Our Latest Homeschool Adventures

 We have continued our trip through American History. We are now also doing some geography by going through each of the states. Olivia has a notebook that she add pages to each time we talk about an event, person, or state. We also have a timeline hanging on our wall that she adds to. We have covered the first 17 states. We try to enjoy something specific to a state when we study it, like we made peach cobbler when we talked about Georgia, and enjoyed maple syrup on ice cream when we talked about Vermont. For each state she writes the abbreviation, the capital, and colors in the bird and flower. We also find that state on the larger US map in our notebook. She places a flag sticker on the page as well. We learned about the Statue of Liberty when we covered NY. As we trek west through KY, TN, and OH, we have learned about Daniel Boone, Eli Whitney, and Johnny Appleseed. We have also talked some about how the pioneers made their clothing (not going to the local store but making it by hand) and also what their schools would have looked like and how they would have learned to read and such.

We just finished reading Farmer Boy as our read aloud. Olivia was a huge fan of the book. She was sad when it was over. We are going to start Betsy's River Adventure which is set in 1808 and talks about a girls journey westward on the Ohio River.

Our current names for Jesus have been the Way, Immanuel (God with Us), and the Lamb of God. It is so neat how God reveals himself through all these names in the Bible. He is a God that knows us and is able to meet our needs.

We have done some further reading about birds as we talk about each state's bird. We have been watching our bird feeders closely and trying to identify the birds that come into our backyard. We have also been joining some friends to put together a bird lapbook as we learn about them more. We are also learning about birdwatching. Olivia has chosen hummingbirds as her favorite bird so we got some books and have learned more about them specifically. We tried to put out a hummingbird feeder but were only somewhat successful in attracting them. Of course, now it is getting too cold but hopefully in the spring we will have more success. Pictures and more information on the bird study to follow at a later time as we are still working on our lapbooks. :) Also for science we talked about weather and made a weather vane to determine which direction the wind is blowing. We also are learning about how to tell direction and approximate time of day by the position of the sun. We did some experiments to check out how warm air expands and rises and cold air shrinks.

Some recent artwork:

She learned how to draw stars. (Those are feet sticking out of the tent!)

Contour Drawing - Not an easy task!

Color mixing - Learning to observe that there is more than one color to things, i.e. the sky, leaves on trees...

Olivia continues to practice her reading. We are specifically working on punctuation and reading out loud so that it makes sense. We are also working on basic reading comprehension. She is learning to write sentences of her own now. She is enjoying writing letters to family and friends.