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! 

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

This week was a crazy week. Between the hubs hurting his arm/chest & missing a few days of work, to me waking up with a sore shoulder & not being able to move it for a whole day (getting old I guess), M6 & J12 getting sick, & now me....we hardly got anything done!! 
Oh yes...almost forgot that I had run out of ink for my printer over the weekend & wasn't able to print anything until Wednesday morning!!

We were eventually able to do some free Christmas printables that I found online. You can find those:
-FREE Christmas Resources Round-up
-More Great Christmas Resources For Free

On Monday we received a package from our lovely friends from England! All sorts of baking gadgets (Doctor Who themed!!) & a few things were put away for M6's birthday party next month. She has been planning a Doctor Who party so these couldn't have been more perfect! We were all hoping to be able to use them but we haven't yet for reasons stated above. Yes, we will Christmas-up these cookies! Doctor Who & Christmas just go together. There is also a gingerbread T.A.R.D.I.S. in the plans. ;)

J12 has been wanting to do a Victorian-themed Christmas unit so I have been finding a bunch of goodies for that. I will post those at a later date when I have it all organized. Also, I am planning a Grinch unit for M6 & L8 next week from a blog post I found recently at Lemon Lime Adventures .

One thing that did get started this week was our review of Keyboarding Classroom. 

I set L8 up with this one & was surprised when he took to it & actually liked it! He's the one who fights me the most on school & lately it's been the worst. I only asked him jokingly if he wanted to do it & he said yes so I ran with it! As of now, my review copy is a single-user license but when he is finished with it I can use it for the girls if they wanted to. They do have options to buy dual or more licenses & the finger guards are free! (Which honestly our 1st thoughts were that they were disposal razors! haha)

I finished up my review for Write From History earlier this week. That was a lot of fun & we are planning to continue using that this year since it fits so perfectly with our history study!

I also started another Facebook page: Daily Deals From A Nerd Mom. You can find that & this blog FB page on the right side up top. ---->

Hopefully next week I will have some Christmas-y goodies to blog about! I cannot wait to get started on our cookie & T.A.R.D.I.S. decorating...plus I found a cute idea on Pinterest to make mini graham cracker houses! This would be a neat way for each of the kids to decorate their own house.

Happy Holidays!

Review: The Write From History Series

I was so excited to be a part of the Write From History series launch group & to get started on this! As most of you know, we are studying the Middle Ages this year. So when I found out that there was a Medieval History book in this series I was even MORE excited &, of course, chose that for my review!

In this series, there are 4 books: Write From Ancient History, Write From Medieval History, Write From Early Modern History, & Write From Modern History.  Each one has 2 levels to choose from, except Write From Modern History. This one only has Level 2 for now and Level 1 is to come summer of 2014. You also have the choice of manuscript or cursive & sells for $22.95 in your choice of printed or eBook.

Level 1 is for grades 1-3 & is a writing curriculum that combines writing, history, and handwriting practice all in one workbook. 
Level 2 is for students in grades 3 to 5 & includes manuscript writing models from interesting historical narratives, excerpts from primary source documents, poetry from or about ancient times, and fun cultural tales from around the world. (Taken from the Brookdale House site.)

Table of Contents

Write From Medieval History covers 600AD to 1600 AD & is divided into 4 Chapters: Historical Narratives, English Tales, Poetry From/or About Medieval History, & Cultural Tales. All 4 chapters include the reading selection, a page for a written narration, & also 2 passages to use as the writing modules.

 What I love so much is that you don't have to go in order in the book or even in the whole series! Whatever you are working on, or want to work on, you just look through the Table of Contents, which also serves as a timeline, & choose what/when you need!

Included are suggested schedules for using the book. It also suggests including a grammar study which I thought was really neat! With 3 kids it's always great to be able to include as many subjects into 1 lesson! J12 was even a part of this so, as you can see by the above pic, I had her write her modules in cursive since she needs more practice. It was a great grammar review for her as well! I hadn't even attempted to start grammar lessons with L8 & even M6 but this was a great introduction to nouns for them! (M6 didn't do that part but sat in on that convo.) For the grammar study, it suggests introducing each part of speech 1 month at a time to make sure they have it down before moving on. 

The only problem I had with this book was that it doesn't have an answer key for the grammar part. It does have a quick reference guide in the Appendix though which was a big help.

We will definitely continue with this book during our studies this year! It's a great addition & doesn't take long to do either!

For more reviews, head on over to Multi Taskin' Mom!

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

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  This week we started a few different things. Since Thanksgiving is next week, we have been working on a large Thanksgiving Day Lapbook. It's a mix of a few different lapbooks that I pieced together, The Pilgrims Project Pack, Thanksgiving Day Speedy Lapbook, & Thanksgiving lapbook. This thing took 3 file folders!

  We also watched Squanto and the First Thanksgiving, Told by Graham Greene with Music by Paul McCandless & did some activities from my list of resources. You can find those here.
  Another thing we started this week is Write From Medieval History Level 1. This fits perfectly with our Middle Ages theme this year & the kids love the stories! Watch for my review on this in the next few weeks. It is manuscript for M6 & L8 so to have J12 involved I have her write it in cursive.
  You can see our volcano project that we did earlier this week here.

  The beginning of this week was very exciting for all of us. My baby sis had her 1st baby! A baby girl! We got to visit her Tuesday at the hospital & then went to her place to help get it ready before she came home. She is so tiny!

  Next week we will be doing some more activities from my list of resources, especially since M6 was on a roll & did this whole weeks worth in 2 days! We will also be getting the house more organized for Thanksgiving & of course we can't forget to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Volcano Project

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  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