Halloween Festivities

So, our Halloween festivities started last night when we made Jack-o'-lantern & ghost cookies & cranked up some Halloween music. J12 & I showed the others how to do the Time Warp & Hand Jive. It was so much fun!

Today, we carved our pumpkins. I know..late right?! We usually have them done days ago but this year the days just kind of got away from me. Anyway, each of the kids got their own pumpkins, as usual, & we had fun last night searching around for ideas. J12 originally wanted a T.A.R.D.I.S from Doctor Who but then found Heath Ledger's Joker face. L8 went with Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas & M6 went with a cat (she's the animal lover!). It's easier now that J12 is old enough to do her own, last year was her 1st year, because I usually have to do all 3! Not fun after a while! BUT, it's for the kids & they love having their own. :)

Tonight, we went trick-or-treating for a bit but that didn't last long. Hardly anyone passes out candy around here & our truck is broke down otherwise we would have gone somewhere else. The kids are fine though because we decided to buy candy & pass it out ourselves. This is a 1st for us. Right after getting home, their friends came over & asked if they could go with them & their parents. We said yes so they are super happy now! J12 dressed as her own version of Harley Quinn, L8 was something he threw together, & M6 was a ladybug.

I got so many compliments on the shirt I was wearing tonight while passing out the candy. And no I don't just wear this for Halloween. ;)

Hope everyone had a safe & fun Halloween!







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Unit Study Basics

    I have been asked by a few fellow homeschooling mamas just what exactly unit studies are. I have dabbled in them a bit in the past couple of years during holidays & such but we never did a full year of them. Now I am no expert or guru when it comes to this but I do know someone who is & I will have the link for her blog later in the post! She has a 3 part series on how to get started with Unit Studies! In this post, I will give you an example of how I use them in our homeschool.

    Unit Studies can be on anything or anyone imaginable. You can cover many different subjects during the study but some may have to be supplemented, such as math. You can use journals, notebooks/notebooking pages, & copywork for writing/handwriting for instance. We have a separate math & reading program for M6 & L8 because of their age, but other than that everything is woven into the unit study. We love to do lapbooks as well. Also, they can take a day, a week, a month, or even a whole year to do depending on how much you want to learn! You can buy pre-made ones or you can put them together on your own. The choice is totally up to you (& the kids!).

    For lapbooks, you can use file folders, glue (I recommend glue sticks, or my all-time favorite, rubber cement), computer paper (white & colored *optional) for lapbook template printouts or even construction paper. You can find many free templates online as well!

    Talk with your children, if you like, & decide what topic they would like to study. Then, search around & find everything you can about it. Crafts, activities, books, recipes, movies, games, websites, worksheets, etc.. Collect all of your resources. I like to use Pinterest & separate each unit into its own board. I also use Dropbox to keep all of my files organized & can grab them from any device that I have!

    This year we decided to learn about the Middle Ages. It all started with a little story I read to the kids during this past summer about the Vikings & Leif Erikson. We wanted to learn more, so in my search for "all things Viking" I figured why stop with them?? I decided to use this whole school year to learn as much as we can about the Middle Ages. You can see a bit of our Viking unit study here that we started the school year with.

    Since this was my first attempt at a full year unit study, I needed something to help guide me through just what exactly went on during the Middle Ages so I didn't miss any important events or people. I came across Story of the World Volume 2 : The Middle Ages. This is what I use as my spine of the study along with the Activity Guide. We read a chapter a week, do copywork (which are sentences that I like from that chapter), J12 keeps a journal & also does a lapbook piece, any crafts & activities we can find (online & off), movies/Youtube videos, books, & sometimes a recipe. This past week we learned about Beowulf so we read a kid-friendly poem of it while J12 is reading a chapter or 2 each day from the book. We also have a timeline going throughout this unit that you can see here.

    So now that you have an idea of how I am doing unit studies this year, I will lead you to the one who helped me out a T O N.....Betty Jo of StillLearningSomethingNew.com! The first part of her 3 part series is here, tips on how to keep records are here, & also how to make weekly plans are here!


edited to add the link to the lapbook that we are using for SotW V2! It's from runofthemillfamily.blogspot.com.

