Homeschool Review: Christmas Unit Study

Last year we had the chance to review a Once-a-Week Unit Study about Knights and Nobles and LOVED IT!!! So when Homeschool Legacy contacted me about reviewing their NEW Once-a-Week Unit Study, Christmas Comes to America, we were thrilled!

Of course, there was a slight "catch". Naturally, Homeschool Legacy wanted my readers to be able to use the unit study THIS Christmas, which means, writing the review . . . now! So, we've had the added fun of getting to have a little taste of EARLY Christmas fun :)

As the name suggests, Once-a-Week Unit Studies are designed to use once-a-week, as a fun change of pace from your normal curriculum routine. The Christmas unit could also be used to add a little bit of "school" to your week if you, like many families, choose to take the month of December "off".

One thing I like is that, in consideration of the general busyness of the holiday season, the Christmas unit is less "intense" than the Knights and Nobles unit that we reviewed.  You can easily fit this one in during the busy Christmas season, and have a blast doing it!

You can see a sample week on the site, but to give you a general idea, each week focuses on Christmas traditions from one country, leading up to the diverse traditions that make up our American Christmas. Each week includes a short devotional time, and then reading and hands-on activities covering history, culture, music, etc.

If your children are involved in Boy Scouts or American Heritage Girls, the unit also includes all the requirements to earn a specific badge.

Naturally, we had to make some adaptations since we were doing the unit a month (plus) early. Some of the most fun sounding parts just weren't practical for us to do in October/early November, including attending a Christmas concert, though we DID get to make our own instruments. Lexie even found directions to make a "string" instrument, since violins are her passion.  We also listened to a variety of Christmas music on CDs to make up for not being able to go to a concert, there just aren't any Christmas concerts to be found around here this early LOL.

Our other "musical" hands-on activity that we decided to save for later was going caroling. We went caroling with a group from chutry the rch a couple years ago and the girls enjoyed it, but even at Christmas time, I'll admit we got some strange looks, apparently it's just not "done" around here. And I figured we would get VERY strange looks if we knocked on peoples doors and started singing Christmas songs in October LOL.  Though people should have liked it, better to offer a song than to beg for candy like all the other kids were doing that time of year, right? :) So, we skipped the caroling, except to sing our own songs at home, but we DID make the wassail recipe (the suggestion was to have it waiting when you got home from caroling), and LOVED it! So much, in fact, that the girls chose to make it again that weekend instead of our traditional Saturday night hot chocolate :)

A definite ADVANTAGE of doing a Christmas unit early is that I was able to reserve all the books we needed from the library without any waiting lists :) And the librarians are so used to me getting tons of books about odd topics that they didn't even question it, hee hee.

I think all three girls' favorite part was making Gingerbread Houses (though be aware, the suggested read aloud to go with it is Hansel and Gretel and it's a more "authentic" version than, say, the Nick Jr version the girls had heard when they were little. Instead of being ambiguous about how the children get lost in the woods, this version tells of their step-mother (the Grim Brothers certainly had something against step-mothers didn't they?) convincing their father to LOSE them in the woods because the family didn't have enough food. The girls were abit horrified by that, but since it's a "happily ever after" ending, it was all good :)

We opted to make graham cracker houses, and our selection of Christmas candy was still abit slim, but we made do, and the girls had great fun with it! Little Bit got frustrated with the fact that if she pushed too hard the house collapsed, so she went with a deconstructed gingerbread house, which still served her main purpose which was, eating the candy over the next week or so LOL.

This unit study is available for $17.95, be sure to order with time to leave shipping time and still have it for the whole month of December :)

Disclaimer: I received one or more of the above mentioned products, free of charge in exchange for my honest review. No other compensation was received and I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC Regulations.

All prices are accurate at time of posting.

F is for Fingers, Feeling and Fun

Fingers can have lots of Fun Feeling different things with Sensory Play! And as we move toward cold, stay-inside-more weather, sensory play can be a real sanity saver for mom, as well as beneficial for kids!

I'll admit, up until now I haven't done much structured sensory play with my kids, beyond sand play, a form of sensory play that we all have probably done at some point. It continues to be a good one! 

