Visiting a real fort!

We had a neat opportunity to take a spur of the moment field trip with a bunch of local homeschoolers to a real fort.

We visited Fort Buena Ventura on a homeschool field trip.

The day was perfect!  The kids learned about a vertical cabin. 

We were able to go in and see two cabins, one furnished and one unfurnished.  We learned about what it took to build cabins/ houses back in 1852.

Katey even got to try out a recliner made out of reeds.

We met a real mountain man. He showed us many mountain man tools and supplies and explained to us why a mountain man would have such tools and how many of them had a dual purpose.  He taught us many ways to make a fire. 

They had an awesome candy canon. All of the kids lined up and the host filled a small real canon up with taffy.  He lit the fuse and had the kids count down. Once it went off the kids went crazy.  It was definitely Tyler’s favorite part. He told every body who would listen about it.

We rented a canoe and floated a dammed up area in the river.  This was fun and I’m glad I had Tommy with me.  He sure knew what he was doing. 

The two younger kids fell asleep for the ride home.  It was a fun day!

Pearson myWorld Social Studies

Pearson Education has been known to create public school curriculum.  They are venturing into the world of homeschool curriculum.  This mean remaking some of their resources to appeal more to individualized learning. 

I am familiar with some of Pearson’s public school materials.  Our local elementary uses them with great success. 


I received the My World Social Studies (History, to us) 5th grade edition. $69.99

*The heart and soul of myWorld Social Studies is the myStory System. We began with the world’s oldest educational technique—storytelling—and applied the latest educational research to create a ground-breaking approach to Social Studies instruction.
 
It comes with

• The work/text book

Which is full of color pictures, bold and highlighted words as well as simple questions that make the reader think about what they are reading. These things all make the book interactive.  Each new chapter corresponds with the myStory DVD (see below)

• The Parent/Teacher Resource CD.
This CD has proven very easy to navigate. Which is sometimes not the case of online teacher helps. *The Teacher Resource Library is a one-stop resource for the myWorld Social Studies Teacher’s Guide, lesson plans, and instruction resources. Each chapter will provide:

• A Teacher’s Guide for each chapter
• Lesson plans
• An audio podcast on chapter subjects
• Hands-on activities to engage your child
• Editable tests for each chapter and separate answer keys
These carefully planned resources will guide you with planning, supporting activities, and testing to ensure learning is personalized to fit your child.

• The myStory DVD

The DVD is like a ton of mini educational video field trips.  *The myStory Video DVD features engaging videos with actual students that explore the Big Question of each chapter. Video icons within the student book indicate that a corresponding video is available on this DVD. These videos allow your child to see children of his or her own age explore the Big Question and the key ideas in each chapter, to go on video field trips, and to watch a character from the chapter come to life. Through these video features, your child will make a personal connection to the lesson, building long-term understanding and knowledge.


I would like to make it clear that history is my 5th graders least favorite subject.  She also despises text book learning.  This has proven to be a challenge for me to even get her to use it.  However, once she begins she does enjoy it.  She said it is an okay way to learn history.  We are going to stick with this for now and help her get over her phobia of textbooks. 

To see what others though of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.







Disclosure: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.  *was taken directly from the website.

Truth Quest History~ Living Books ~ A review

 

My daughter has really disliked history so far this year.  The previous curriculum we had been using just skimmed the surface of events.  It is also textbook style.

Just when she would get interested it would move on.

I jumped at the chance to review TruthQuest History’s American History For Young Students II 1800-1865.

She enjoys reading in a living book format.  TruthQuest is a a big historical book list in chronological order.  However it is more than just a book list.  There are discussion sections, a writing prompts.  There are not very many of these.  Expect to spend most of your time reading right out of the various book you choose.

One thing about TruthQuest is that the books have been chosen because of their Christian perspective.  For me quiet a few books were not available at my library (I live in a very small town).  I do have interlibrary loan and requested some that way. I was also able to pull up similar books from the time period based on my searches for the books on the lists. They also offer a few spine choices, they are by no means required though.

