November 2010 – Preparation Education

Colonial Life Unit

November 29, 2010February 1, 2011prayingmother

Whew! We spent so long studying about the Thirteen Colonies and Colonial life. We started this study when I was pregnant, and it kind of came to a hault when I was so sick. But we finally finished it. We decided that we wanted to finish it with a Colonial meal, then we realized that we were awfully close to Thanksgiving, so the kids agreed that that would make for a great Colonial meal. It did! We had a great feast–vegetarian style!

The kids dressed up in their Colonial clothes for the event. They’ve had so much fun with these clothes. It’s a little sad that they are going to grow out of them. The cousins that were here for Thanksgiving, also dressed up in Pilgrim and Indian costumes. What fun!

Now for what we’ve studied for the last long while on the subject. We read some really good books on the Thirteen Colonies. We continued to enjoy This Country of Ours. We really do enjoy that book. The kids enjoy listening to the audiobook version while they work on their lapbooks. We also enjoyed some other books about different people and experiences of the Colonial time period. Some of our favorites were Roger Williams by Mark Ammerman, Tattered Sails (this one for it’s illustrations rather than the writing), Old Silver Leg Takes Over (Kids loved that book!), The Carving Tree (about Roanoake). We read several others, but these were the ones that we really, really enjoyed.

Of course, we did lapbooks on Colonial America too. Here are some pictures.

Lapbook covers by Zippy and JD Boy respectively

Slideshow of Zippy’s (age 10) Colonial Lapbook

Slideshow of JD Boy’s (age 7) Colonial Lapbook

Simple Carpentry with My Boys

November 9, 2010May 3, 2012prayingmother

My boys love to build things. What boys don’t? So when I can think of something useful for them to build, we’re all happy. It gives them a great opportunity to develop hand-eye coordination as well as some math skills (measuring). You know me, I’m always happy to find ways to teach school subjects with real life. They get permission to bang on something. That always brings smiles! And it gives them a nice sense of accomplishment when it’s finished. So here is a project that I did with my boys recently.

I didn’t like the way they just piled things up on the floor of their closet, so I decided that if they built a rack to put in their closet, they would get all of the great benefits of building, plus they would be so proud that they would determine to keep the bottom of their closet nice and clean. It worked!! Yea! Score!

We measured their closet, then we went to Home Depot and figured out what would work and purchased a kit. Building with them is fine and all, but I did not want to have to get out a saw to complete the project, so I limited our choices to kits.

Here’s a before picture of the closet.

Here are some work in progress pictures.

And here’s the completed project.

They’re quite proud of their work. They’ve faithfully been lining up the their shoes and toys in there now. They have even been keeping their closet floor vacuumed now. It might not make it into Better Homes and Gardens best organized closet, but I’m thrilled with and so are they. Just think of all that we got accomplished with that task.

Baby pictures

November 1, 2010prayingmother

Just wanted to share a few pictures of the littlest one in our family. She is already 4 months old. (These are the same that I posted on Facebook a week or so ago, so you may have already seen them.)