For winter, you can fill a small plastic under-the-bed box with sand, and set it on a plastic table cloth to let your child have an "indoor sandbox". 

When Little Bit wanted to "do school" at age 3, I turned to sensory play as an element for "school" for such a little one, and introduced the bean bin. She still remembers them fondly :)

More recently, the combination of continuing to read about the benefits of sensory play on countless homeschool blogs, and the fact that, with our neighbors joining us for school part-time, I have more little ones, and more varied personalities, to consider, I'm finding that sensory play can be something that all of the children enjoy, and I feel it helps with school overall. Sometimes I'll set kids up with something sensory while I read (the challenge with that when the neighbor boys are here, is that all 3 littler ones want to talk about what they're playing with instead of listening to what I'm reading, so that works better when it's just my 3.

Last month, on a warm day, we had a fun sensory table with baking soda, vinegar, and water in the old sand and water table. E & J were spending the afternoon with us that day and it kept the 3 little ones busy for half the afternoon!

A few weeks ago for science we mixed cornstarch and water. It was showing states of matter, but it was also addictive . . . all 3 girls, and I, were fascinated with that one!

Another brief, un-planned sensory experience, thanks to science class happened last week when we mixed hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, food coloring, water and yeast in an empty water bottle and let it foam out into a bowl. Little Bit and E had great fun "turning into smurfs" for a few minutes before we rinsed it off.  The big girls didn't want to be anywhere near that one because it smelled . . . odd, and they didn't like that.

While I was sick I needed something to keep Little Bit quietly occupied so I could rest, so I pulled out one of the sensory activities I had planned to use sometime during our current preschool unit (Water in Our World) anyway.  For awhile now I've seen bloggers raving about how fun water beads are for sensory play, but I must admit, I was somewhat skeptical, but I bought a pack and figured we'd give it a try. 

We put sea glass, marbles, "jewels" (the little flat marble thingys for putting in vases) and clear water beads in a 9x13 baking dish and added warm water (it was a chilly day, warm water was nice . . .).  Then I told Little Bit to go get some of her plastic "ocean animals" . . . she has a broad definition of "ocean animals" but whatever makes her happy.

I intentionally didn't tell any of the girls what the water beads were supposed to do (when you get them, they are tiny (smaller than bb's) hard little balls). Little Bit enjoyed playing with her animals in the water and stirring around the sea glass and marbles for awhile, then suddenly said "Mommy! These are GROWING!"  after that, we were all pretty fascinated, over time, the water beads grew to the size of the marbles, which makes it fun because they look the same but one's hard and one is like really stiff jello.  The water beads absorbed all the water, but she continued to have fun with the beads, marbles, and animals for a couple more days.

Some additional sensory play that I have planned for this winter includes:

Arctic play - freeze some containers of water and pop the "icebergs" out, then float them in a dish of water and let the kids play with the plastic ocean/acrtic animals on the icebergs. 

Jello - I'm going to put the plastic ocean animals and some marbles/sea glass/jewels in the bottom of small plastic containers (knowing the kids involved, I suspect that small, individual ones will work better than a big shared bin). Then mix up some plain gelatin with blue food coloring and pour that on top. Let the kids dig through the jello to "save" the animals and such.

"Snow" - I'll let the kids mix up their own moon dough (water and baby oil), and then make mini snowmen or whatever they want.

So those are some fun sensory activities to keep children busy during cold winter days :) 

Blogging through the Alphabet at BenandMe.com

Book Review: At Home at Dogwood Mudhole

Usually Schoolhouse Review Crew products are for the kids. Or for the "teacher" part of my job description. But this final review product of 2013, was just for me!

At Home in Dogwood Mudhole Volume 1: Nothing that Eats by Franklin Sanders is the first of three volumes, consisting of the newsletters that Franklin Sanders sent out to subscribers to his Moneychanger newsletter over a period of seventeen years.

