Flanders Fields::WWI

Today we read this book, In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae, by Linda Granfield, and I could not make it through without choking up. (My 10 year old must surely think I'm crazy). In light of the 10 year anniversary (yesterday) of 9-11, this story about the fallen soldiers of WWI was quite timely.

I memorized this poem by John McCrae when I was in elementary school, and surprisingly, I still can remember it. I think I'm going to have Jacob and Emily memorize it as well over the next 4 weeks as we study World War I.

After our study today, we each drew our own renditions of Flanders Fields, using the stirring illustrations by Janet Wilson as our inspiration.

Notebooking::Vocabulary Words::Landforms

My son's vocabulary words last week were all pertaining to land formations and bodies of water. Ah, the perfect setup for more notebooking pages!

I instructed my son to look up the definitions of his vocabulary words and copy them down on the paper I gave him. Afterwards, I let him look up images on the internet (under careful supervision, I might add...internet searching can yield some inappropriate images) for the specific water and land forms. We then resized the images to fit on his vocabulary pages and he next printed, cut, and pasted the pictures down. Now when we review the definitions, he has a visual picture in front of him.

I can certainly see using this format for subject-related vocabulary words in the future.

Notebooking with TOG

I have rediscovered "notebooking". Notebook pages, to be more descriptive, something I used to do eons ago when I was homeschooling my older (now graduated) children.

I like to think of notebook pages as mini posters--small posters that slide into sheet protectors and then into a notebook. A record of what we studied. A nice collection that makes a book of sorts on any given topic or a variety of topics.

Right now we are learning about the 1900s in our TOG studies. These pictures below represent some of the topics we're covering. One day, as my son's notebook gets fuller, I can envision moving all the president pages to their own notebook, and similarly grouping other pages together and moving them to create separate notebooks. Or perhaps we'll just keep everything in one gigantic notebook titled "The 1900s". Oh, the possibilities....

Lapbook::Wright Brothers

We studied about Wilbur and Orville Wright during our TOG studies a few weeks ago, and Jacob made his first lapbook.. I let Jacob choose the topics to include in the lapbook and I let him choose which pictures from the internet to use. Eventually I hope to see more writing included, but believe me, this much is great for a 10 year old boy who is reluctant to write anything.

Now we are studying the Titanic, and Jacob has begged and pleaded (okay, he asked) to make a lapbook for the Titanic. Yes, he asked. So now the Titanic lapbook is in progress.... :)

Meet Rosie

We got a new puppy! Her name is Rosie, she's 10 weeks old, she's a German shepherd, and she's going to get B.I.G.!!!!
:)

TOG, Y4, U1 :: Wright Brothers

It's been years since I've posted on this blog site! Well, I've decided to use it to post about some of our homeschool activities. This year we started using Tapestry of Grace, Year 4, which starts in the early 1900s and goes through current day history. I'm excited about studying this time period of history. It seems that all too often we teach history starting at the pilgrims and ending at the Civil War.
Last week Jacob and Emily learned about the Wright brothers and their airplane. We made model planes from instructions we found here and here. Jacob also made a lapbook of the Wright brothers, and I'll post a picture of it when I put new batteries in my camera and take a picture.

Katie had a birthday!

Katie Marie is 18 years old! I remember when Katie was born early that morning in December. Her due date was Christmas day, but she decided to come early. I had a hard labor and delivery, and after Katie was born she cried for about 2 hours straight. I think she finally fell asleep from exhaustion. When she woke up several hours later, Katie was as sweet as could be.

18 years later, Katie is still sweet. She is such a blessing to our family with her servant's heart, gentle spirit, and joyful countenance. Katie is a peacemaker in our home, friendly outside the home, and a lovely young lady who desires to serve God with her life.

Happy birthday, Katie. We love you!

Katie at 2 and 1/2 years old