Unit Week-Sharing with friends

Tera's candy giraffe
Daniel's little man
Before
After

A couple of our homeschooling friends came over yesterday, Sarah and Amanda with their kids to participate in our unit. JP dissected a worm for the kids. As much as I don't like dissection, it was really interesting. We had a diagram in our science teacher's edition and it was easier than I thought to find all the parts on the not so alive specimen. All the kids made A Winter Count, which is a Native American pictoral calendar. So they drew 12 pictures to represent things that they had done in the past year. I didn't get any pictures but I thought they did a great job. I did a demonstration I found online called Delicious Classification, where you use candy to symbolize the different animal groups. For example, a junior mint represented an insect because it has a hard shell (exoskeleton) and gooey insides. A twizzler was a worm and so on. Then the kids receive a bag of candy pieces and made their own creatures. They turned out really well. We had lots of giraffes, candy men, a dog, a worm and some other things I can't remember now. We played a game called Animal Antics-boys against girls. It too dealt with classifying vertebrates and invertebrates. We ended with lunch, kids playing and adults talking. It was a great time and I was excited that all the kids were into the activities and participated.

The Collage of Doom

Tera's collage
Daniel's collage

This was the last day of our unit week, so we just had a few loose ends to finish. We had a review time on Mammals, Reptiles and Birds and a few small projects. An Animal Classification worksheet and a mammal picture to draw, label and write 3 facts. The big project of the day took 3 hours to finish. I assigned a vertebrate collage, my only rule was no white could show. Who knew that was so hard? Whining, complaining, sighing, and 3 hours later they finished. They didn't complain the whole time, like the time I was helping them. (I'm probably exaggerating just a bit but when something seems easy, it's so frustrating when your kids act like it is the hardest thing you have ever asked them to do. I wasn't exaggerating about the 3 hours. I helped a little more than I really like to but could sense they were getting frustrated). Next time, I'll make the paper a whole lot smaller, I didn't realize they would have that much trouble. They were so tired when they were done, I made them both go lay down for a nap. They haven't taken a nap in over 2 years, but today they are at least gonna try. We are done, their projects look great and I'm pooped, what a day!

Unit Week

We are trying a new schedule this year. 3 weeks of core subjects- handwriting, spelling, reading, math, and language. 1 week on a science and social studies unit study. Tera and Daniel read material from the textbooks and other books dealing with our subject areas during the 3 weeks prior to the unit. This is our unit week. Above are two of the projects Tera and Daniel have done so far this week- paper weaving and line art drawings of a turtle. I think they turned out well but I also believe I'm missing some of my hair especially from the line drawings.

We are doing a Colonial Life unit this week as well as Classifying Animals unit in Science. We are covering different facets of Colonial Life as well as learning the 13 original colonies and The Preamble. Mostly we are reviewing their reading and having a lot of fun with Colonial life- weaving, a little cross stitching, making butter and other recipes, playing Colonial games, exploring school life in Colonial times and more. We have been reading through the novel Johnny Tremain that is set during the Revolutionary period. It has been a great read so far, and we look forward to finishing it soon. It's hard to read out loud with Michael sometimes, he loves to try and eat books right now.

Our classifying animals study is including a lot of experiments and hands-on activities. We are building spider and insect models, experimenting with ants, testing for living and non-living things and other experiments. We've learned about the different ways to classify animals- (vertebrates vs. invertebrates, warm blooded vs. cold blooded) Yesterday the kids made a model of the spine using spools of thread and a straw.

Of course, we are also doing art projects which we never seem to be able to have time to do at other times. I am hoping this schedule will work well for us this year. It always feels there is not enough time to cover everything so this is my solution for our family.