When the book begins, Franklin is, as many of us were, concerned about Y2K. Partially motivated by these concerns, he and his wife buy land in Tennessee and end up moving not only themselves and their still-at-home-age children, but also some of their older, married children onto this property and begin moving toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

In case you were wondering where the title comes from. Dogwood Mudhole is where the Sanders family lives. I'd say "only in Tennessee" except since I live in Pennsylvania where we have towns named everything from Bethlehem to Blue Ball, I guess I can't really say much about Tennessee's interesting addresses, hee hee.  The first volume gets it's subtitle "Nothing that Eats" from the frequent plea of Sanders' wife, Susan whenever he and various of their children attend livestock auctions or flea markets. Despite her plea, they seem to always come home with more livestock or pets and many of the stories in the book revolve, not surprisingly, around those animals, including various dog stories, and many humorous incidents revolving around the family's attempts to figure out how this whole farming thing works, from raising pigs to plowing fields with, not-well-broken, very LARGE, horses. . .

This book was unlike anything else I've ever read. It is humorous, and "down-to-earth" and in many ways like sitting down and listening to an interesting granfatherly-type tell stories of his family.

Franklin Sanders is an interesting guy. He, and several members of his family, enjoy participating in Civil War reenactments as confederates. He provides a fascinating, more pro-confederacy, perspective on the war, the reasons behind it, etc. Definitely not what you're likely to read in any textbooks :)

You can purchase At Home in Dogwood Mudhole Volume 1: Nothing that Eats for $22.95 for paperback or $16.95 for Kindle/ePub/PDF. This is a good book for older teens and adults, I don't think my ten year olds would enjoy it yet.

If you're looking for an entertaining book about life in Tennessee and interesting tips and tidbits on a variety of topics, I'd recommend this book, as a great read!

To see what other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thought, click the banner, below.

All prices are accurate at time of posting.

Weekly Wrap-Up - November 10

We started the week with both Rodney and I fighting colds (and losing, sigh). We squeezed little bits and pieces of school in between my naps, and I was struck with how much reading/talking I do for school on a normal day - having an almost gone voice makes a person much more aware of such things.

As we continue to enjoy Chemistry and Physics, the girls were learning about atoms and elements and all that fun stuff. To better visualize "water" they made hydrogen and oxygen atoms using gobstoppers and nerds on paper plates. Even Little Bit gets into science when it involves candy LOL.

Showing off their finished H2O!

We had some wonderfully warm weather and, after ignoring the sandbox all summer, Little Bit re-noticed it this week. I love the . . . homeyness . . . of her playing in the sandbox with the laundry on the line :)

Sandbox time

We're continuing to enjoy our "early Christmas" studies on Tuesdays, as we review a Christmas unit study (look for that review in just a few days!).  This week's study was about Germany and included making gingerbread houses. All three girls thought that was great fun, though I think getting to lick the frosting off their fingers, and then eat their creations was the biggest draw LOL.

I wish I'd gotten some pictures of Sabbath School this week. It was a fun program. We were learning about Paul on the road to Damascus. We started by trying to guide balloons along masking tape lines using brooms, but not our hands or feet. And we talked about how challenging that was as a lead-in to learning about how challenging Saul found being blind.

Lexie played the part of Saul to tell us all about it. 

And we finished off class with an obstacle course. We blind-folded the kids and lead them through the obstacle course to help them see what it would be like to be blind.

Sabbath afternoon we took advantage of another day of not-too-cold-yet weather and headed to Hershey's ZooAmerica! Little Bit was really excited to be able to feel a real giraffe skin (her favorite animal), and we all enjoyed seeing the animals. It was chilly but not too cold to have fun. 

E is for Eggs!

I decided to "multi-task" today.  This week's Blogging Through the Alphabet letter is E AND I haven't posted a recipe on Try a New Recipe Tuesday for awhile, and have an egg recipe that I've been meaning to post . . .

Last summer we attended the rehearsal dinner for my cousin's wedding and the food was wonderful! One of the things I really enjoyed was a vegetable frittata. So once I was home, and realized how easy it is, I added it to my list of recipes to try. And a few weeks ago, Lexie made supper one night, and tried it out for me.

This is a wonderfully versatile recipe too! Whatever vegetables you have on hand, whatever herbs . . . I LOVE that!!!

