Last week he listened to the book Man’s Slave Becomes God’s Scientist: George Washington Carver. He loved it! George Washington Carver is just every boy’s best friend. After all, he escaped kidnapping; he got beat up and lived to tell about it; he was smarter than his teachers; and he loved dirt and bugs and all those boy kinds of things. That all aside, he makes for a worthy hero, so I love for my boys to admire worthy heroes. And he loved school, which is not a bad thing to encourage boys to love. (I said “boys” because actually others of us enjoyed the book, because we couldn’t escape it as it was being played over speakers loud enough for all of us to not be able to ignore, but fortunately we were all hooked.)
This was a total rabbit trail, and has nothing to do with any of our curriculum, but while we were on a role, we also checked out a book about George Washington Carver for younger kids: A Weed Is a Flower : The Life of George Washington Carver by Aliki and read that. That is a super well illustrated little book that I had read to my older kids once upon a time, and just had to read it again.
Rabbit trail or no, Ace did a notebook page about George Washington Carver and if you ask him to tell you stories, you’d better sit down because it’s going to take awhile. Here are a few of pictures.
List of resources:
Hold That Thought World & US History Notebook Pages (Out of Print) (George Washington Carver Notebook Page)
U.S. History Little Books: Famous People — George Washington Carver (Free) (George Washington Carver 1864-1943 Mini Book)
Literacy-Building Booklets: Famous Americans (An Amazing Scientist Mini Book)
Man’s Slave Becomes God’s Scientist: George Washington Carver (Audio Book) (Sad to see that the price has gone up.)
A Weed Is a Flower : The Life of George Washington Carver (Well illustrated children’s book about Carver.)
Paper Plate Fish
I’m loving having a preschooler around again to make crafts with. I think I have as much fun with her crafts as she does.
We decided to make fish the other day, because we have been enjoying this great music album for kids called God’s Treasures Under the Sea. (And yes, I paid shipping from Australia to the USA for the CDs. It was very worth it. I’ve ordered more to give as gifts.)
Here you are fishy-fishy!
And I’m not the only person in the house who is having too much fun with preschool crafts, so are my older kids. This next fish was made by Ace.
Force and Motion Lapbook
For science, Ace and I are doing the Noeo Science Physics I curriculum. This curriculum was written specifically for homeschoolers, grades one through three. So far, we are enjoying it. It pulls together several different books both on science and biographies on scientists. This curriculum includes Young Scientist Club Kits for experiments. I really like the experiments, and making notebook pages to go along with some of them is great practice too. We did not do a notebook page for every experiment, because being that Ace is nine years old, he still considers writing and bookwork to be boring, but he loves doing the experiments. (At my age, I actually still agree with him, but if nobody recorded their findings, we wouldn’t have science.)
This science curriculum claims to be a Charlotte Mason style curriculum with all “living” books. I will agree that some of the books qualify as “living” books, but some are a bit dry, with mostly little text boxes around pictures. That works, but I was hoping for something more fun to read. I am thinking about trying to figure out what sections of The New Way Things Work book correspond with the different units in the Noeo Physics. That is a really great book, and I already own it. We read it some last year, and loved it. I was really hoping for an open and go science curriculum that was really interesting and fun to read, and while this one is really good, I think it still has room for improvement.
Okay that is my review after doing one unit, now on to a few pictures from our first unit. The first unit was “Force and Motion.” There were lots of fun experiments about friction, gravity, Newton’s third law of motion and more. We enjoyed things from racing cars on sand paper to slamming coins into a line of other coins to see what happened.
Here is the lapbook that we made to go with this.
We laminated the cover image and then glued it on the left side of the lapbook with glue dots and attached it to right side of the lapbook with a velcro dot.
Excuse that I misspelled “Centrifugal”–bad teacher moment.
The list of sources for the lapbook: (no affiliate links)
Newton’s Laws of Motion from Jimmie Langley (Scroll down to find Newton’s Laws of Motion Book)
Cover for Gravity Mini Book from Crayola
Both Friction Mini Books from Tools & Technology Book by Dinah Zike
“Force x Distance = Work” Mini Book also from the Tools & Technology Book by Dinah Zike
Balanced & Unbalanced Flap Book by Haley Grant (Scroll down quite a ways to find link.)
Cover art by Phillip Martin
I have to admit that we looked at the lapbook that was done by Jimmie’s daughter from Jimmies Collage quite a bit since hers was also based on the Noeo Physics 1 forces and motion unit. If you’d like to take a peak at hers, here is the link.
Overall, he seemed to enjoy this unit a lot. He especially enjoyed the experiments. Next is Sound and Light.
Armor of God
Recently, Ace attended a Bible class about the Armor of God. At the end of the three-day class, his class put on a presentation for the parents, which included: marching for us, describing Roman armor, and also explaining the meaning of the fiery darts. He really enjoyed himself and learned a lot about the practical application of Ephesians 6, but the best part was the armor that he made. He was very proud of his armor and strutted around in it a for quite awhile at home after the class was long finished, and even went on to make some for his little sister and his big brother.
Cheers to his very excellent teacher (my cousin) for teaching a class he will never forget!
Preschool Art Lapbook of Sorts
Since my third grader made a lapbook about Leif Erikson, my preschooler wanted to make a lapbook too. She totally designed this all by herself, (Act surprised!) because that’s what preschoolers like to do. Sometimes it’s just fun to let preschoolers do what preschoolers do, (other than when you have to clean up.)
It’s pretty though. I decided to document it, just because I like it.
Leif Erickson Lapbook
My third grader and I are doing the Early American History Study by Beautiful Feet. We just finished our first unit in the guide—Leif Erikson. We read the book, Leif the Lucky through two or three times, just because we enjoyed it so much. It’s not only well written, but has great illustrations, and that makes a book a win-win for an early elementary student. We also had lots of fun researching online about Vikings and Native Americans that Leif may have met.
And, of course, Ace thought that being Leif Erikson was one of the best parts of the unit.
Ace made a lapbook to show some of the things that he learned about Leif Erikson. Here are a few pictures.
List of sources for the lapbook (Some are affiliate links):
Cover picture from Exploration of North America Coloring Book (Dover History Coloring Book)
Map from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History by Donald Silver
“Who Were the Vikings” and “Vikings Were Also Called” both from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Blog Vikings Lapbook
Northern Lights from Google Images
“Native Americans in Vinland” from Google Images
“Father & Son Explorers” from History Through the Ages Timeline Figures
Viking Ship from Homeschool Share Viking Multi-Theme Unit
Coin idea from Homeschool in the Woods’ Great Empires Activity Pak
Viking mask from Funnycoloring.com
Paper Ship Model from forbicolla.com (not in English)
So far so good, as far as the Beautiful Feet Guide. What a nice pick of books they have made for this age group. Next comes Columbus, but first we are working on finishing up a science project.