Our homeschool ~ the last week edition

I am so behind on updating our homeschooling adventures.  My Baby Boy has been running fever for two days and I’ve pretty  much been holding him and trying to teach the older kids while doing that.  It is…interesting.  It’s one of those times that as a  homeschool mom you practice flexibility and focus on the basics. 

However, last week, everyone was well and we had a great week filled with fun experiences!

My two older boys are doing Chemistry this year in Science.  (We are using Christian Kids Explore Chemistry.)  We have been studying atoms and since it is so abstract they were having trouble understanding it.  I knew that I needed to make it concrete.  So we got out the play dough in three different colors. 

We made protons using blue, electrons using red, and neutrons using green.  Then we made atoms.  The boys even learned how to determine the number of protons, electrons, and neutrons for an element using the periodic table.  They loved it! 

I also made the decision (in April!) to make the switch to notebooks for some of the older boys’ subjects.  I had been using loose-leaf paper & worksheets and then putting it into a binder for the boys.   It was just too much work for me.  The boys are enjoying having notebooks (especially my oldest son).  Not only do they record their learning, they also glue diagrams and pictures in it.  It’s kind of like a lapbook in a notebook.  It is helping me too by decreasing some of my workload.  That’s always a good thing!

I try to combine subjects like science or history for my children.  It really helps me in the planning department.  I am pretty sure this will be last year that I can do that though since my oldest will begin 7th grade in the fall and that will mean he will need to focus on getting ready for high school and college.  (yikes!)  Anyway, Sunshine Girl was studying U is for umbrella and weather & rainbows.  So my older two boys learned about tornadoes using parts of the lapbook from Homeschoolshare and a science textbook that I had on my shelves. 

We made a tornado by using duct tape to attach two Coke bottles together.  We were able to see the tornado but I think it would have worked better if our bottles had been 2 liter bottles. 

 It’s blurry but can you see the tornado?

Flower Girl studied weather and rainbows with Sunshine Girl.  Here are some pictures of her and her activities last week:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Links to her activities:

Rainbow Lapbook at 1+1+1=1

Catch a Rainbow science experiment

We also did some color mixing using tempera paints & q-tips.

Everyone wanted to get in on the color mixing.  It made me realize that the older boys need to make a color wheel in the future.  They had fun mixing a lot of colors from just the three primary colors.

And if the paints are out, you know we have to paint some pictures.  ;0)

We finally finished our reading of Mr. Popper’s Penguins this week.  I loved that when David got home from work, the boys wanted to tell him what had happened at the end.  I am looking for a new read aloud to finish out our school year.  I’m thinking about The Swiss Family Robinson or The Cricket in Times Square.  

For their independent reading, my children each choose a book that I have on a list for them to read.  Here is what they are currently reading.

Flower Girl ~ 1st grade ~ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Hot Rod ~ 4th grade ~ Henry Huggins

The Hunter ~ 6th grade ~ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  (One of my childhood favorites.  He said it was better than the movies!)

We had a great week of learning fun!  So far this week has been fun too even with a sick baby in my lap.  Actually it’s been so good that I’m going to extend the unit for another week because the kids are having fun.  They have actually told me, “Thanks Mom!  It’s been fun!”  Oh, how I love it when that happens!

Lapbooking

I have said it before but we love making lapbooks. I wanted to share one of the lapbooks that my son made for our Thanksgiving unit.

Some people get really fancy with the file folders and different folds for the little books that go inside. We keep it pretty simple. I want my children to construct most of the book themselves and while some of the folded books are really neat, if I am the one who has to do it, then it is my project and not my child’s. Also, we only had manilla folders but we have used colored folders too.

We use information from various sources. For this book we used, History Pockets: Colonial America, Enchanted Learning, and parts of a free lapbook from Live and Learn Press. We usually use lapbook pages from homeschoolshare.

We read our books which are our sources of information and then we color pictures, maps, etc. to put in our books. We will write narrations throughout the lapbook.

Some of the books look rather simple but…

once unfolded, you can see that they contain other information. The boys had to write the requested information in this book.

This was the favorite activity of the whole lapbook. They had to complete a poll of how many people like dark meat and how many liked white meat. They then graphed the results.

The final assignment is a narration of the information that they learned. I type for them and we place it in the lapbook.

It’s not unusual for the kids to pull out a lapbook from the past and reread it. They are a great learning tool!