In Social Studies Connor is continuing to learn about the Native People of North America. Yesterday he watched Videos and Read about the Anasazi People-feel free to use our links. Today he started a Minecraft build to replicate the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi. He also learned about how they farmed, created irrigation systems, and handcrafted Baskets to gather produce. He also learned about the pottery they to transport water, and cook in. Here are some photos from his Minecraft build. Here is another fabulous link to the Manitou Cliff Dwelling Site where you can find out more information about the culture and architecture of the Anasazi.
I figure weekly updates might be a little more interesting than Daily. Connor has been enjoying his P.E Class at our Public School. They are learning how to play Ultimate Frisbee and Soccer. Our Scholastic Books arrived-we love Scholastic! We Ordered quite a few books for History-We are studying U.S History all year. Connor was clearly inspired by our Trip to the Ripley's Believe it or Not exhibit. He Ordered the 2016 Special Edition Ripley's Believe it or Not and the Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer's Edition. We are still focusing on "Color" in Art. Connor created this Watercolor Color Wheel this week by blending Primary Colors to Create Secondary Colors. Our Writing Tutor Abigail grew this beautiful Sunflower and Gourd. We are keeping them as some Inspiration for our Art Project tomorrow. We had some fun Playing some new Games for Geography this week. We played The Scrambled States of America Game. I really liked how this game has you take a closer look into the states location-compared to other neighboring states, as well as State Sayings, and Capitals, I also found this oldie but goody National Geographic Global Pursuits Game at Goodwill. I couldn't believe it had never even been opened! I love those kinds of finds. This one really proved to be a challenge. In addition to having to re-create the Globe, it also has Trivia questions. We were able to sneak in a quick game of pool during our break. We've added some new resources this year. One of the items we have added is the Junior Scholastic Magazine. In addition to a Magazine that is jam packed full of articles related to important events, it also includes a Teachers Guide, and an On-Line version with On-Line Resources. If you decide to order be sure to call them for special Homeschool pricing. This week we read about the drought and how it is effecting California and other states. We also learned about how we can be better consumers, and how we can do our part to limit water consumption. I spend a fair amount of time searching for Educational videos to supplement our Science Curriculum. I saw that the Homeschool Co-Op was offering a Free 7-Day Trial to Discovery Education TechBook so we decided to give it a try. This week we were studying the: Theory of Evolution Natural Selection, Evidence of Natural Selection, and The History of Life on Earth The Techbook had videos to go a long each Topic. The Discovery Videos are interesting, and easy for my kid to understand. Since this is made for Schools there are also Lesson Plans, and Experiments built into the program. Even though there are several components we wouldn't use, Overall I like the layout, and enjoy the time savings of having everything "ready to go". In Social Studies we started Learning about Early People of North America. Connor has started a Minecraft Project re-creating the homes of the Mound Builders, and the Anasazi. We still have one more session of our September Writing workshop. The kids are working on Expository Writing this week, and are writing about their Favorite Hobbies.
We were so excited to visit the Washington State Fair, in Puyallup WA this year! We spent Monday, exploring all of the wonderful exhibits and activities the fair had to offer. One of our Favorite's was the "Sweet-A Tasty Journey" Exhibit. Throughout this exhibit you take a peak into the history of Candy. We learned about how candy is made, who made it, where it was made, and about the different candies enjoyed by previous generations of Americans. There were all kinds of hands on exhibits and interactive displays. The exhibit also had factory equipment, and Antique Candy Vending Machines on display. We enjoyed our visit to the Hobby Hall. In addition to spinning a wheel for a free stone, Connor also really enjoyed the Coin Collectors Corner. He was able to select an International Coin, and A State Commemorative Coin to take home. He was also able squish a penny by hand as well! Connor is a huge fan of Animals. We saw so many beautiful and unique animals in the Animals of the World exhibit, including this Ze-Donk! Learn more about Ze-Donk's Here. One of the more popular areas of the Fair was the Piglet Palace. From here you are able to view a little of baby Piglets, born just a few days prior. They are so adorable! No trip to the Fair is complete without a visit to the Midway. Connor and Greg took a ride on the Classic Wooden Roller Coaster that's been at the fair since 1935! While we were visiting the Midway, Connor decided to try his hand at some Rock Mining. This Great stand is operated by Carbon River Mining Company. We purchased their "Emerald Strike" Bag! Connor had so much fun sifting through the items to find his stones! The owner was super nice, and it was a really fun hands on activity. After chowing down on some fun fair food, and resting our feet for a while we headed over to our Seats at the Weird Al Concert! It was such a highlight for me. Years ago Weird AL was the first Concert my husband and I had seen together, and this was Connor's first "Grown-Up Concert". He is such a wonderful entertainer! So much fun! So much learning!
Please note my posts may contain affiliate links. The money we earn from affiliates goes towards funding our homeschool supplies and our Website, and doesn't cost you anything extra. You can read more about how that works here. Thank you in advance for your purchases.
