Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

It's been about a month since I wrote up a Weekly Wrap-Up post. I can't believe it! I have some posts up in between this time so instead of a 'weekly' wrap-up I can do a 'monthly' wrap-up. (I'll make it quick so I don't bore you!)  ;)

• Christmas was great for us. It usually lasts about a month since we have so much family that we can't get together with all at once! You can read all about that here & here. 

• We started back to school this week. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! Usually it takes a day or 2 to get things back in order after taking time off but we were in full swing Monday! 

• J12 started working on a Victorian Era unit (at her request) so I was able to throw together a Webquest for her. It's my 1st one ever & so far she loves it! When I heard, "Mom, you made this?!", it kind of made me feel awesome!! She has until the end of this month to finish it & has to come up with a Powerpoint (unless she can think of another way that we both agree on) to show all that she learned. She is reading The Importance of Being Earnest,  Sherlock Holmes, & The Time Machine. You can find all of them FREE for Kindle!

• L8 & M6 are continuing on with our Story of the World studies. 
  

• And also their science. I found an old 2nd grade textbook recently in my garage & thought I should put in some more 'formal' science lessons. I added a little lapbook to go with our chapter on plants. You can find that here ------Pinterest. And I found a cute little copywork book of a poem about plants but can't remember where I found it! :/

• J12 is still working on her Money Doesn't Grow On Trees Lapbook from Knowledge Box Central.

 

     I have been splitting my time lately between family, homeschool, housekeeping, & blogging a TON more! I'm still trying to get into a routine that works somewhat for us! Along with this blog, I also have my deals blog at Daily Deals From A Nerd Mom AND I am now blogging on freetailtherapy.com!

Thanks for stopping by!

Until Next Time,

 

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:

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

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.