INGREDIENTS:
14 eggs
2 c cheese
chopped vegetables of your choice (we used onions and broccoli and spinach)
herbs of your choice (I don't remember what Lexie snipped from our herb pots)
salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400.  Heat butter, coconut oil, or olive oil in a large, oven-safe skillet. Saute vegetables until tender (since the spinach just needed to "wilt", I waited to add it right before adding the eggs). Meanwhile, stir together eggs, cheese, salt and herbs. When vegetables are tender, spread evenly in skillet, then pour eggs on top. Do NOT stir them. Cook until the sides begin to look firm, 1-2 min. Move skillet to the oven and bake until the eggs are set (10-15 min). Slice into wedges and serve.

This was a HIT all around! Super easy, tasted yummy, and just about the perfect amount for our family of 5, with a salad and some bread to round out the meal.

   

Schoolhouse Crew Review: Apologia Science

You can't spend very long on (Christian) homeschool sites and forums without hearing someone sing the praises of Apologia science. When it comes to Creation-based, homeschool science, it's definitely the one I've heard mentioned most often. Last winter the Schoolhouse Review Crew reviewed Apologia Elementary Science, but, since we were mid-move, I didn't beg as hard as I otherwise would have, to be on the review, and we didn't get to review it. We DID get to review one of Apologia's Bible curriculums last year, and enjoyed it!

So, when Apologia Educational Ministries asked the Schoolhouse Review Crew to review their NEW Science book, Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics, and the Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal I really hoped we'd get a chance this time, and we did!!!! Wooo-hooooo!!!!

This is a K-6th grade, creation-based, science curriculum, based on the Charlotte Mason approach. It consists of 14 lessons, and if you follow the suggested schedule in the Notebooking Journal, you will spend 2 days per week, 2 weeks, per lesson, so the curriculum will cover 28 weeks. You can download a sample lesson here.

There are 2 notebooking journals available, the Junior Notebooking Journal, for younger students and the Notebooking Journal for upper elementary students. For this review, I was sent up to 2 notebooking journals of my choice. Initially, I considered asking for one of each, so that Little Bit (Pre-K), and/or our neighbor, E (K, who joins us 4 days a week for homeschool), could share the younger one and the twins (5th grade) could share the older kid one). But after looking at the online samples (available at the links above), I determined that, while the little kids would probably like the coloring pages in the Junior Notebook (for that matter, so would my older girls), overall, the Junior notebook still assumes pretty advanced (IMO) writing ability, and would be well beyond Little Bit and E's, pre-reading, level.  So, I just requested 2 of the older kid journals, one for each of the twins.

The lesson plans for this curriculum are included in the Notebooking Journals, rather than the textbook. That can be frustrating, since I don't normally have the girls' notebooking journals with me when I'm doing lesson plans. Since I write my lesson plans in Evernote, I solved this problem by snapping a picture, in Evernote, of the lesson plan pages of the Notebooking Journal so I have it right with me when I'm writing my lesson plans. As mentioned above, the suggested schedule is 2 days a week, 2 weeks per lesson. I found for us, considering that I was including the younger kids in at least some of it (ometimes the reading, usually the hands-on stuff), I found the suggested lessons were sometimes too long (the sample pages of the journals on the website include one page of the lesson plans, so you can see how it is laid out). My default is to split the reading/try this days into 2 days, but we generally do science 4-5 days per week, so it all evens out. The  "workbook" pages, I usually don't have to divide, so overall, we are moving as quick, or quicker than suggested, just dividing things up differently.

I think, because of the lesson plans being included in the Notebooking Journal, I'd for sure recommend purchasing at least one Notebooking Journal (or Junior Notebooking Journal, the textbook assignments appear to be the same), for $24, in addition to the textbook for $39.  Whether to purchase a notebooking journal for each child is going to depend on your educational approach. My girls have enjoyed the pretty notebooking pages, but the same journaling could be accomplished in a regular notebook. The journals include word searches and some lapbook type pages, as well as a quiz at the end of the chapter, so if your child enjoys those types of pages and/or, quizzing is important to you, that would also be a reason to purchase the journals for each child.

This is an AWESOME curriculum! I really can't sing it's praises loud enough! As much as we generally don't go for textbooks, this one is just amazing! It has TONS of hands-on stuff, mixed all through the lessons. Most of it is very easy to accomplish with common household items and they are FUN and COOL!!! Just yesterday (I didn't get a picture because my hands were abit messy), we mixed yeast, hydrogen peroxide, and dish soap to create a really cool (I'm running out of adjectives here!) bubbly reaction that oozed out of the bottle and half-filled the bowl we had the bottle sitting in.