Today was a busy morning for us. Connor has 1st period P.E at the public school, and after that we had our first Writing Workshop with some new friends. The focus of the Writing workshop for September is Expository Writing. Connor had a great time collaborating with the other kids.
Connor worked our Social Studies Unit (a brief overview of our Government, and Citizenship and the importance of voting). Connor read a little bit about Ellis Island, and did his Teaching Textbook Math Lesson Roman Numerals. (Check out my fun finds to enrich a lesson on Roman Numerals below) After Dinner we played a Family Game of Catan. Connor's Favorite Part of the Day: Writing Workshop Mom's Favorite Part: I'm a sucker for family games! So I'd have to say Catan. Today we watched a video about Primary & Secondary History Sources. We had a discussion about the History of our Town (we were excited to find it's been featured in a Kit Kat Commercial). Connor started a descriptive writing lesson. He continued with his Growing with Grammar and Teaching Textbooks Math Lessons. He listened to me read more of our Ellis Island Book. Our Science lesson involved Reading and Discussion on Natural Selection and Darwin. He created a symmetry Art project with focus on creating secondary colors. For our break we played a game of pool. In a previous post I talked about how I've been inspired by Homeschool Blogger Tina and her "Experience-Based Learning" system. You can read more about it over at her Experienced Realm Blog. She has created several "Stations" in her Homeschool space. I'm excited to share our updated "Create Space" below. In this space we have Pens, Colored Pencils, Crayons, different types of paper, Adhesives, Scissors, Water Color, Chalk, Pastels, and Collage Supplies. In a cabinet to the left we also have Tempera Paints, and Painting Supplies. I'm a big fan of IKEA, and I was excited to get these shelves to display Connor's Completed Art. Connor's Favorite Part of the Day: His Math Lesson
Mom's Favorite Part of the Day: Art This post contains affiliate links I have been looking around for a Homeschool Curriculum that would teach Connor some additional personal financial skills. Connor is already familiar with Saving, and Budgeting, but I wanted something with a little more complexity. As I was searching the Web for a non-related Subscription Box-I came across Financial Adventure! Financial Adventure is a hands on subscription program. They offer 3 different programs based on your child's age: Piggy's (Ages 5-7), Kids & Teens (Ages 8-18), and Teens (ages 13-18) . Disclosure: I received this curriculum in exchange for writing a review, but all opinions are my own. Also note: this post contains affiliate links. I was thrilled to get the chance to Review the Financial Adventure Program! Financial Adventure is a hands on subscription program. They offer 3 different programs based on your child's age: Piggy's (Ages 5-7), Kids & Teens (Ages 8-18), and Teens (ages 13-18) . Connor and I received a copy of the Kids & Teens Financial Adventure and Starter Pack, for this review. Our Starter package arrived nicely packaged. The starter package had everything Connor needed to get started. It included: A Welcome Letter, A Financial Adventure Calculator, A Financial Adventure Piggy Bank A Financial Adventure Checkbook, A Financial Adventure Pencil, A Financial Adventure Checkbook Instructions and A Financial Adventure Reward Tracker Connor loved the cute piggy bank, and the fun Calculator, I was really happy with the quality of these items. Your Subscription includes lessons that incorporate making deposits, paying bills, balancing a checkbook, recording debit card transactions, paychecks and much more. For parents, the Subscription includes an answer key and tips for making discussions about financial literacy easy. When the journey is complete, your child will receive a Kids and Teens Financial Adventure reward. Financial Adventure Costs $20.95 a month, and offers a discount for multiple month Subscriptions. The starter kit is $29.95 After we completed the first two exercises it was clear how much time and thought went into designing this program. Their activities are fun, hands on, and interesting! We've decided to add this program to supplement our Homeschool Math Curriculum. We plan on using it as our new daily math warm up. Our first few lessons opened up so much discussion around, the importance of Savings, how an ATM card works, the importance of "Double" checking your calculation, and so much more. I have to say it was the highlight of our day. As I see so many adults struggling with some of the concepts in this program, it's apparent how valuable it is to give the children in our lives these lessons for their future. If you are interested in finding out more information about the Financial Adventure program, or would like to Order you can check out their Website here.
Please note my posts may contain affiliate links. The money we earn from affiliates goes towards funding our homeschool supplies and our Website, and doesn't cost you anything extra. You can read more about how that works here. Thank you in advance for your purchases. We didn't do as much creating as we had hoped yesterday, so we wanted to share our Art Project today. Using our Art Curriculum Today's lesson focused on Primary, and Secondary Colors. The open ended activity encouraged Connor to explore with mixing Colors to discover the "Magic" they create. We are big fans of Start Wars around here, and we couldn't let our "Force Friday" find go unmentioned. We were able to pick up this cool paper X-Wing Model Kit at Joann, the last I checked you can still find them at Kohl's as well.
