Lewis and Clark: A 3 Week Unit Study

This unit study is available for our patrons over on Patreon and covers science, language arts, history, and art. You will be doing a Minecraft reenactment of the journey, working with maps, studying animals and tracks, and playing Discoveries, The Journals of Lewis and Clark. It is geared toward grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8  but can be adjusted for higher or lower grades.

This unit study contains a list of resources and  activities for you to use in your studies. Choose those that will best suit  your students, time, and learning environment. My hope is that you will enjoy  the process of learning and not feel constricted by the timeline or  activities. Make changes as they suit your needs and enjoy your time learning  together! 

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First Grade Curriculum Choices

It is almost time to start a new school year at our house. We are changing up everything. I am also happy to report that, wile it was not the determiner, we were also down by half for our budget too. We are really looking forward to trying out our new goodies, but for now I will just share with you what they are...

Illuminations 1 is our core model this year. It is kind of strange because it is just a downloadable file that includes your curriculum choices to buy separately and the year planned out for you. It has set up for 3-8 grade and high school as well as adjustments for younger learners. If we like this curriculum we can use it 3 times over! That is something I can wrap my mind around!

Mystery of History is the glue that will be sticking our whole year together. MoH is a chronological whole world history from a Christian world view. Bible history is included and put in with more common history for a chance to see what order it all happened in. Mister is a huge history buff, at 5, and so a curriculum focused around history is going to be right up his alley. All the readers on the reader list build upon the lessons learned in MoH. This can also be used 3 times.


Life of Fred is our math focus for 1st grade. Mister has fantastic reading comprehension and learns so much from reading books. Life of Fred teaches math through the story of Fred's life. It also shows how math is used instead of the typical worksheet format he will be learning the practical uses of the math he is learning. We can run through the books each year till he moves up in 4th or 5th grade.

The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide is one I don't know much about. It can be used through graduation. I will have to give you more information when I have started using it.

Grammar Punk looks fun. We are going to give it a shot. It uses dice to write sentences. It can be used through 3rd grade. I don't have this one yet, so I can't give you much on this one either.

For Science we will be reading through the mass of free kindle books I have been collecting over the last year. Mister will be learning all about animals from all over the world.

Bible is going to be covered a bit in our history lessons anyway so I think we will just read a chapter from Mister's bible each day. Of course, we will also have to watch What's in the Bible too. After all it is fun and we all learn from it!

We will continue working with Alpha Phonics and then we have agreed to let him have Magic Tree House and Boxcar Children books to practice with after that. We are really looking forward to the next school year but for now we are just having fun finishing up kindergarten!

Kindergarten Curriculum Review

We are almost done with the school year and I thought it was high time I shared my thoughts on all the curriculum we were using. I should mention that we will not be using any of these choices again next year but that is not because we didn't like them. One main reason is that we want to be more compact for our move into the mission field. 

The Sonlight core curriculum has been mostly good. There were a handful of readers that Mister did not really get into but we did find some new favorites. I would definitely use Sonlight again and plan at least get some of the readers from future years. Their book list is very good.

 

All About Reading Level 1 was a big hit at our house. Mister loved the hands on activities and it all stuck. It is very slow paced compared to Alpha Phonics, which we switched to when he finished level 1. We have been very happy with Alpha Phonics. It is very basic but he has already advanced past what he would have learned over the course of a year in All About Reading level 2 and we are still doing kindergarten at our house. Plus, Alpha is available on the Kindle so that is great for compactness!

I have to say I am not a big fan of All About Spelling. Some of the beginning activities helped him get started, but it would be just as easy to just have him spell words as he learns to read them. I don't think I would do a spelling curriculum again for Mister.

SonLight science was okay. I was disappointing to find that there was a box of supplies that needed to be ordered separately on top of the box that was included. I did not order the extra box. We are nearly done with all the science and have added a large pile of science books besides as we read them all faster than the schedule suggested. I would skip Sonlight Science in the future.

We ended up skipping Horizons math (shown above). Instead we went with Math U See. Mister got it and whipped through the workbook with ease. He did not like the math blocks and we started using Squinkies instead for much more fun and homeschool happiness. I wasn't feeling the Math U See groove this year and with the added fact that they are conforming to common core standards, I will not be purchasing from them in the future.

Handwriting Without Tears was done quickly. It lasted about 1/2 the year but Mister loved it and his handwriting is looking great, when he makes sure to do it correctly and not just mess around. This was a great choice and I am glad that we were able to use it. I would absolutely buy HWT again!

