorate:

13.  Stringing Beads—Gabriela strung large “jewel” beads onto a pipe cleaner.  When she was finished, she promptly put it up to her head and called it a crown!

14.  Ornament sort.  I bought these for our Christmas sensory tub (which Gabriela still isn’t playing with…sad Mommy).  There were so many of them, I decided to take them out and make a sorting game.  Gabriela immediately knew what to do and did it so quickly that I barely had time to snap a picture.  Even then, she insisted on making funny faces at me.

15.  I got this A page from Making Learning Fun.  You can use it as a magnet page or a Do-a-Dot page, but I had Gabriela use balls of play dough.

16.  Snowy Christmas Jigsaw Book (Usborne)—Gabriela loves this book.  She enjoyed working on the puzzles, too.

For more Tot School posts, visit 1+1+1=1 and click on all the linkies!