Monday, December 13, 2004


Pearl Harbor Posted by Hello

Pearl Harbor Posted by Hello

World War I Unit Study Posted by Hello

World War I Unit Study Posted by Hello

Thursday, December 02, 2004

hodgepodge

Ok. Well we made it through Thanksgiving and now this is our month to "do as we please". During December we take the time to do alot of crafts and Christmas things. We'll do a hodgepodge of science and history stuff using the Enchanted Learning calendar for ideas as well as watching some good "educational" videos (to us it's just plain interesting stuff lol) and reading some good books.

We've finished The Sign of the Beaver and it was excellent. Very thought provoking and initiated various discusssions on the treatment of natives by the whites etc. Josh still laughs at me because it seems each time we read a good book, there always seems to be one part toward the end where I tear up and can't read on, yet he's there saying come on mom finish it! I need to pick up the book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh since that is the book we are reading for December with Julie's Arrow subscription. She has not steered us wrong yet so I am looking forward to it.

This morning we watched Vol 6 - Expansionism from the video series we get from the library. This is a video collection of American History that has 20 volumes (videos) each dealing with a specific time period (topic) in American History. They are only 35 minutes long so a good length timewise and are filled with primary source pictures and video footage. They also give a fair telling of things in that they talk about the negative aspects of some of the events and policies as well as the accomplishments. The title of the collection is United States History video collection Origins to WWII put out by Schlessinger video productions.

We'll read Christmas stories each day now to start off the day. We get some new ones from the library as well as read some old time favorites from our own collection of Christmas books.

Yesterday I had him begin writing again. I usually just take a topic from something we are studying. I am amazed at how thought provoking his writing is. I do not correct these in any way as I want him to be comfortable getting his ideas and thoughts down on paper. I do go over them and note words he may be spelling wrong, punctuation etc and then I bring these into our studies separately. That way he does not feel like I am tearing his work apart. This kind of critique can wait for now. I do want to make sure we do not get out of this habit though. It is important for him to be practicing on a consistent basis.

Yesterday was Rosa Parks Day (commemorating her refusal to give up her seat on the bus) and he enjoyed a little cloze we did that I got from the Enchanted Learning site. He still remembers what he read from the biograhpy of her and says she is one of his favorite people to learn about. I had him make a notation on our wall timeline for her. If I can figure out how to download the program to do pictures I will put some pictures on the blog of it.

Well Lauren's home from school and hungry and I have to get Brad from work too.

Barb