Election Unit Study

I'm looking for ways to do school for the next couple of weeks without having to be as rigorous with our schedule as we have been, and I have had a stroke of genius: we're going to study the election. How perfect is that? We can talk not only about this election, but the electoral process, political parties, city/state/federal government, past presidents, and current political issues. I even happen to have a father who has been on the Carroll city council and can tell us about elections from the "inside."
The only downside to this brilliant plan is that I'm not all that knowledgeable about the current or historical political scene, and I haven't been following the current election AT ALL. I mean, not one little tiny bit. I did see Obama 2016, and I occasionally see a political ad while watching Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives on Hulu, but that's the full extent of it. So once again, homeschooling is giving me the opportunity to learn something that I've always wanted to learn and felt sort of guilty for not knowing. Sometimes, I think it actually helps to be as uninformed as the kids are, because it helps me to teach at their level and be a little bit more patient with them.
I've found some great online resources (through Pinterest, my new favorite thing to do), and I think we're going to do a couple of lapbooks:

Source: homeschoolshare.com via Allison on Pinterest

Source: homeschoolshare.com via Allison on Pinterest

If I had a bunch of kids or a classroom, I'd love to hold a mock election, but I don't know how to do that with just the three of them. Maybe our homeschool group can get together and do something like that. Wouldn't that be cool? They could come up with their own platform, a catchy slogan, a persuasive speech or essay, even an advertising campaign. I suppose all of that is possible without a mock election, too.
Let me know if you have any creative ideas...this is something that I think really needs to hit home with the kids; they need to learn that being involved in the political process is exciting and fun and NOT optional.

The New and Organized Me

Staying Organized

I’ll be honest – I have never been good at keeping track of appointments. We’ve missed practices, dentist appointments, late starts at the public school, and all kinds of other events because I’ve never been able to find a calendar system that I can keep up with. I buy planners and use them for a week or two; I put things into Gmail or Outlook and fail to log in to them for weeks; I write notes that get lost or thrown away or stuffed in the bottom of my bottomless purse.

Enter Cozi, a free online calendar/to-do list/journal/shopping list program that has totally changed my life and reputation. I am now “on-top-of-it” Mom who never misses anything and is actually able to tell people what we’ll be doing and when.

If I had a smart phone, which I don’t, I could look at it and update it from there, but I just keep it all updated from my home computer. I can print weekly and monthly calendars to hang up at home and at John’s office, and I can have text message reminders sent to my “dumb” phone for important things that I’m likely to forget.

When you create your account, you can share your password with the whole family, and everyone can go in and add their own events. You can flag each event for one or more family member and do all kinds of other things that I haven’t used yet.

Check it out! www.cozicentral.com 

Homeschool Share & Lapbooking

Lapbooking is one of the best discoveries I’ve made since I started homeschooling. I would describe it as “educational scrapbooking,” and it’s something that all ages – preschool through high school – can use to enhance their study of a particular topic. They make great presentations for older kids and great “quiet time” activities for younger ones.

Each lapbook has a theme, and it opens up to a bunch of mini books and pictures and activities related to that theme. You can either make the whole thing yourself; or with kids who are old enough to cut or color, you can work together; or, with middle- and high-schoolers, you can have them work completely independently.

There are a ton of websites that sell or offer free lapbook kits, but if you’re creative and have the time (ha!), you can make your own. Homeschoolshare.com has some great free ones; right now, I’m doing one for Esme about apples. We did lapbooks with the boys last year for our book studies of Island of the Blue Dolphins and A Cricket in Times Square; both of those were free lapbooking kits from Homeschool Share.

Most lapbooks use one or more file folders as the base, and you tape, glue, staple, or fasten your materials inside the folders. There are all kinds of neat paper-folding and paper-cutting techniques that you use, which appeals to some kids (Simon) and annoys others (Isaac), but it helps develop hand-eye coordination and forces them to work carefully, which I think are great skills to develop. Take a look: http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.php. 

What We’ve Been Doing

All of my kids love animals. Animal books, animal documentaries, animal stories, actual living animals, dinosaurs…they are just fascinated by anything animal-related. Simon has amazed me more than once by identifying some obscure animal that I’ve never heard of, and Isaac has decided that he wants to write a nature guide about birds. Simon asked me the other day if he could play on the computer, and I reluctantly said yes – only to find out that, instead of playing computer games, he was searching Google images for pictures of gorillas and other creatures that he thinks are cool. Animals are the one topic that they get truly excited to learn about, and we’re always in search of ways to incorporate animals into our studies.

