Sea and Sky

Over the last 9 months, the boys have been doing a curriculum from WinterPromise called "Adventures in the Sea and Sky" that has been really cool.

It started with the history of sailing ships, way back in Egypt and the first fishing ships and went era-by-era through history, up to today with our huge, satellite-guided supertankers. It went in to great detail and they had to learn about things like the names for each part of a sailing ship, sailing lingo, and how the steam engine changed ships forever.

One we finished with ships, it transitioned over to the "Sky" part and they started learning about air travel starting with balloons and going all the way to space travel, the moon landing and the International Space Station.

If there's one unifying theme to the entire curriculum, it would have to be "Exploration." The books and activities were all geared towards learning how the known world has expanded through each leap forward in sea and air technology. In the middle of all that was science about oceans, sea and air creatures, weather and weather forecasting.

Each boy had a "Captain's Log" that had various worksheets for them to do related to the readings. While Gabe can read and write, Ezra isn't quite there yet, so I had to help with that part. Truthfully, it frustrated them both a lot of the time because Ezra's not writing much yet and Gabe really doesn't like writing. They didn't mind doing some matching or coloring, but if they had to write more than a couple of words for an answer, they balked at it. Most of the time, I let it go because when I would ask them to narrate back to me what they heard me read, they could do it flawlessly. What was really cool about their narrations was how Ezra would get one thing from the readings while Gabe would get something else. If I let them do it together, they'd go back and forth and between them , I'd get the whole story back from them. 

As far as the readings, we used a TON of different books. The main ones that come with the set are produced by WinterPromise. The books "An Unfurling Sail," Sailors, Whalers, and Astronauts," and "Under the Sea and In the Air." They each have short sections that have activities or additional places to look for more information.

An Unfurling Sail primarily covered sea transportation from its roots in ancient times and the first sea-going vessels up to World War II and the advent of modern ships. It talked about the effect those advancements had on history and science.

Sailors, Whalers, and Astronauts generally had one or two pages each day that covered a specific area of life on a ship like the names for various parts of a ship, the games and activities sailors would use to pass the hours, and the various jobs of men on the ship. True to its name, it also covered whaling ships and how they worked before moving on to space travel. Those two things don't necessarily sound like they should go together, but they actually do when you consider the exploration aspects.

Under the Sea and In the Air was mainly science-based. It taught the boys about various sea and air creatures, the ocean and the atmosphere. To go along with this, we did Apologia's Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. The two curricula dovetailed pretty nicely together and gave a really broad view of the huge variety of creatures in the seas and the sheer expanse of the ecosystem.

The Apologia science, like the other ones we've done comes with a journal of activities for them to do and in the book, there are various little experiments for them to try. 

 In this one, they made animals out of Play Doh. Ezra made a dolphin and Gabe made a seahorse.

 Here, they cut out puzzle pieces from their journals and put them all together. It wasn't as easy as I expected it to be.. There were a couple of them that could have gone on a different animal.

 This one showed them how different size vessels made different sounds when the wind blows across them.

Here, they had to figure out how much water it would take to make the Lego ice cube float exactly in the middle of the glass.

 It demonstrated the neutral buoyancy that fish have and how they use their air bladders to go up or down in the water.

The whole year was a very interesting journey, but there were a couple of big highlights that the boys particularly enjoyed.

They loved the story of Shackleton and his crew being stranded in the ice of Antarctica in 1914.What amazed them the most, after hearing about all the trials and tribulations they endured, was that not a single man died on the expedition.

They were also fascinated by the story of Captain James Cook and his 3-year journey when he "discovered" Australia, visited a ton of South Pacific islands, Hawaii, (where Cook died) along with the journey itself. Because the story is told from the perspective of a fictional young boy who stowed away on the ship with the help of a couple of crew members. Once the ship was out to sea too far to turn back, they took him out of hiding and presented him to the captain, who, after some punishment, made him a cabin boy. While they couldn't wait to hear the story each day, they weren't to keen on the idea of going off to sea. It sounded like too much hard work! ;)

All-in-all, this was such a great year of study. The boys loved it and it was a great journey of exploration for them!