What I have been doing is checking out enough books to last about 1 week.  Then I have been letting her choose the books to read from my basket.  If she is interested in the subject, I try to get more books on that time period and let her spend another week on it.  If she isn’t as interested in it then just a week has been fine.  She doesn’t fight me as much for history.  She is learning more and retaining more.  History is moving slower than it was, but that can be a good thing.  

Did I mention that there are book for all grade levels, K-12.  This has really helped me with my selection process.  I have been trying to get a mix of the younger level books, the books on her level and one above her level.  She feels less overwhelmed starting with the lower level shorter books first.

One that that I would have liked was more hands on/activity book choices.  There are a few.  This is a literature based curriculum.  So I expected there would be lots of reading.  I just like to do one activity for each main point.  There are suggestions for skits and you could easily come up with your own ideas based on the books you selected.   They also offer supplements on their website for this curriculum. 

Overall this has helped my daughter to enjoy history more and dive deeper into history than she was previously doing.

I was also excited that this curriculum included Brigham Young’s journey and books to read for that. 
Check out the Table of Contents to see what else is included. There is even a sample section.  

There are Truthquest Guides for every time period. 

This particular guide is $24.95 for the print version and $19.95 for the pdf version.

To see what others though of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

Disclaimer: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.

Physical Education

This year, we have been trying to incorporate more planned physical education. Of course, they still do tons of bike riding and playing in the neighborhood too. 

I took some fun pictures of us one afternoon playing guess what kind of animal I am. 

Tommy and I were the guessers and Emily and Katey were the actresses.   This lesson went along with Katey’s history lesson that week.  She has been learning about all the continents and the animals that live on them.

Here they are being an American Bison. 

Here is Katey being a Toucan.

Here are the girls being Hedgehogs.

Other animals they pretended to be were a Kangaroo, a Penguin, an Elephant and a Koala Bear. 

This was pretty fun for all of us. 

What a great way to take learning outside. 

History in my home

This year, we are focusing on Ancient History. I use History Odyssey Ancients, Level 1 as my guide this year. The biggest way I teach History is through arts and crafts. We really like feeling like we are living history. I read the Story of the World out loud. I will usually read first and then we do a project of some sort. I get my projects from 3 very helpful books, they are Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors, Ancient Israelites and Their Neighbors, and History Pockets. Here is a little picture journey of some of the history we have done so far this year.



Here we are having a Royal Assyrian Feast. We wore toga's and made crowns, we even ate on the floor. (They didn't have tables back then.) My husband and I were even their servants.








We played games that ancient Egyptians play.







We built a Ziggurat out of boxes.
















We made some mobiles to help us learn about the Nile River.









We sculpted bowls into ducks, made Phoenician head wear, and ate Phoenician stew to learn about the Phoenicians.






We carried water on our heads around our yard, to learn what
some of the daily life was like.










We eat alot of food from the time periods we are learning about.
So we usually do history right before lunch.






Here is an art project they worked on while I read to them.








We also learned about how they colored their clothes, we dyed our own socks using blackberries.








This post has been linked up to a history hopper at Latter Day Homeschoolers.

Egyptian Muffin Tin Meal

There was no theme this week for Muffin Tin Monday, so here is what we did, (we didn't serve it in a muffin tin, because I don't have very many yet, we are working on that)

We have been learning about ancient Egypt. So what better way to make it stick, then with food. So we had a royal Assyrian meal. We made some Egyptian bread (Sebatu Rolls) , we had grapes, apples, figs, dates, and grape juice, (they drank barley beer and wine, but that's not for us). The girls made royal crowns, and T made an Egyptian bracelet and we made toga robes (out of our bed sheets). For a snack the day before we had Overnight Fig Cakes.

Here is a picture of us making our crowns.


Here we are enjoying our lunch on the floor. (Ancient Egyptians didn't have tables and chairs, or silverware.)


We really love History Odyssey
One of our favorite books with many fun learning activities are from this book: Ancient Egyptians And Their Neighbors.


To see how other moms are incorporating lunch with learning, visit The Muffin Tin Mom