CHARLESTON FIELD TRIP

Hey everyone! The kids and I took a detour on our trip up to NC and stopped in Charleston for 24 hours. We have been studying The Civil War, The Underground Railroad, and slavery since March in both Story of the World (we lingered on the chapter for weeks) and Five in a Row (Follow the Drinking Gourd and Who Owns the Sun?). I knew we wanted to do Fort Sumter so we pushed our June trip back to July in May when it was still closed so that we could be assured of it being mostly open. At the last minute, I found a tour called "From Slavery to Freedom", and the founder of The Slave Dwelling Project happened to be the tour guide the weekend we planned to be in town. I highly recommend this tour at Magnolia Plantation. All of the links are at the end of our pictures if you want to check any of it out. Here's a photo dump of our experience, and my vlog is linked at the end as well. 

Some helpful information regarding where we visited: Fort Sumter: https://www.nps.gov/fosu/index.htm From Slavery to Freedom Tour: https://www.magnoliaplantation.com/sl... Slave Dwelling Project: https://slavedwellingproject.org/

A NEW COAT FOR ANNA || FIVE IN A ROW

I wanted to share a peek inside of our Five in a Row study on "A New Coat for Anna". We loved this story and it was the perfect introduction to a few new topics for my Kindergartner. It also ties in nicely with Christmas, which is why we chose to row this in December. If you're unfamiliar with Five in a Row, here is a description of how we use it:

Here are a few highlights of our week:

Paper weaving was the perfect fine motor activity, and Eli was ALL about it. He really enjoyed creating some Christmas gifts and decorations. 

While the book doesn't officially state where it's set, you can assume it is post WWII Europe. My plan was to place our story disc on Germany, however, we went a different route the week of. One of the illustrations shows Anna and her mother picking lingonberries to use as dye, and other than the few times we've had Swedish Meatballs, Eli had never tried lingonberry jam. 

It happened to be the same week that my kids were participating in a St. Lucia's Day Procession, so we took it the swedish route and placed our disc there. One of my favorite things about FIAR is the flexibility. The curriculum is simply a starting point, so we chose to make it fit our studies that week and tie it into our study of Christmas in Sweden.

 

We didn't go "all out" with this book like we do with others, simply because it was a busy holiday season, but some other topics we covered were:

• Paper Chain Making
• Wool weaving (including a visit to John's nanny who has a beautiful antique loom exactly like pictured in the book
• Bartering (this was the main theme of the book and a great activity to role play around the house)
• WWII introduction
• Discussions about relationship, patience, and gratitude.

I hope you enjoyed this peek inside of our week, I'll be sharing much more FIAR here in 2020!

I did a little 2012/13 digging here on the OLD blog and found a few posts from other FIAR units we loved. Here's a little roundup of some, so excited to be back sharing in this space:

The Very Last First Time

Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

The Glorious Flight

Madeline

Night of the Moonjellies

The Story About Ping

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (Year 1)

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (Year 2)

See you next Monday!

FIAR: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (Homeschool 2015-2016)

We ROWed "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" for the third year in a row this year. With visiting six countries in the book, there are just so many different directions to take this unit study, that we have never done the same activity twice. Here's a little peek into our week!

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FIAR Very Last First Time

We are back at ROWing! Until little mister arrives in a few weeks, that is. We truly missed it, and needed some "filler" school to slow down on our curriculum a little bit.

This week we rowed "Very Last First Time" by Jan Andrews. The book is about an Inuit child named Eva who walks alone on the ocean floor for the first time to collect mussels. There are many different approaches to take to this book - sea life, the arctic, etc. In my opinion we could've taken two weeks to row this, so maybe we will throw it in the mix again next year! Here are some of our favorite moments:

We always start a row by exploring some go-alongs.These stayed up all week for her to poke around in.

 Geography/Social Studies

We started by locating Canada, coloring the flag, placing our story disc on "Ungava Bay", and talking about the oceans that surround the bay (Arctic and Atlantic). The kids used this song to remember the oceans:

(Tune of Frere Jacques)

There are five, there are five,

O-Oceans, O-Oceans,

Pacific and Atlantic,

Indian and Arctic,

Southern, too, Southern, too.  

Then we made some Sweet Bannock, a treat loved by Inuit Children

 We talked about what it would be like to live where Eva lived - no roads or trees, very cold, etc.

We decided to have some fun with our winter sensory bin and enjoy some hot chocolate!

 Science

We learned about Tundras this week and that led to a science project with salt and ice. We also had some fun exploring the different types of plants and animals designed to survive in the cold.

 I happened to have already signed us up for a nighttime aquarium visit offered this week, so it was perfect to tie into the book (tides, ocean life, the ocean floor)

 It was a late night :)

 Art

The illustrations in the book use pointillism, so we tried our hand at it with toothpicks!

As far as math and phonics this week, we stuck to our main curriculum (Horizons and All About Reading), but there were some great ideas listed in the manual for her age. 

Here's a peek into our completed lapbook for this row:

 

Buzz enjoyed himself this week, too, working hard on some fall themes in his daily learning notebook...

  Or is it hardly working...

 

 And a moment I just have to share: along with our verse this week, we started our "Thank you God" tree, and BeeBop's answers are unguided and unsolicited. She may add a leaf any day and at any time. WELL, after a great day of learning and playing together, she asked for me to write "school" on a leaf. I asked her why she was thankful for school, and she replied

"I'm thankful that Jesus lets my mommy teach me school"

That's one to stick in my mind for a tough day. Maybe I should add a leaf to the tree, too.