Story of the World

  We have been using The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child  this year & cannot express enough how much we love it! 

  It all started when we started reading about the Vikings over this past summer. The kids decided they wanted to learn more about them so this school year turned into 'all things Medieval'. During my search, I came across The Story of the World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Renaissance. It was perfect!

  We had already started our Viking unit before I came across this but that didn't matter. We started at the beginning of the book which took us to the Fall of Rome. Besides the story book, they also have an activity book full of great crafts/projects, coloring pages, maps, & more to go along with each chapter! Check out our Ancient Rome unit here & here!

  For J12, I use the test book. It  has a test for all 42 chapters with the answers.

  
  

 There are 4 volumes in the series, each listed below with the main text, activity book, & test book. You can choose between paperback, hardcover, audiobook CD, or Kindle eBook for the story book!

• Vol.1 - Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor        

                                        

• Vol.2 - The Story of the World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Renaissance

           

                                   

• Vol.3 -  Early Modern Times: From Elizabeth the First to the Forty-Niners

                                  

• Vol.4 - The Modern Age: From Victoria's Empire to the End of the USSR 

     

                                 



     We all love history here & this has been so much fun that we plan on using each of the volumes. Actually, J12 has decided that she wants to branch off & learn more about the Victorian Era. I was able to find info on that in Vol.4 to put together a unit for her. You can find more info on that here. 

   Here are some more links to our Medieval studies:

• Story of the World V.2
• Unit Studies
• Ancient Rome

I will post at a later date a list of resources we have used to supplement our studies. The books are great by themselves but, like I said before, we love history & can't get enough of it! 

Volcano Project

(Contains affiliate links. See my full Disclosure Policy. )

  To go along with the Ancient Rome theme (Pompeii), we had our volcano eruption Monday! It was so much fun! Each of the kids took a turn mixing in the ingredients.

  J12 started out but we had a dud. Well, not really but the top of the volcano was too tall above the bottle inside so dad had to cut the top off.

  L8 cracked us up by being over-dramatic....as you can see by the bottom right pic!

  After we were done, the kids came in & journaled a bit about what happened & drew a pic of it erupting. We found the pages for free from NotebookingPages.com.

 To make the 'lava' we mixed 4 tsp baking soda, 1/2 C warm water, 5 drops dish soap, 5 drops red food coloring, & 1/2 C white vinegar last.

  We are going to try it out again later today but this time I want the kids to use different measurements of ingredients & see if it still 'erupts'. They will journal again with their findings.


Hope you have a great day!

Linked up with:

Works For Me Wednesday, Inspired Wednesday

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

Linked up with SoYouCallYourselfAHomeschooler.com

  We made it through another week! We did a few fun things together. I met a few awesome new friends that have given me some great advice. There will be a few more changes to J12's lessons to try to challenge her more in the upcoming weeks. This girl exhausts me but its fun!

   They had free drawing time. J12 is always, always, always drawing. She uses www.dragoart.com. It has free drawing lessons. L8 decided to use his time to write a letter but he did color the whole paper afterwards...which is strange because he HATES coloring! M6 drew 3 pics....a huge rainbow eyeball is one of them..lol.

   I thought we were done withe Ancient Rome studies but then decided to make a volcano project because of Pompeii. It was made with flour & water (equal parts, I used 2 C each) & brown paper bag. We will be painting it later this weekend & setting it off. Can't wait!

  Thursday, L8 surprised me by waking me up, made my coffee (!!) & toast w/ jelly, & even straightened the living room up for me! While I was eating, he looked at me & said, "Mom, I'm going to be really good today for you." My heart melted. He kept his word & even caught himself a few times before arguing with the girls! I kept hugging him & praising him all day when I would catch him doing something awesome. <3

  I have also noticed with L8 that the best way to get him to write is to write letters or notes to people. We have been working on his capitalizing & punctuation. Another thing all the kids love are mad libs. It's a great way to work on grammar skills! It has introduced nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. to M6 & we've made some crazy mad libs! One site we like is www.madtakes.com.  I went through my stash of homeschooling goodies & found a file folder games book. I made a few of them Friday for M6 & L8 (fractions, nouns, & a phonics one.) but forgot to take pics! oops

  Oh & almost forgot! I was complaining in my Facebook homeschool group, Schoolin' Swag, about my calendar. I hated having to pin & unpin it each month. So Friday I came up with a solution. All of my pocket charts are used so I couldn't use them for it. I hole punched each day card & they fit perfectly over the push pins! (fellow Whovians: take note of Nov. 23rd!)  ;)

Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Linked up with:

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal (11/11/13)

   Not too much went on this past week. We mainly did a lot of our Ancient Rome study so we could finish that up before this week. We did a lapbook & activities I had found online. J12 is still reading Beowulf & L8 is trying out his first chapter book. He gets frustrated after a few pages so we take a lot of breaks.

   Our truck has been broke down since before Halloween & we thought we would have had it fixed by this weekend. That didn't work out so *fingers crossed* & lots of prayers that it does next weekend!

   This past weekend I decided to reorganize & rearrange the dining room/classroom.

This is an old pic & for some reason I cannot find a more recent one. Just imagine the playhouse gone & the dining table in its place like the 'after' pic below!

I love it this way! Now with the love seat in there we can cuddle while checking things out together on the pc or reading. (Ignore the pc on the floor next to the love seat....the hubs was working on it.)

      I need to put our world map back up & move the dry-erase board over from behind the tv to over by the bookshelf. I have a lot more wall space now!

      I broke out my rotisserie that has been put up for about 2 years! I forgot just how much we loved cooking chicken in it! I made a special spot on the counter so it's easier to get too..lol.

      This week, I want to look for a lapbook/file folder game, or something along those lines, for the different measurements of time for L8 & M6 to work on together. They have ideas but we need to get that down. If you have any ideas feel free to let me know in the comment section below!

       I also need to start planning the Thanksgiving dinner. I can't believe it's so close....we are still wearing shorts & flip flops here in FL so it's hard to get into the 'holiday spirit'.


Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!

Linked up with:

Ancient Rome Lapbook

We have a few more pieces to complete tomorrow but I went ahead & put it all together. This free lapbook unit is from HomeschoolShare.com. There are more pieces that we decided not to do so they are not shown here. You can't see it very good but the little pic in the corner of the cover page is from Doctor Who's Fires of Pompeii because..well, why not!!

Linked up with:
Think Tank Thursday, Thriving On Thursdays

Free resource finds of the week: Ancient Rome

We learned about the Fall of Rome during our Story of the World lessons so I wanted to dig a bit deeper with the kids about Ancient Rome. Here are some things we found....

• Ancient Rome lapbook from HomeschoolShare.com. We should be finished with this by Friday & then I will post pics.

• Rome Mini-Study for Young Learners from Hideaways in History.

• Play the Dig It Up:Romans online game.

• The Fall of Rome video.

• Visigoths sack Rome video.

• The Destruction of Pompeii from EyewitnessToHistory.com.

• Musician and artist Jeffrey Lewis sings about the factors that brought down an empire on History.com.

• Tour Pompeii.

• Gladiator: Dressed to Kill game.

• The Colosseum: Building the Arena of Death animation.

• Lots of funny videos from Horrible Histories about the Rotten Romans. These are our favorite!

• Awesome Notebooking pages.

• Lots of links for units.

Enjoy!

Linked up with:
Works-For-Me-Wednesday, Inspired Wednesday, Think Tank Thursdays, Thriving On Thursdays, Blessed Beyond A Doubt - Free Printable Friday, Frugal Homeschool Friday

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!

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