Museum of Science

Were were all feeling a bit uninspired and sluggish this week, so we decided to spend a day with friends at the Museum of Science in Boston. This is one of our favorite field trip destinations. We spent quite a bit of time in the Pompeii exhibit, which was amazing, and visited some of our long-time favorite exhibits as well. Animals and dinosaurs seem never to disappoint.

This week

This week we did some hands on science.

These are simple models of plant and animal cells made with jello and fruit. I think a little finger or two sampled the jello while making the model :)

We did some fun history learning

J made this history pocket, published by Evan Moore. We just discovered them and all agree they are great. They are wonderful for crafty kids who like to draw, cut, and paste, and are looking for a more creative approach to learning history

and started an ancient history time line.

We've been reading our favorite fall books, and making some fall art.

and doing some fall knitting.

My littlest one is a busy bee this year, learning right alongside her sister and brother, making me realize how big she is getting.She insists on doing her own "work" each day.

Happy fall!

End of year Wrap-Up

We've officially ended our homeschooling year 2010-2011. Actually, we finished a few weeks ago and I have been trying to write this post forever, but a new dog and trying to pack up to move for the summer have been keeping me from most other things these days. Summer in New Enlgand is so very beautiful. When it finally arrives I inevitably say to myself 'so this is why I live here'. We put aside any formal work for the summer, and relax into a different type of learning. We will soon be moving out to our house on the beach, and I look forward to spending our days playing, swimming, searching for treasures, reading great books, and taking long walks.

We did so many fun things this year! I'm sure I won't remember everything, but here are a few things we enjoyed: D learned about physics, architecture, and biology. He had a great time building models of simple machines and reading 'The New Way Things Work'. We took nature walks, planted a garden, and photographed the birds that come to our birdfeeder throughout the year. We participated in the Cornell Ornithololgy Lab's Backyard Bird Count and entered a Science Fair. J learned all about animals and plants. We visited the Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium. D learned about world history from 1849 to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He worked on maps and learned about the 50 states, important U.S documents and amendments to the Constitution, and read some great biographies and historical fiction. J learned about the seven continents and read stories from around the world. We visited Battleship Cove and Old Sturbridge Village. We discovered our new favorite board game, The Scrambled States of America.

D read the entire Guardians of G'Ahoole series, and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, along with many other wonderful books. Some of our favorites include Nory Ryan's Song, The Sign of the Beaver, and Number the Stars. J became a fluent reader this year! We read so many great read-alouds. Her favorites were Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, and Around the World in 80 Tales. D wrote some wonderful stories this year, and did some great non-fiction writing as well. I truly enjoy the content of his writing and it's been so much fun to watch his confidence in writing grow this year.

Both kids worked on math skills using Math-U-See. D began learning German and continued his study of Latin and Greek root-words. J practiced violin while D rocked his drum set, and both kids made some beautiful art in their art classes.

We ended the year with two performances of Much Ado About Nothing, in which D played the role of Dogberry. It was a wonderful way to end the year.

D, backstage, during the Young Shakespeare Company's performance of Much Ado About Nothing

Battleship Cove

We took a family field trip to Battleship Cove yesterday. This year D studied world history from 1849 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so this trip tied in nicely to our study of WWII. The girls enjoyed the trip too, though they didn't ask too many questions about the nature of the ships we visited, which is probably a good thing. As a parent, I really struggle with the idea of teaching my children about war, or about glamorizing it in any way. War is terrible and violent, but war is also an unavoidable part of our human history. On our trip I tried to downplay the act of war itself, and instead bring to mind the courage of the men and women who have sacrificed so much to defend our country and our lives. We imagined what it might be like to live in such a small space, to go without privacy or a room of your own for months or even years, to go without seeing your family and friends, and to have the knowledge to operate all those buttons and switches on the sub - so many buttons and switches!

On board the USS Massachusetts

And onboard the USS Lionfish

Yikes, talk about close quarters! Not sure I could live on a sub without losing my mind due to extreme claustrophobia.

Checking out a ... shark boat?

Field trips are exhausting...

Old Sturbridge Village

We had a great time at Old Sturbridge Village this week! I forgot my camera, but a good friend of mine was nice enough to share the fabulous photos she took.

History, Geography, and Cultural Studies: How We Learn It

We are winding down our school year and I thought I would recap what we have learned this year, and how we went about it. Last week D finished up his year-long study of world history from 1849 - present. Since he began homeschooling almost three years ago we have been using the Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer to study history and geography. We follow a classical approach, breaking world history down into four units, studying one unit per year. The summer before he began homeschooling we read Volume One, Ancient Times together and D was hooked! During second grade he learned about medieval history, in third grade he learned early modern history (from late Renaissance to the gold rush) and this year he finished up the fourth volume, from the gold rush to the fall of the Berlin Wall. D listens to a chapter or two on CD per week or reads them from the book, and does a corresponding map to go along with the learning he has done.

