An awesome world = our classroom! Nature Days with our Homeschool Friends: LOVE

One of our co-op moms led an awesome two-day nature adventure for our homeschool group this summer. We started with a nature show and tell, exploring items brought in by students, everything from turtle skeletons to wood duck nests. Followed by a hike to explore various plants, trees and foliage, and some rules of thumb to identifying what you find in nature- and what is safe to eat or not. The kids took notes in nature journals and also colored pictures of how nature made them feel. It was great!
The subsequent day was even better. We headed to Jackson's Landing, a shallow portion of the large river that runs through our town. The kids got to wade in and find all sorts of life- from beetles and water spiders to crayfish and minnows- even down to microscopic creatures- and categorize what they scooped up and discovered. It was a fantastic day of educational fun! What an awesome world we live in, and it's all our classroom for the taking!

Homeschool Show and Tell Showcase

As home learners, it's important we foster opportunities for our kids to experience show and tell moments, to present projects they've worked on, demonstrate pride in their work, share the excitement of what they have learned with their peers, etc.
Here are some highlights to our most recent showcase, the kids shared their favorite projects from the year with their friends, and got to see the cool stuff built by their buddies. One awesome family displayed an amazing medieval castle they built with their dad--it was the size of an entire room!! It had a draw-bridge that worked, with a courtyard, several buildings and towers, along with a moat and a board report all about knights and castles. Totally great!! Home education rules!

From London to Jamestown in 1609: Colonial History Lit class: A Lion to Guard Us

I taught a fun colonial history/lit class at our homeschool learning cooperative last trimester on the short historical fiction novel, "A Lion to Guard Us," by Clyde Robert Bulla. The kids all followed the book at home and then on Fridays during my class we did hands-on projects and discussion of the book.
The book follows 3 children who live in London and travel to the New World to find their father in Jamestown, Virginia on the Sea Venture in 1609 through the Virginia Company, so along with various literature elements such as similes, cliff-hangers, mood and symbolism, we were also able to cover a good deal of historical events.
Throughout the 10 weeks we examined numerous "Then and Now" comparisons while doing fun hands-on activities, including making soap, making butter, quill feather pens, oil lanterns and making small candles, and the kids had a blast packing their own travel chests and bringing them in to show and tell what essentials they would bring with them to the "New World."
The Lion's Head door knocker is a vital center to the story, and I was blessed to get an identical one (the fact that it was brass was also central to the story) from a friend in Grand Rapids who picked it up for me from an antique store for $7.






Mid-trimester I had set-up a field trip for our homeschool group to a nature center's sugar bush tour and it worked out great as they went over the history of how Native Americans and the early pioneers made maple syrup.

On the last day, we also played some games like Tic Tac Toe with ships and lion heads, which the kids enjoyed, and I gave them journal pages called "The Starving Time" with a girl's picture on it that they could continue the story from the lead character, Amanda's point of view on their own after the novel ended.


It was a great trimester and a fun unit. I drew many ideas from Laurie Carlson's Colonial Kids Activity book, too. Here are some more extremely helpful links:
On The Trail of Captain John Smith: A Jamestown Adventure from NGK
A Lion to Guard Us unit study from the Homeschool Share

And here is an awesome short video on the exact ship from the story, the Sea Venture!

Highlights from our Homeschool Week

A glimpse in the life of our normal homeschool week.

Monday: We started out the week learning about natural disasters, specifically studying Joplin, Missouri and the tornadoes that devastated the area. We put together Animal Relief Kits to send to the animal shelter down there. You can read more about those activities in my Lessons from Natural Disasters post. That afternoon we headed out to the playground for our designated Monday playdate with my kids' friend Gabbie and her baby sister. We arrived early and as my son cat-napped in the car, my daughter and I enjoyed some books we keep on hand for "car-schooling" moments like these. My car-tote includes dry erase learning books, library books, flashcards, BrainQuest cards, etc.
Making a Tornado, see my Disaster Post for instructions.


Reading time in the car with my daughter while my son zzzzzzzzzz....


The Historical Society in front of the park, like many small local museums, has an enormous antique farmer's stump remover. We got a closer look before our friends arrived at the playground.





After our afternoon playdate, we headed to the library for an hour before my daughter's soccer practice. My daughter played computer games independently while my son did puzzles and searched I-Spy books.



We finished up the evening with soccer practice and my daughter's friend Chloe did this hilariously awesome super goalie kick. :)


Tuesday: Regular school work like math and reading, outdoor chores including gardening and chickens, followed by another afternoon playdate up north at our friend's house.








Wednesday: It was a rainy day, so we postponed our afternoon playdate and stuck with our school work. Currclick gave away an awesome free copywork notebook of the Winnie the Pooh story, "Piglet Meets a Heffalump," so my daughter worked diligently on that. She's working on penmanship and spacing, learning to stay in the lines with her letters and doing a terrific job. We read a great book about Amelia Earhart, one of my daughter's favorite historical heroines. It was about her night flight across the Atlantic Ocean, so of course we did further study on the Atlantic. She is also doing wonderfully on reading short Scholastic readers independently.






Thursday: We did a really fun unit study on Manatees, inspired by my daughter's latest issue of Your Big Backyard magazine. See my Manatee Moments post. We had fun trying to decide what to make the Manatee out of for our diorama, finally settling on a potato.


Friday: The Last Day Party of our weekly Homeschool Learning Cooperative before summer break. Classes start up again in the fall. We had an awesome first year and celebrated with games and treats with our friends. I ordered an adorable "Smart Owl" graduation cake for the occasion and we played carnival games before enjoying playground time. Afterward we kicked off the weekend by going as a family to see Kung Fu Panda 2 at the movie theater. Great times!