United States and US Native Peoples Weeks

 Our next country in our Around the World Homeschool curriculum was the United States. We took two weeks to do it, but also combined it with learning about US Native Peoples.

Books:

I'm not going to list out our spines every week, but I thought I'd share some of our other books. 

USA Books:

Blue Sky White Stars

Summertime in the Big Woods

I Love You Americanly

Explore America's National Parks (only skimmed through)

If America Were a Village (I summarized for him as we went through quickly)

Explore America's Wildlife (only skimmed through and then used for his animal profile)

Scrambled States of America Talent Show (favorite)

Scrambled States of America (huge favorite)

Magic School Bus Builds the Statue of Liberty

We are Still Here! (a little over my 5 year old's head, better for an older learner)

We are Grateful

Bowow Powow

Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest

We Are Water Protectors

Arrow to the Sun

Jingle Dancer

Fry Bread

My Heart Fills with Happiness

I am Sacagawea

We read about the American Black Bear from The Wild Life of Animals

Activities:

US mazes from Around the World Mazes

New York Page from Adventures Around the Globe Activity Book

We read a little about landforms from Beginning Geography

He did his magnetic US map

Interactive US Map. We've had it for a few years. It's ok, but probably not something I would purchase again.

Another US map puzzle that he has loved for years.

We did the redwood tree puzzle from his Plant Anatomy Puzzle set.

I made a sensory bin using star shaped pasta. I threw in some landmarks and star buttons, so it was super simple. Archer still finds them entertaining and Juniper loves them, so it was a win win.

Recipe:

We kind of skipped the recipe for the US portion of the unit, but we did make fry bread (using the recipe from the book Fry Bread). It was interesting to compare to the Bannock Bread we had from when we studied Canada. I think the whole family liked this version better.

Read Aloud:

We did two read-alouds this unit. We started with Coyote Tales, which just had two coyote folk tales. Honestly, I don't think Archer had much of an opinion on them either way. Then we read JoJo Makoons and the Used To Be Best Friend. I'm very torn on this book. I liked that it was about a little girl who lived on a reservation and her Native American heritage was a huge part of her life. I loved that it included Ojibwe words and pronunciation. However, I kind of didn't like JoJo. She's a little mean, without necessarily meaning to be, but she also doesn't really learn from it.

Games:

Sequence States and Capitals. He enjoyed playing the game, but then also enjoyed sorting the cards.

Scrambled States of America has been a favorite for a while. We tend to play non-competitively.

For his logic puzzles he played Smart Farmer and Color Code.

Art:

For the United States portion of the unit, we did this star art. I had him draw a line from a center dot to various points around the paper. Then he was supposed to color a different pattern in each wedge. We glued a star over top of the center (in retrospect, I should have had him make the star on cardstock so the marker didn't show through as much). 

For the Native American portion of the unit we learned about dream catchers and made one out of a paper plate. We watched this video from Mallory at Tribal Trade to learn about them and this video from One Little Project to make them.

Videos:

We could have probably watched more, but we just didn't watch all that many this unit.

Tot School Goals for Baby Number 3

 It's time to start tot school with my third, and last baby. Goodness, that's hard for my heart to think about! She's almost 15 months and we could both benefit from a bit more structure to our week. Anyway, just like the boys, I am going to start Juniper off with Color Themes, with maybe a few weeks of other themes to match seasons or big brother's school work.

However, I thought I should clarify that my goal is not at all for her to learn her colors. She already knows some and I have no worries about her learning the rest, even if we never did tot school. Instead, having a theme gives me a jumping off point for organization. It makes it easier to plan and include a variety of activities.

Instead, here are my goals:

• Occupying the Baby! - Ok, so the first goal is very selfish because it is for me, not for her. Now that Archer is officially homeschooling, I need to keep Juniper busy. She likes to join in, sometimes a little too much (like by sitting on him while he's trying to work, coloring on his papers, etc. Having a weekly rotation will hopefully provide her with new distractions often enough to occupy her a little more so we don't have to rely on a good nap to get most of our work done.
• Language Building - This is twofold. First, I plan to have new vocabulary cards out for her each week. These were a fantastic tool for teaching the boys new words and I hope they will be for her too. Even though she is nowhere near ready to match them on her own, modeling for her will help teacher her the idea of matching. Second, having new toys and puzzles out for her regularly will give us new things to talk about to build vocabulary.
• Reading - After teaching both my boys to read as babies and seeing the worlds of stories and interests it opened up for them, I cannot imagine not teaching Juniper to read also. She was a little slower to be interested in it, so will likely progress slower, but there is no set timeline. I plan to go at her pace and follow her interests. We try to fill her world with words, although she's picky, so they may not be "tot school theme" related and that's perfectly fine.
• Math - As with the boys, I am avoiding exposing Juniper to numerals as much as possible (which is sometimes a challenge with a kid like Archer who LOVES shows with numbers). I hope to expose her to concepts like sorting, ordering and matching. She's too young to do any of that on her own yet, but through modeling she'll learn and be able to do a lot more fun learning activities with them later.
• Fine Motor - Obviously, she's at the prime fine motor development age. She really seems to like this type of play, so I'm hoping to try to provide new activities and challenges for her.
• Gross Motor -Juniper is my most physically adventurous child, so I want to make a conscious effort to provide gross motor opportunities for her. A lot of it will likely happen naturally as she tries to keep up with her big brothers (or get to their things).
• Sensory Play - Sensory play is something I have to remember to include in the winter, but I definitely want to make sure I provide exposure to a variety of textures and materials. It is great for fine motor and involves learning some physics with dumping, pouring, etc.