Week in Review 10/21 - 10/27

  This week went by pretty smoothly. L8 got his 1st pair of glasses!! He was so excited. He has to wear them for 30 days all day & then go back to the doctor to have them checked.

  During our Fall of Rome study we made a Roman Signum. Each one of the kids decorated their own 'metal' circle & J12 came up with the yarn idea. That was pretty fun. We also read Beowulf as our family read-aloud while the internet guy was here fixing our wifi. I think he took longer than normal because he was listening to the story! LOL  We are using free lapbook pieces from runofthemillfamily.blogspot.com & pasted them on the back of J12's notebooking pages for each chapter. I also made a homemade timeline on my bedroom door. I had a bunch of word strips from the Dollar Tree so I flipped them over to the back & taped them together, added dates, & hung it up on the door. Now when we are going through or Story of the World book we can add pictures to the timeline!

(I didn't get a great pic of the dates...sorry!)

  I decided it was time to attempt Spelling again with L8. I set him up with Spelling City & he is doing great! Only missed 1 word on his test! I figured M6 could use it too so I plugged in her sight words & a few word family words & it has helped her out a lot. Also I started M6 on ClickN Kids Phonics. She did 1 lesson a day. L8 was using this last year so I switched his name out with M6's & off she went.

  J12 is needing some more of a challenge with her lessons. She is like a sponge & just flies through everything! This is a child who is reading Shakespeare's Sonnets for fun for crying out loud! Guess it's time to do more adjusting but not really sure where to start or how far to go.

  I forgot to mention before that L8 & M6 told me that they were missing Calendar Time. I had made a binder for them last school year but they had got bored of it about 3/4 of the way through the year so we stopped. I found a cute & simple daily learning notebook from Confessions of a Homeschooler that we have been enjoying. I put some of the sheets in page protectors & we use dry-erase markers. You can find the free printable notebook here.

  So there you go...a pretty easy week of school! Let's hope next week goes just as smooth!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Viking Unit

  During the summer we had read about the Vikings & Leif Erikson & the kids (& I!) were fascinated. This is how the viking unit came to be & we started out the school year with it. Here are some resources that we used:


Viking lapbook

Viking boy paper craft

 
Horrible Histories Viking Explorer Game

My awesome homeschool mama friend did her own unit on the Vikings here. She also has a chalkboard mural!

Another lapbook/unit from Dynamic2Moms.

Make a viking helmet! 

Video of a longboat construction.

Viking Webquest.....write your own saga!

Viking Myths : Norse Mythology. We drew a huge Yggdrasil Tree & labeled all of the different realms & beings.

2013-2014 Curriculum

Official school started back for us in August. I changed things up for us again but there are a few things we are still using. 


J12

Since J12 was doing so well with the Easy Peasy AllInOneHomeschool.com last school year we decided to continue the full course this year. She is a hard one to keep challenged so I had made a few adjustments to what she was doing on there & still need to bump her up! Because she is 12, I had her in 7th grade lessons & now I have bumped her up to the 8th level, which is actually 9th grade level work! I have also  loaded her Kindle Fire with a ton of free classic books that she reads on her own. She loves to read so there is no problem there! You can find the free Kindle books here. 


L8

We found out over the summer that he is having problems with his focusing & attention. This is something that we have been dealing with since he was 5 but it was verified for us recently. Also, he has been dealing with vision problems which caused him to get his first pair of glasses this past week. Put these things together & that was the main cause of his reading problem. At least now we have dealt with the issues & are able to know how to move forward. Things have to be a lot more hands-on for him & in short periods or I lose him! This has turned us towards Unit Studies.

For math & reading he uses Funnix. It's a computer program with printable workbooks. He is continuing them from last school year. 

M6

She has decided that now she is old enough to learn how to read. She had no interest in it last year when we were doing Kindergarten because she was "too wittle". We are using the Ready2Read Level 1 units from The Moffatt Girls. For math she is also using the Funnix lessons.

All 3

I decided to do unit studies this year. I had dabbled in it a bit in the past years & we all loved it. Since we needed more hands-on activities I thought it would be perfect. So, I decided to start with the Middle Ages since we had read about the vikings during the summer! In my search for all things Medieval, I came across Story of the World Vol.2. We absolutely L O V E it! Between crafts, videos, stories, activities, games, & anything else we can find it makes it so much fun!











Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”