This week, we discovered that Aunt Ann bought us a subscription to National Geographic Kids magazine, which is all about animals. Yay! They also have a huge website (www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/) with videos, pictures, and facts about all kinds of animals, places, crafts, recipes, science experiments, contests, and games. 

There’s even a “Little Kids” version of the magazine for ages 3-6!

Next time we’re looking for a supplement to our curriculum, we’ll have to remember to consider a magazine subscription as an alternative to another book or textbook.

10 Great Homeschool Pages to Like on Facebook

1. Library and Educational Services
2. Holy Spirit Led Homeschooling
3. The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
4. Preschoolers and Peace
5. Practical Homeschooling
6. Lesson Planet
7. I Love Homeschool
8. Homeschool Share
9. Homeschool Freebie of the Day
10. Homeschool Creations

Cricket in Times Square and LibriVox

We finished Island of the Blue Dolphins and have been studying The Cricket in Times Square for the last week or so. We're doing a lapbook, like we did for Island, and we're also using this wonderful site to find activities and English lessons that relate to the book: http://www.mce.k12tn.net/reading24/cricket_in_times_square.htm. One thing I've learned is that Simon doesn't have the stamina for writing that Isaac does, so I try to have Simon do some of his work on his own, then I take over as his "secretary"; he tells me what to write, and I write it. It's amazing how his attitude instantly changes once I start helping him.
So, at one point, Mario takes Chester (the cricket) to the soda shop and gets him a strawberry soda. It's lemon/lime soda, vanilla ice cream, and strawberry syrup. We recreated these at home, which was a much-needed reward after a busy Monday. We also learned early in the story that Tucker the mouse loves liverwurst, so the kids and I had crackers with Braunschwieger with our strawberry sodas. Believe it or not, Simon and Esme had their Braunschwieger eaten before I even had a chance to beg them to try it. Isaac ate it too, and of course, so did I. I tried to take a picture of all of this, only to discover that our newer, better camera is broken. "Grace dropped it" was the story I was told. So, I need to start using the old one, but I was too annoyed to go and find it yesterday.
In unrelated news, I was digging around for a kids' church lesson for Wednesday and I came across this site: http://librivox.org/. It's a collection of free audio books (you can even volunteer to do some recording, if you want to). I didn't look very hard, but in the A's and B's I found Aesop's Fables and the Bible, and I looked a little farther and I found Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, so I think this is worth investigating. I'm listening to "The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg" right now, and it's pretty cool.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

The kids and I just finished reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell, and we did a cool lapbook project along with it. I did not make this project up. (Ha! As if you were wondering.) We got it for free from Hands of a Child, a lapbooking website: http://www.handsofachild.com/freebie.html. I was surprised by how much the kids loved the story, because it is, after all, about a girl...but they were fascinated. I was fascinated too. The book is based on a true story of a girl who lived alone on an island for 18 years! She was finally "rescued," but by that time, no one knew her tribe's native language anymore (the tribe had all died, mainly of disease), so no one was ever able to get the details of what she did all that time. She could only communicate in signs. So it's historical fiction, and it's awesome. We want to watch the movie (circa 1964), but it looks like we'll have to buy it. Here's a link, if you're interested: http://silveragemovies.com/island-of-the-blue-dolphins-1964-p-255.html.
We did find a movie called End of the Spear on Netflix - also on Hulu - also at this website (http://endofthespear.com/%29, which is a great movie about Nate Saint, the missionary pilot who died trying to help the Wuaroni tribe in Ecuador. We read about him for school a few weeks ago and just happened upon the movie while searching the "faith and spirituality" category. There was a documentary about him too, but we haven't seen that yet. Be prepared to read a bunch of subtitles to your younguns, because all of the dialog between the Wuaroni natives is in the Wuaroni language. If you'd rather read the book, here's a link to that; it's written by Nate Saint's son, Steve Saint.
Our other big project right now is studying and memorizing the fruits of the spirit, which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Even Esme has these memorized, although demonstrating them consistently is another matter. For some great songs about this verse (Galatians 5:22-23), check out my YouTube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE7E25DA3AC5CB32.
And that is homeschooling for this week.