Lexie and Ashlyn are loving it! When I asked them if they had anything to add to the review, they said "it's really fun! There are PLENTY of experiments! And some even involve candy (that would be the hydrogen and oxygen "elements" we made out of Gobstoppers and Nerds the other day)!

Every day when E (6) gets here, one of his first questions is "do we get to do Science today?"  Little Bit (4) is still abit young, but she thinks the experiments are fun. She liked the candy one too LOL.

We are definitely planning to continue using this curriculum until we've completed it, and we're already talking about continuing to use Apologia for science after we finish this book (our current plan is to "trade" with a friend who is currently using Astronomy, after that, we'll have to see . . .)

To see what other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thought of this curriculum, click the banner, below:

All prices are accurate at time of posting.

Weekly Wrap-Up - Nov 3

We had a pretty quiet week overall.

Sewing, playing outside, learning about steam, by doing fun things like making popcorn, and watching a youtube video of popcorn popping in slow motion. . . .To coordinate EXTREMELY well with the steam stuff (which was part of our preschool water unit), in science we made a "water cycle" by planting a plant in a sealed plastic container with a cup of water in the container. It's pretty cool to now see the water condensed and running down the sides. 

The last part of the week was . . . not too great. The cold that I've been trying to avoid as it's worked its way through all 3 of the kids, finally hit me, full force, ugh! On an extremely positive note, the day I felt the worst, and Rodney was travelling for work, I asked the girls to PLEASE play nicely together, and make sure Little Bit stayed safe, so I could take a much-needed-nap. They DID!! All 3 of them, without ONCE running to me whining about anything, ALL afternoon!!! Granted, their "play" included putting on a "ball" (as in dressing in princess dresses and "dancing") in their bedroom, which is right above MY bedroom, but I didn't have the heart to tell them that doing the Virginia Reel in the room above where I'm trying to sleep isn't exactly conducive to my sleeping. 

Since that was the night that I'd promised them a trip to Pizza Hut to cash in their Book It coupons for October, and I wasn't up to that, we substituted ice cream and watching Cinderella. It seemed to work well. And of course we still have to go to Pizza Hut sometime before the end of November to use those coupons :) 

Friday, I was still feeling pretty lousy, and Rodney had come down with the cold too. As we were mostly "vegging", the big girls were outside trying to clear some weeds on the back of our property and somehow Ashlyn managed to poke herself in the foot with the pitchfork, sigh . . . Lexie came in and got us, but didn't really give us any feel for how serious it was, or wasn't. Thankfully, it wasn't serious enough to require medical attention, and by evening she was dancing around the bedroom, and said it only hurt when bumped. Made for a stressful day though . . .  At least Rodney could stay home with Ashlyn while I went to the library (my one frustration with the library here is that it's closed both Sunday and Monday, I wish the extra day closed (due to budget cuts) was sometime in the middle of the week instead of back-to-back with Sunday) since putting a shoe one wasn't really something she wanted to do that first day.

By Sabbath, Ashlyn still didn't want to wear a shoe, but did go to Sabbath School (wearing just a sock on that foot). The curriculum we are using in Sabbath School frequently has a "Bible Character" tell the story, and Lexie and Ashlyn are LOVING being able to play those parts. On their own, they decided that it is better if they don't have to READ the story, so on the weeks that one of them dresses up and tells the story, she also memorizes it! Shhhh . . . don't tell them, but they're learning lots as "helpers" in the little kid class!!! :) This week Lexie was Tabitha/Dorcus, and, not to be left out, Ashlyn was her "friend" so they could both sit in our Palestinian "house" and "sew" while Lexie told the story. We made some sewing cards for the kids to "sew" on too, so they weren't left out either :) 

Rodney was sick enough that he stayed home, and I was still feeling pretty lousy, so the rest of Sabbath was a true day of REST.

Here's hoping that we can all get to feeling better QUICKLY, and have a good, sick/injury free week this week!