I think that there is no easier way to make learning history tedious than to give kids text books and to ask them to memorize dates and take tests, only to regurgitate information that they will quickly forget. I want history to come alive for my children, and I want them to always find meaning in what they are learning. So we read lots of historical fiction, take lots of field trips, and do lots of projects. This year D has read Farmer Boy, The Sign of the Beaver, David Livingstone Foe of Darkness, Number the Stars, Meet Addy, Stawberry Girl, Snow Treasure, Anne Frank, Life in Hiding, and Harriet Tubman, Go Free or Die, and has listened to the novels of Patricia Reilly Giff on CD just to name some favorites. We visited Plimoth Plantation, and yesterday went to Old Sturbridge Village for the first time! Next month we'll head to Battleship Cove to check out some WWII era subs. D was so very lucky to be able to travel to Greece and Rome with my dad and his wife last summer and to visit the ruins, museums, and cathedrals of many of the historic places he'd learned about over the past years.

Public schools seem to focus on U.S history, which makes sense in a way. It's good to know about the country where you live and ours is a very large and diverse country to be sure. But I want my children to be curious about the world around them and accepting and knowledgeable of other countries and cultures. So we focus on world history, but I also try to find creative ways to introduce U.S history each year as well. D has learned about famous presidents, important documents, the three branches of government, and the 50 states - mostly by reading books, watching movies (Brainpop and School House Rock are favorite sources)and playing stack the states on his ipod. Our new favorite book is the Scrambled States of America and we can't wait to get the board game!

J has been learning all about world culture this year. We use the book Around the World in 80 Tales by Saviour Pirotta and Richard Johnson as a jumping off point to learn about the world we live in. It's a book of folk tales from around the world. So we read several stories each week, and then put a flag sticker of the country we've been reading about from her Flags of the World book into a passport that we made in the beginning of the year. We also use globes and puzzles to learn geography. So far she's 'traveled' to countries in North America, South America, Africa, and Europe and this month we'll be reading and learning about Asia. We try to do a project for each continent - for example, we made clay beads last week when we were reading about Africa. When we learned about North America we did some crafts with quilting squares and made a southern-style meal. We also read lots of historical picture books and early chapter books for young learners. J loves the Little House books and some other favorites are the D'Aulaire's books of famous people (we love Abe Lincoln and Columbus), Follow the Dream, the Story of Christopher Columbus, Farmer George Plants a Nation, Martin's Big Words, Paths to Peace, Squanto's Journey, and Across a Dark and Wild Sea.

Happy history learning!

Keva Creations

We are lucky to have a great group of homeschooling families in our area, many of whom get together every Monday at a local children's museum so that the kids can take classes and do some group learning. The classes are all taught by parents and this spring I am facilitating a Keva building class with some of the nine and ten year olds. There were only three kids in the class today, but we had a great time discussing some of the architecture and structures of ancient Egypt, and the kids recreated some of these landmarks with Keva blocks. I loved hearing them discuss their knowledge of Egyptian mythology - of mummies, tombs, and pyramids, and at one point they decided to make sure that they showed the Nile River flowing to the Mediterranean so that they could build Carthage. Carthage? Seriously, I had to look it up when I got home. I didn't 'teach' the kids how to build. We simply looked at pictures in books for a few minutes, and discussed some different Egyptian building techniques. They then created everything on their own. I was so impressed with their creativity and ability to work together and play off each other's ideas. As you check out the pictures be on the look out for the Great Sphinx, a lesser pyramid, some Egyptian temples, an obelisk, the Nile River, and an Egyptian galleon.

hitting the freedom trail

On Friday we took the T into Boston and toured the Freedom Trail with our HS friends. The Freedom Trail is a walking tour to up to 16 sites that were made famous during the Revolutionary War and during the days of unrest leading up to the war. We saw the State House, the gravesites of Paul Revere and John Hancock, the site of the Boston Massacre, and learned some fascinating nuggets of historical info from our guide, who was dressed in period costume and assumed the role of Sheriff Wright, a sherrif who lived in Colonial Boston during the war. D's favorite part was examining the musket and musket ball that Sheriff Wright brought along. I've attached some of our favorite pics, but for privacy reason I never post photos of other people's children on our website. This makes it tricky to add photos taken during field trips! But D and I snapped some good shots of downtown Boston and the graveyard to share. We ended the day with fried clams, Indian food, and gelato from Quincy Market. Did you know that Faneuil Hall used to be part of Boston Harbor and that it was later backfilled to create more land in the city? This is fascinating to me - first off, why would you fill in a harbor? And how did they do it? Can you imagine the ammount of work it would take to do this pre-industrial revolution? I feel a reasearch project in the making...