This kit Model is made from Sturdy metallic paperboard. The cut outs can be folded and tabbed together to create either a classic Star Wars X-Wing or a vehicle from Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens. No glue needed! It also includes stickers and pens to customize your creation. We replicated much of What we did on Day 1, today as well. Connor really liked the spinner so we used that to choose Subjects again. This is how we Dough We Started our Day off playing with some fine motor dough play. Rolling Balls, Squishing, Rolling creating Snakes, etc. Language Arts We continued our Growing with Grammar Lesson which focused on Nouns-Common and Proper. Since I have Connor type for Composition, we also use our Grammar book to focus on handwriting as well. Writing Today's Writing with the Best lesson focused on Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs and their importance in descriptive writing. Social Studies Connor read an except from our Social Studies book, and We finished watching the videos from this weeks lesson. We also discussed American culture, and values. MathWe are starting our regular Math Curriculum next week (Teaching Textbooks), but today we did another exercise in our Financial Adventure Booklet (Affiliate). I can't wait to share our review of this fabulous program. Today Connor purchased "Gas" with his "Debit" card, so he had to record and balance his checkbook. Writing Workshop We met with our Writing Tutor today, and some new homeschooling friends for our Writing workshop Meet and Greet. We played a getting to know you game, and plan on meeting on Wednesdays in September at our home. We are looking forward to that! The Best part of our day Connor: The writing exercise (Choosing his own Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives & Adverbs)
Mom: I liked the video we watched on Cultural differences. We took a Trip to our Local Science Museum today, to catch the Ripley's Believe it or Not exhibit! Which is fabulous! Check out this camel made from recycled toys. Our Favorite part of the day: Connor: Playing with the nanoparticles.
Mom: Watching clips of home movies belonging to Robert Wadlow. Please note my posts may contain affiliate links. The money we earn from affiliates goes towards funding our homeschool supplies and our Website, and doesn't cost you anything extra. You can read more about how that works here. Thank you in advance for your purchases. We started transitioning back into our Homeschool rhythm. You can feel the weather is starting to change, and so are the leaves. It's definitely a time for transition. A note about EBL This year I have been inspired by Tina over at The Homeschool Realm after reading her blog post on Experienced Based Learning. Of course, I'm squishing it, pulling it, and twisting it to make it work just for us (just as we do with many of the resources we run across). Each day I want to make sure we've:
Some days will be completely child led where Connor get's to choose and activity for each of the "Experience" items, and some days will be adult facilitated. It's important to me that we still find a balance between learning new Math, Language Arts, and Writing skills while at the same time exploring new Experiences. We started our day with a Therapy Putty Activity. This helps wake up Connor's hands and also serves as his OT exercise for the day. Today his challenge was to pull small beads out of the putty, as well as pull, fold, and squeeze the putty to work on his Hand Strength. I need to give a shout out to the Dollar Tree! Earlier this Summer I found this cool magnetic arrow spinner there. Today we used it to spin and choose the Subject we were going to do next. Art of course isn't shown here because we save our specials for last-that way we can finish our projects without interruption. The Spinner landed on Writing first. We have started a new writing Curriculum called Write with the Best. For our lesson today, Connor had to read an excerpt of 20,000 leagues under the Sea, and write what made it "Great Writing". I'm really impressed with the pacing of this curriculum, I'm hoping we continue to enjoy it as the year passes. After Writing we moved onto Language Arts. We are continuing to use Growing with Grammar-which we love <3 Today's lesson focused on Nouns: Common, Proper, Concrete, Abstract, and Collective. For Math we Played SMATH, we picked this board game up at our local Goodwill. Neither of us had played this before, but it was pretty fun. A lot of "thinking" is required for this one. After Math, we started our Social Studies Unit. Today we focused on Americans Today: Cultures, Diversity & Unity. After Connor listened to me read the textbook chapter, we discussed the Vocabulary words for the Subject. Then, we watched the Videos I had linked here under our Lesson Plans. After watching the videos we had a great in depth conversation about them. Finally, we took out our World map and explored where members of our own family immigrated from, when and how they came. Our last Subject of the day was Art. This year I actually purchased a more formal Art curriculum (rather than just pulling projects from Pinterest) called: Art is Fundamental: Teaching the Elements and Principals of Art in Elementary School. This book may not be challenging enough for many children Connor's age. However, since we are still working through long term effects from his Brain Tumor, it was really important for me to find a curriculum that could challenge Connor, while at the same time helping him feel confident in this area. Today's Art Lesson focused on how each Artist is unique. Everyone sees the world differently. The assignment was to draw a tree. Before we did that we had to view other Artists paintings/drawings of Trees (quick internet images search). We discussed how they were all different. After Connor created his drawing we both shared (not compared) our vision for our Art. Favorite Part of the day:
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AuthorHi, I'm Melissa.. Mom to Connor. Archives
February 2017
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