She blinded me with Science!
(a.k.a our Homeschool Curriculum, part 3... catch up on part 1 here and part 2 here).
So I mentioned somewhere before that our three main science topics we will cover this year are the human body, the solar system, and the scientific process.
{We're also doing a bit of weather study in our daily calendar routine, for which we're using some of the charts found here. N checks the outdoor temperature and we write it down on the calendar each day, and at the end of the year I plan to make a graph with the average temperature for each month. This gives her a basic familiarity with the seasons and the farenheit system.}
Again, no purchased curriculum, and I don't really have as clear a plan for this as I do for other subjects. Here are my ideas, and we usually end up doing some kind of history or geography activity about once a week:
*Leading up to Columbus Day, we've been doing some Christopher Columbus activities. We checked out a few picture-book biographies from the library and read about his life and exploration. We also made a timeline in our playroom (hoping to add other historical events to this timeline as we learn about them):
N also made a Columbus "doll" (and his wife, of course) and put them on our world map in Spain. We then drew arrows to the place Columbus was trying to go (the Southeast Asian islands) and the place he actually landed in America (Hispanola).
*Along the lines of early American exploration and settlement, we've also done a bit of reading about Jamestown and Pocahontas, and we're going to put her on our timeline next. We will also be visiting Jamestown when we take a trip to DC later in October!
*We will put pictures up our different relatives and friends that live far away, and pinpoint their locations with strings on our classroom map.
*I'm hoping to do some of these map-making activities before the end of the year!
*We also now have a membership to Old Sturbridge Village and visit there just about on a weekly basis. There are so many learning opportunities there-- we have been over a dozen times and we still haven't seen the whole place. We always come away with some new bit of knowledge about what life was like in "the olden days" (as L puts it).
My goals for music this year are to include daily violin practice, which we do every morning, and also to do a weekly 30-45 minutes of "music class" during which we do such activities as:
*Playing games to introduce familiarity with the musical staff and rhythmic sight-reading
*Introducing the major scale with solfege practice-- I "quiz" the girls by pointing to the different syllables on our wall and having them try to sing (after establishing the scale by singing it lots of times):
For further practice with solfege we sometimes try to sing syllables on songs that we already know (like Twinkle Star-- "do do sol sol la la sol..."). We also like to watch this video:
*One week I did a listening exercise where the girls had to listen to a few pieces and decide whether they were performed by a choral ensemble, an orchestra, a wind band, or a solo instrument. That was really fun!
*We are doing a bit of music history-- nothing formal really, mostly just whenever we're listening to public radio I will tell them the story of whatever piece is playing (we've encountered Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, Beethoven's 5th, and Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain in this way, among others). Occasionally they will ask about when a composer lived, and we talk about our timeline and I show them where he or she would be in history.
*Lately we've been checking the "Beethoven's Wig" series of CDs out of the library-- they're really clever! There are silly words made up to all the classics... Mozart Sonata in C, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Debussy's Clair de Lune, etc. The girls love to listen to them in the car. It's a nice way to expose them to some classical literature while having fun at the same time.
And that's about it! I'll probably be back at the end of the year to talk about what worked for us curriculum-wise, and what didn't, and what we actually ended up accomplishing. Everything is new so there's lots of room for tweaking.
I'm about to blind you with our science curriculum (and history and geography and music)... but feel free to watch this video instead... it may be more fun for you. No hard feelings.
SCIENCE
So I mentioned somewhere before that our three main science topics we will cover this year are the human body, the solar system, and the scientific process.
{We're also doing a bit of weather study in our daily calendar routine, for which we're using some of the charts found here. N checks the outdoor temperature and we write it down on the calendar each day, and at the end of the year I plan to make a graph with the average temperature for each month. This gives her a basic familiarity with the seasons and the farenheit system.}
I didn't purchase a science curriculum. My goal is a basic overview for N, not high school chemistry or anything, so I felt pretty confident covering the basics with her myself. I have found a few free resources that will help us along:
*The Homeschool Den post with free human body worksheets and ideas for a human body unit
*We will probably lapbook our way through the solar system and the asteroid belt (not free, but extremely cheap!)
*We will learn the scientific process by performing actual science experiments, like this and this.
If we have time left in the school year, we may do this weather packet too... if not, we'll save it for next year!
(As you can see I'm relying heavily on the Homeschool Den for our science supplementation... thanks so much, Liesel!)
*The Homeschool Den post with free human body worksheets and ideas for a human body unit
*We will probably lapbook our way through the solar system and the asteroid belt (not free, but extremely cheap!)
*We will learn the scientific process by performing actual science experiments, like this and this.
If we have time left in the school year, we may do this weather packet too... if not, we'll save it for next year!
(As you can see I'm relying heavily on the Homeschool Den for our science supplementation... thanks so much, Liesel!)
In addition to our home science activities, N will be participating in a "nature school" at a nearby wildlife sanctuary where they will go on hikes, read stories about nature science, and play games. L may get involved with this for the winter session too.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY
Again, no purchased curriculum, and I don't really have as clear a plan for this as I do for other subjects. Here are my ideas, and we usually end up doing some kind of history or geography activity about once a week:
*Leading up to Columbus Day, we've been doing some Christopher Columbus activities. We checked out a few picture-book biographies from the library and read about his life and exploration. We also made a timeline in our playroom (hoping to add other historical events to this timeline as we learn about them):
N also made a Columbus "doll" (and his wife, of course) and put them on our world map in Spain. We then drew arrows to the place Columbus was trying to go (the Southeast Asian islands) and the place he actually landed in America (Hispanola).
*Along the lines of early American exploration and settlement, we've also done a bit of reading about Jamestown and Pocahontas, and we're going to put her on our timeline next. We will also be visiting Jamestown when we take a trip to DC later in October!
*We will put pictures up our different relatives and friends that live far away, and pinpoint their locations with strings on our classroom map.
*I'm hoping to do some of these map-making activities before the end of the year!
*We also now have a membership to Old Sturbridge Village and visit there just about on a weekly basis. There are so many learning opportunities there-- we have been over a dozen times and we still haven't seen the whole place. We always come away with some new bit of knowledge about what life was like in "the olden days" (as L puts it).
MUSIC
My goals for music this year are to include daily violin practice, which we do every morning, and also to do a weekly 30-45 minutes of "music class" during which we do such activities as:
*Playing games to introduce familiarity with the musical staff and rhythmic sight-reading
*Introducing the major scale with solfege practice-- I "quiz" the girls by pointing to the different syllables on our wall and having them try to sing (after establishing the scale by singing it lots of times):
 |
| Daddy drew these! |
For further practice with solfege we sometimes try to sing syllables on songs that we already know (like Twinkle Star-- "do do sol sol la la sol..."). We also like to watch this video:
*We are doing a bit of music history-- nothing formal really, mostly just whenever we're listening to public radio I will tell them the story of whatever piece is playing (we've encountered Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, Beethoven's 5th, and Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain in this way, among others). Occasionally they will ask about when a composer lived, and we talk about our timeline and I show them where he or she would be in history.
*Lately we've been checking the "Beethoven's Wig" series of CDs out of the library-- they're really clever! There are silly words made up to all the classics... Mozart Sonata in C, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Debussy's Clair de Lune, etc. The girls love to listen to them in the car. It's a nice way to expose them to some classical literature while having fun at the same time.
And that's about it! I'll probably be back at the end of the year to talk about what worked for us curriculum-wise, and what didn't, and what we actually ended up accomplishing. Everything is new so there's lots of room for tweaking.
very interesting! Maybe next year you guys can learn about the metric system!
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