Tons of homeschool info, tips, and links. Homeschooling in Florida, plus lots of other great info. Join me on our Homeschool journey. I have been adding to this blog for almost our whole time as homeschoolers, eight years. There is an abundance of info at your fingertips.
Next up in our World History/Geography tour of Algeria. There is a ton of history in Algeria, as well as wonderful and beautiful places to see and learn about. I have shared some videos, books, links to learning more, and a whole Pinterest page of Algerian recipes. I think we will try to definitely cook something from each country. We have used cooking in our History lessons before, and it is a fun way to learn about other cultures.
On to the next country, Albania. I would really love to visit Albania someday. It is such a lovely looking place, and it doesn't appear most tourists know much about it. I am sure they have a busy season just like any other travel destination, but the quietness of this place is a huge attraction to me. Check out the videos, and links. This post may contain affiliate links. Leave me a comment, especially if you have visited this amazing country.
I made a final test for Civics and US Government, and Caitlin received a 91 on that test. She was very pleased with that grade. She received a 0.5 credit for each class.
I have made her Oceanography final, and she will take that next week.
I still have to average her grade for Sign Language.
That leaves just Math, and Language Arts, her two least favorite classes. She is in the harder parts of Algebra 1b, so I will have her do it over the Summer, just an hour a day a few days a week, because she will be taking the PERT probably in August, and I want her to do as well as she can.
I have already started thinking about next year, actually, I am a little late on this. I will be posting videos and books for a World History/Geography class. I am not sure yet if I will have her do this her Junior or Senior year. I am leaning more towards Senior year.
I will post other items once I decide for sure what she will be doing in her Junior year.
I picked New Zealand to start with because I was curious about New Zealand. The book below, may, or may not be the one I choose to use.
Have I mentioned that I love PBS? I love PBS. This short video below will take you on a virtual field trip to Africa, and there are teaching materials to go along with it. All of these Travel on Tuesday posts serve a dual purpose. 1- for your personal use and 2- for when we do Geography and World History. You need to click the link to go to the website with the video and other teaching information. I hope you and the kiddos enjoy! Let me know what you think.
It just is not what I thought it was, a full year curriculum, that was being offered to free to the first certain number of people who signed up. Guess what, it was three lessons for free, and I advertised a lot for this curriculum. Oh well, live and learn, should have asked more questions, should have investigated more. Bleh!
So, instead Caitlin and I will be doing Geography and Geology for 6th grade Science. She needs to work on map skills, and Geography in general, and we all love rocks in this house. So, this will work out just fine. Here are some of the links to websites we will be using. We actually have a rock tumbler, and some rough. So, as soon as I remember to buy some grit we can polish some gemstones.
I also have a world History book, but I will be using it for the awesome world maps in this book. I love maps, especially old maps. I think we will do some map crafts, and sell some in my Etsy store.
Science, and History were the two subjects that I still had to decide for my daughter, who will be in 6th grade next year. So, I finally decided on the West. The Wild West, history of how the western states came to exist, and Geography of that area. Below you will find the resources I found so far, for this class. I am sure Little House on the Prairie would work too, but she hates it and doesn't want anything to do with it. Netflix has a streaming series called the West, which is a PBS show. We will be watching that. Now, I still have to decide for Science. I do have an older book I might just go ahead and use, not sure.
We did not get to our Native American art, like I had hoped. But, I will definitely get it in this next week. For Geography I want to watch the documentary below about the history of Irish Americans. It is a long documentary, so we might have to split it up into two days. I am hoping to get to the springs within the next two weeks as well. I will have to see how it goes.This weekend I am catching up on grading, planning, and more research for me to go back to school.
I am always looking for ways to make school more enjoyable, yet still educational. I also like to let the kids pick some of their interests to learn about. I would prefer they do them together, but they really have different interests now. So, I asked them each to pick three things they would like to learn about. DJ picked: training the dogs, space and game making. I kind of knew he would pick game making, lol. So, I introduced him to Sploder,and he began making a game. Sploder is free, but if he really loves it, I will look at other options for next year. Once his game is live, he can play other games to earn power ups for his game, and updating it. Kind of cool if you ask me. Most likely both kids will get this free time on Tuesdays.
I found on Educents, a Minecraft set on sale, for Writing and Math. The math is all angles and Geometry, which makes sense considering the game. She actually gets to play the game, then complete the assignments. At only 5 dollars, I would say it is a great deal. Educents also has a mod game for Minecraft, which if I understand correctly allows them to learn coding. Not really sure about it, but might check into it for next year. I have no affiliate with Educents, so I don't earn a thing for telling you about this.
On Wednesdays, we usually do Art. But, since I could not decided what I wanted us to do, I skipped it. I have decided for next week though, lol. DJ is reading about the Trail of Tears, a book I read first. So, I think we will do some Native American Art. Next on his list is 12 Years A Slave. I also read that book. We will watch the movie after, and maybe even dabble in some Art for that topic. Not sure.
Since Mardi Gras was this month, our first Geography lesson was a history of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We used the materials below, with some entertaining discussions. For dinner we made some French Toast.
For week 2 of our American History Art class, we drew log cabins. The kids were not told how to draw their art. The only directions was to draw a log cabin like the Colonial Americans would have had. So, I was glad to see they both drew their cabins in the woods, as did I. They both wanted to leave them as pencil drawings, so I said OK. I think they would look nicer with color, but hey whatever. Mine is not finished yet. I still have to add the outhouse somewhere, and mine will be painted. Speaking of unfinished, I have not finished my Mayflower painting yet. Good grief! Probably Monday, and Tuesday I will catch them all up. For Wednesdays Art class, next week, I decided to do some Mardi Gras Art, and some French cooking. I decided to add some Geography into our Wednesday fun day lessons. We now will do experiments, writing, Art, test day, and Geography on Wednesdays. Nothing major, just some fun stuff. I will try to do the Geography around holidays, or celebrations. Madis Gras will be both for French history, and New Orleans.
We had to cancel our trip to the springs, yesterday, due to it being so cold. I am hoping to reschedule it for a few weeks from now. Have an awesome weekend!
For the month of December, we will be studying Christmas Around the World, for History class. We have done some Christmas for other religions, in the past, this time we will focus on traditions and the holiday in other countries. I am sharing some links for you to pick and choose which ones you would like to use. Below is a video for your kiddos to watch, after you have completed the study. We will be doing one or two different countries each day. For our purposes their activity will be to read about Christmas in a specific country, write Merry Christmas in their language, say what the weather is like at Christmas, find the country on the map, songs, and symbols. Both my kids will be doing this. I probably won't do all the countries listed, as time is limited. After Christmas break we will be doing Virtual Tours of the United States. I am still working on getting that all together, but will share it when it is completed. In my archives you can find the popsicle stick game to help learn the states.
Wow you would have to really have to believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, for this scary fish. Tomorrow is our Earth Kids meeting, and Faith chose the Angler Fish. Below are links to the reading and worksheets we will be doing. Because I could not find ocean theme math for the older kids, I used TLSbooks. There is also a Geography page where they will be identifying what level of the ocean the Angler Fish would live in. Do you know? We also are doing an Angler Fish bird feeder using upcycled materials. I will share those, and how we did it, after they have been completed. Oh, and I almost forgot, for lunch, I am making Angler Fish theme sandwiches. I can not wait to see how these come out. For such a hideous fish, they truly are fascinatingly unique. It has been a good, and productive week, here at Melissa's Homeschool. I am off this weekend, so we will be having some family fun. Hopefully there will be pictures to share.
I am somewhat disappointed because I found some awesome sheets on Teacherspayteachers, that I could not print because I used pdf files not Microsoft Office. Since I have no intentions of getting Microsoft Office, I am really glad I did not pay for something I could not use.
First I must start with my frustration with Entrecard. I do not know what they are doing over there anymore, but they certainly do not enforce their own rules for standards of blogs. This is the second week I have gotten a virus from an Entrecard blog. There are blogs full of redirects, automatic downloads, freeze frames, pop ups, etc, and quite frankly I am not going to use them anymore until they fix it, or clean up their membership. If you are a member of my blogging for fun group, I will obviously continue to visit, and comment on those blogs. If you would like to join our Blogging For Fun group, and get visitors, and comments, click on the green join box, on the side of this blog. I will have to go back to traffic exchanges, and other methods, for traffic, at least for now.
Tomorrow for Social Studies, we are doing how lakes form. I could not find a cool video, for the subject, but I did find a cool video showing lighthouses of the Great Lakes. I love lighthouses, and I love the Great Lakes. Be sure to check it out. By the way my lesson plan for how lakes form, came from Lesson Snips.
Lesson Plans For 09/23/09:
Caitlin: Printing practice Reading: HOP Pig Wig Alphabet Book: Letter I Adding and subtracting acorns Writing numbers 1-5 Site words Same and different: worksheet
DJ: Social Studies: How lakes form, Geography Spelling/Vocab: Use each word in a sentence Language Arts: Capitalization, no prefixes, homonyms Reading Comprehension: Worksheet Math: Subtracting checking your work, compare and order greater numbers, division Cursive handwriting
