History
With the new year comes a continuation of the kids' history lessons. Over 3 terms, we covered everything from the Oregon Trail all the way up to space flight.
We used the Simply Charlotte Mason Curriculum to do our history, both American and World.
For American History, we started with the Oregon Trail (you can play the classic game online!, The California Gold Rush and the events leading up to the Civil War, including slavery. As with previous terms, Olivia continued to write essays about each of the major figures we studied. Her writing has improved in both content and form, though she usually has to write a rough draft first so we can catch mistakes and make sure she's not rushing through them.
As we've gone through the various periods of history, the d'Aulaire books have been a wonderful resource that we've all enjoyed reading. These two were no exception. Buffalo Bill gave the kids a look at the Wild West era while Abraham Lincoln gave us a great view of Lincoln's early life, both as a boy and a young lawyer before becoming President. Another invaluable book that we added (it wasn't part of the SCM curriculum) was Abraham Lincoln's World by Genevieve Foster. Her books not only tell of the subject in great detail but intersperses his story with events and people who were also active at that time.
One of the read alouds from this period was Sarah, Plain and Tall. It tells the story of a family in the late 1800s West who has lost their mother and so their father begins a correspondence with a woman from Massachusetts. When she comes to visit, she changes their world. It's really worth a read if you haven't.
A really cool part of history this term was that we got to study was the invention of some of the things we take for granted today like the telephone and the light bulb. We read all about how Alexander G. Bell and Thomas Edison spent many years of their lives working on hundreds and hundreds of inventions, sometimes competing against each other to be the first to achieve something. It was while reading about these men that we did our Electricity and Magnetism study.
As we finished up the term, Olivia read The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. She has read about her before, but since this was the time period in which she lived and she had dealings with Alexander Bell, we thought it was appropriate for her to read.
We also too a look at the construction of one of the most iconic bridges in the world: The Brooklyn Bridge. Elizabeth Mann's book had amazing illustrations of how the bridge was built and the story of the man who brought his vision to life.
Later, we studied another of our country's great presidents: Teddy Roosevelt. The book was really meant for older children, but we did it as a read aloud at the table and the kids really enjoyed it. They may not have fully understood everything, but, as always, they surprised me with how much they retained.
For world history, we studied such figures as Marie Curie, Alfred Nobel and Otto Von Bismarck. We read about China opening to trade, the Opium Wars, the Boer War and the construction of the Suez Canal.
One of the historical figures we spent a little more time on was Louis Pasteur. The kids really enjoyed hearing about his work on vaccines for diseases like rabies.
However, the real highlight of world history was reading about George Mueller. Mr Mueller ran an orphanage in England and always trusted God to provide for their needs. He never once asked for a donation, but was able to build a home for more than 300 orphans.
For Geography, we read Tree in the Trail, which is the story of a cottonwood tree spanning more than 300 years as it stood along the Sante Fe Trail and saw buffalo, Native Americans, Spanish conquistadores and American settlers traveling along the trail. Even after the tree died, it lived on as a yoke for oxen and became and enduring symbol of life on the frontier in the 1800s.
Some other fun stuff we did included seeing a live presentation of Peter and the Wolf at a local high school. The kids really enjoyed it because they got to meet the various instruments up close. No surprise, Ezra went straight for the drums... :) The kids also did a yoga program called Cosmic Kids Yoga. They do a wide variety of themed yoga routines that really appealed to the kids. I would say the favorite is the Star Wars episode. :)
Finally, for art, we did some art appreciation with the Come Look With Me books. The kids would look at the paintings in the books and then we'd go over some questions about each painting that had to do with their observation of the painting, i.e. the colors, the subject matter, and perspective.
Math
Olivia did a whole new math program this term. SCM has a really neat program that teaches students how to run a business. Olivia ran her own virtual bookstore. I did a post about it here. Once she finished it, we gave her a book called "This is Not a Math Book".
Rather than typical math stuff, the book combined art and math by working with patterns, shapes and artistic (though still math) things like fractals. There were some very cool but also very difficult activities in the book.
Gabe has continued doing his Life of Fred Books and has an absolute blast hearing the stories. He's powered his way from Butterflies all the way into Edgewood!
Science
For science this term, we're reading through this book. It tells the story of a brother and sister in the NC mountains who observe all the various changes that the forests go through in the fall and winter. We took the time to go out and make some of those same observations near us.
Olivia has continued with A Nature Walk with Aunt Bessie and is still enjoying it very much.
Ezra
With Ezra, we started a new reading curriculum from SCM called Delightful Reading. The idea behind it is to get him to recognize words and build sentences with them using recognizable pieces of literature like short passages from the Bible or a simple poem like "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson. The curriculum comes with the words from each passage on heavy, laminated cardstock that have to be cut out individually. Then, after I read the passage to him, we practiced putting the cut out words in the right order. At first he really got frustrated with it, but then I decided to try a different tack. I put the words randomly on the table and then placed the bags (which have labels that have the full line that belongs in that bag, i.e. "All the rain is falling down") on the table and told him to put the right words in the bag. After a couple of days of doing this, it built his confidence to the point that he was able to go back to making the sentences as I read them to him.
He has continued doing his Rod and Staff workbooks along with his sight words each day. He gets very frustrated when he gets things wrong, so there are days when he does better than others.
Emma
Yep, Emma's started school! We're doing simple, basic ABC stuff with her, so we pulled out the Alphabet Art book and have started working our way through every letter.
Each letter has a "letter" activity that involves decorating the letter with something having to do with the letter like "Apple As", where we carved the end of a carrot into the shape of an apple and used it as a stamp on the letters.
Then there's a crafty project like this bee with tissue paper on the body.
She has so much fun doing this! Hopefully that love of school will continue. :)
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