Little Passports got cut in November and we started doing our own series on the blog (World Travels on the side bar). Little Passports was fantastic and I highly recommend it. We just felt that we could spend less and focus more on what we wanted him to learn if we created our own. Plus the goodies we buy are just for him and are things we will actually use and he will love.

Dance also got the boot. We felt Just for Kix was way to commercial. Every dance class they were trying to sell us stuff (t-shirts, bags, ect.). It was hard for Mister because it was all geared toward girls. We did start using some awesome workout apps on the kindle and we have been walking and biking every chance we get.

It has been a great year! We still have a couple of months to go since we are schooling year round. Most of his curriculum is going to be finished this week though. We are going to do a long unit on Little House in the Big Woods. Mister loves the book as far as we have read it and we will be incorporating lots of activities too. 

Want to know what we are using for 1st grade? Joins us again tomorrow to find out!

Egyptian Dig

Jayne really enjoyed November's Little Passports package! He got Egypt and Sam and Sophia sent him a pyramid excavation kit. I have seen these in the store before and thought it might be a 5 minute project. As it turns out, it took us about 30 minutes to dig out the little quarter sized trinket. Those little buggers are really hard and the tools that come with it are not designed for cracking it at all. We had so much fun working on it though and by the end all 3 of us were digging at it, between photos. Little guy was so proud of our effort when he was finally holding his mini Sphinx!

Daddy gets a turn

It is getting smaller at this point and I am trying to get a large chunk off since we know where the trinket is at this point.

Little Guy with his Sphinx!

Passport is Here

Jayne's first month of Little Passports has arrived! It came much faster than expected, arriving before we start school. The look on his face when he saw he had a package was priceless.He was a bit disappointed to find out it was not a toy. I don't know why he seems to think he should be getting piles of toys in the mail. We certainly haven't given him any reason to think that. We read the letter from Sam and the excitement was back. Especially when he found out that he would get a package every month.



Checking out all that is inside.

The most exciting task f decorating the suitcase with stickers.

He had to lay out everything for his daddy to see.

He will be needing help with the activity sheets and online activities since he is not a strong reader yet, but he is looking forward to it and so am I!

Homeschool Fun: Getting Aquainted

Jayne is so darn excited to start kindergarten. One day we had a bit of extra time during school and so we got acquainted with some of his new school goodies.

We started by making Mat Man. The blue mat and wooden pieces are part of his Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. This is one of the pre-writing activities and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Then we got out the Math U See poster and used his blocks to make all of the buildings. We had to cannibalize the middle sized house to be able to make the whole castle. I think we will probably get another set of blocks, but for now we are fine.

He had just as much fun putting the pieces away too. I really like how hands on his lessons will be. It makes leaning so much more fun.



Kindergarten Curriculum

I realize that many of you are just glad that your kids are back in school after Christmas break, but at our house the conversation has been all about next year's curriculum. I have spent a considerable amount of time researching Jayne's curriculum for next year since the school year started. Last night we made our final decisions. It was hard because there were many that I wanted to try and a few that would have involved me making the curriculum for the subject. So what did we choose?

We are using the SunLight core for history, geography, and bible. It also has a reading program that is several readers and we will have a blast reading them together, but for his official learning to read program we are going to go more hands on with...

All About Reading Level 1! I am very excited about the program and especially that it is hands on and will be a fun way for Jayne to learn to read.

All About Spelling is also very hands on. Jayne will be working on Level 1 here too.

He will be learning biology, botany, and physics with SonLight science. Plus we will be adding in some fun with Magic School Bus science projects on our 5th days. To clarify here, we do a 4 day school week. We have 2 days to spend with Adam and Saturdays we catch up on any chores that may have been missed during the week. So 5th day activities will be fun family activities and field trips.

We chose Horizons math from SonLight because if we chose to go all SonLight in the years to come, that is the one that is included in the set. I am not sure if we will like this one, but it is worth trying and we can always pick something new for 1st grade if we don't like it.

Handwriting Without Tears was chosen for the same reason as math, but this one does look like a great program and I look forward to trying it out.

We are also planning on doing Little Passports to supplement his Geography lessons and have a little fun. We will doing Nickelodeon Fit for PE in the winter, spending lots of time walking in the summer (because we always do), and may put him in dance class. He loves to dance and it is something he wants to try, so why not.