Kindergarten Science: Sunlight

 This year, we are taking a two pronged approach to science. We are doing activities to meet the Next Generation Science Standards for kindergarten, but we are also learning about biomes to go along with out Around the World Homeschool studies. I've done my best to meld the two so it feels mostly cohesive.

This week focused on Sunlight. The main goals were to understand that sunlight warms the earth and affects climate. We also got in our NGSS engineering standards.

We started by reading books about the sun:

• Why do Elephants Need the Sun
• Sunlight (Pebble Books)
• Rivers of Sunlight
• The Sun: Our Nearest Star
• Max Axiom Light
• Just Ask: Why is it Hot?

We also watched What is the Sun?

We made some sun art also. We picked three dark colors of paper and put various objects on them. We set them out in the sun for a few hours and then looked at the results.

  Effects of Sunlight on Earth Experiment

We also did two science experiments. First, we looked at the effects of sunlight on earth (NGSS K-PS3-1). We compared soil, sand, water and rocks in the sun and shade. The main learning goal was for him to understand that it is warmer in the sun than the shade. If you would like directions and a lab sheet, you can print it here.

Building Penguin Protectors:

The second experiment brough in some engineering standards (NGSS K-PS3-2, K-2-ETS1-1, K-2-ETS1-2 , K-2-ETS1-3). To start us off we watched a couple Sci Show Kids episodes on thinking like an engineer.

Then I presented him with a problem. Some penguins (penguin shaped popsicles), are getting too hot in the sun. He needed to build something to protect them (You can print the lab sheet here.) I had him design and build two separate things so that he could compare.

We put one penguin popsicle in each design and then one next to them for comparison.

We took the temperature every 5 minutes, but using actual thermometers vs our infrared would have been a lot more accurate.

At the end we were able to pull out the penguins and compare how much they melted. We also compared the temperatures and discussed what worked well and what he could improve. He was tired when we did it, so I wrote for him while we discussed.

He really wanted to try eating one of the penguins.

Canada Week

Our first country in our Around the World Homeschool curriculum was Canada. Since the country is HUGE, we tried to focus mostly on intuits and maple syrup. 

Books:

I'm not going to list out our spines every week, but I thought I'd share some of our other books. Bear Goes Sugaring was, by far, Archer's favorite! It led us to check out other books by the same author.

My plan is to include at least one math picture book each week, and this week I was kind of able to tie it in to the country with The Grizzly Gazette. I know I won't always be able to tie it in, though.

Archer was pumped when I assigned him to read the Canada section in his Flag Book. That book has been so well loved over the last couple of years, I'm worried the binding will fall apart one of these days.

Activities:

Coloring a map of Canada. Archer chose to do province flags.

Canada maze from Around the World Mazes

Rocky Mountain animals puzzle from the Momentous Mountains set

Canadian Flag from Little Passports

Animal Profile (I modified my own research page from the BYL0 one). Archer chose the ringed seal.

Recipe:

We made Bannock Bread. Four out of five in our family really enjoyed it, although, we'll probably stick to our regular whole wheat pancakes purely from a nutrition perspective. :)

Read Aloud:

We've been working our way through The Very Very Far North. Honestly, it is ok but very wordy for not a lot happening. I am glad we got it from the library instead of purchasing it. Archer seemed to like it.

Games:

Every week I'm trying to get in at least one logic puzzle game and one board game. This week he played Squirrels Go Nuts, which kind of fit the theme. We also played Lemonade Shake Up, which did not at all.

Art:

This week's art fit with our science unit rather than our Around the World unit. We were studying sunlight, so we did some sun art. 

We also did some line practice from Lolly Arroco

Videos:

Other Canada Resource Ideas: