European Government History

In the program I am using (I fallow the guide but I change it to the way I want all the time) 

We are traveling the world and covering all sorts of things, culture, food, music, art, history, and government. This is NOT my area of knowledge and I can't even fake it like I can other things like math, or science, so I had to call in the expert to teach the History of European Government, he did a great job. 

I would like to tell you about the lesson, what they learned and what these pictures are of, but honestly I can't tell you. I should have stayed and learned myself. But I was off preparing something else or unpacking as this was only 3 weeks after our stuff got here. I know they talked about the Berlin Wall and then created this, I think one side the people are more free and the other side is not.

From what I understand Will gave different situations on each side of the wall and explained what would happen to the people under each kind of government. (the kids did get a bit creative, and had fun)

I really need to call them in here and have them tell me what they did, but I keep saying I will do that then don't so here are the pictures for now and I will update when I get around to that part.

I do have to say that whatever lesson they got worked well because as we studied France and Germany and other governments months later they referred back to what they learned. I should call in the expert more often. To bad he works during the day :)

Bones, Cells & DNA Activities

For science we focus on a different area in Anatomy each week. Although we do not do science every week. Here are some of the activities we did. Along with reading really great books, and sometimes a movie to go along with it. Someday I will type up the full planns if you are interested in it let me know. 

The first week we just did an overview of the body systems one of the things we did was we made these cute accordion booklets the boys LOVED them! They carried them around in their pockets and would pretend to do "surgery" on each other in the different systems, pulling it out of their pockets to see what system they would work on, taking out certain parts. Kind of gross I have to admit but they were having fun and learning the systems. 

 The next week we learned all about cells. The activity we did along with that was making a pizza cell the boys LOVED this! They designed their own pizza finding something to represent each part of the cell, we used a diagram to fallow in one of our books. They ate them right up!

 Boys making a silly face with their finished pizzas.

 The week after Cells we learned about DNA (see pictures bellow for activity- sorry not the right order)

 After DNA we learned about the Skeleton, and did lots of games and activities. They LOVED making Mr. Bones. I got this pattern from a book we are using and had it copied on really thick card stock and used brads to hold it together, he is  now part of our family and hangs on the walls. I make little label cards from card sock and they match the name to the right bones. We also did games where I would call out the bone and they would point to it.

 We also did this work sheet where we fill in and color the bones. The younger boys did a skeleton do to dot I found on Pinterest.

 This is one of the books we read, it is a super fun Skeleton book we read teaching fun facts about the bones.

 DNA! We studies this, and for the activity we build DNA! we did two smaller ones then hooked them together to make a big one. We found some examples on Pinterest to fallow.

After Skeleton we learned about the Muscle system.
For our activities, we did a fun Word search and coloring page and watched a Magic School bus one day and a Bill Nye about bones and Muscles.

What we are learning about in 2015

I am beyond excited for this year… really…. I am not sure who is more excited, me or the boys :)

back in 2010 when I was researching all about Homeschooling Curriculum I found Winter Promise Children around the World, and I fell in love with it. I wanted to do it that year but it is for grades 2nd-6th. So I waited, and this year we finally get to do it! The kids are really excited too. We are going to travel the world through books, activities and food. I hope we can travel for real one day, but this will have to do for now. Here is a link to their site, but they have really updated the program I have the old set. It has a lot more books the new one is more ebooks.

 Since we are learning about cultures and people all over the world, for science we are studying anatomy and the human body! The boys are soooo excited. They have been asking for a while now, and I am finally getting my act together and doing it! I used a wonderful blog HERE I used her plan as a skeleton for my plans I created. I also got some of the books she used too. There are a few more but these are the main ones. I am using these plus activities and short videos I found on pinterest.

 For our "Main" focus this year is on world geography and cultures. Here are some of the books we will be using. As we "visit" each place we go to the Library and get extra books just to read and look at to get more info on that place. In this program we will cover some world history, art, music, there is also a study of child labor and more.

 Here are some more books many of these tell history of how things are made, and also our geography books (well some of them)

 Here are some of the read a loud books we will be reading.

 For Language Arts….
K/1st - I am trying Queens Homeschooling program this year instead of Well Trained mind.
K/1st Delightful Reading Program, (from simply Charlotte mason) + reading tons of books : )
3rd Grade - Primary Language Lessons.
5th Intermediate Language Lessons
3rd/5th Drawing into the Heart of Reading program.
3rd/5th Writing - Story starters. - We will use this a little here and there as Ethan wants to be challenged in his creative writing.
Winston grammar - and Grammar tales books
Spelling we use - Modern Speller (free on line) or we also use Spelling Wisdom (not pictured)

 ART! - we have some art build in but I love it so we try to do more if we have time. No schedule we just read and Study what we want to from these books.

 Nature Study- the kids to do this on their own I do not schedule it, they have nature journals and they read these books on there own, and of course we go on nature walks too.

 For Math we continue on with Math-U-See I am totally happy with it.
K/1st -Alpha
3rd - Gamma
5th Epsilon
We also do fun games and activities from pinterest, and I LOVE reading books on the subject I am addicted to these fun math start books they can add up in price though, so I love when I can pick them up at used books sales for a steal! We are also enjoying Life of Fred books

Preschool-
I have no pictures for that but we are just playing games, doing puzzles and activities that I am finding on Pinterest. For the Ryan I did an alphabet Tree and activities to go along with that and I will be starting that sometime this year with him as well.

Other things….

Spanish- The boys really want to learn Spanish, and Will is wanting to head that up this year, and I am excited. We are also going to try to pick up sign language again this year. It fell to the side last year.


Habit Training- Laying Down the Rails and other CM books and activities on Pinterest
We also have some fun charts, and calendars to help keep us organized and developing good habits. More to come later on that.

Stress Free for Kids program HERE is a link- we have done only two lessons so far and I LOVE it!
my kids really enjoy the stores and activities and it is really really important Skill to learn to deal with stress, controlling anger, and other emotional things. I also add my own things to it too. I would LOVE to teach this in a co-op someday, and I called and asked the company if I could and they said yes!

For PE we have a home school group we are playing with. I also got this really fun Yoga game- kids love it Dallin is super cute, and loves doing Yoga, though out the say he will just Strike a pose and say "Mom look I am doing Yoga!" HERE is a link I also got a FREE down load of a home school at home PE program.

We have a whole closet full of there games, activities, poetry books games and more that the kids do as well. But this is our Learning Curriculum for this year.