A lot!! We've been so busy with all our studies, music school, Red Cross club and fun activities! It's been awhile since I've posted about what we've been up to. Here is a little peek into our school room....
Here is our chuck wagon menu for when we studied the cattle drives...
Here is an example of our map work. We work on a different map of OK for each unit we cover.
Here is our statehood worksheet. We learned so much!!
We have so many fun activities to do with each unit. Here is one example.......
BabyGirl is thoroughly enjoying our Oklahoma history. She asks what we are going to do with it each day. Since my last school post we've covered: Five Civilized Tribes (including the Cherokee alphabet), Trail of Tears, Civil War in OK, Plains Indians, buffalo, railroads, cattle drives (we made our own brand!), cowboys, outlaws, the land run, life in Oklahoma territory and statehood. It has been quite the journey! All of us have learned so much about the history of our great state! We have several field trips lined up to incorporate what we've learned. In a couple of weeks we will be visiting an historical mansion that was finished in 1907. This comes perfectly right after we studied statehood! Coming up we will be covering the oil boom, race riots in OK, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, WWII and the OKC bombing (lightly). After we are finished with the OK history we will go over our state and local government and their symbols, our plants and animals, our industry and tourism, more geography, weather, climate and tornado!! This has been one of my favorite home school purchases EVER and I highly recommend it to anyone considering covering OK history. Cindy Downes has lots of great resources! I plan on using this again when we cover OK history for high school.
We are almost finished with our level of Right Start math, and will be moving right along into the next one. I plan on keeping up with math over the summer again probably 3 days a week to keep it fresh. She is still enjoying this math more than any we have ever tried, and is so proud of what she has accomplished!
We are also about finished with our spelling, handwriting and vocabulary. We should be done by the end of March. I've been looking around at different options to try and I think we've settled on giving Word Wisdom, G.U.M. and Spelling Connections a try. They were all easily accessible to us, look interesting and we're ready for something new. If these don't fit us...we'll keep on looking! That is the beauty of homeschooling!!
Our Social Studies program is also moving right along. Right now we are working on a review of government. This will still be fresh on her mind once we cover our own local government. She was able to compare voicing your own opinion with a Punky Brewster episode she watched recently where the kids went to a town hall meeting to discuss plans for a vacant lot. This made her most pleased! :)
We are still having fun with our famous artist unit study. So far we've covered: Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and most recently Georgia O'Keefe. She never tires of our time spent on art and loves to do artist inspired works. Here are a couple I have not posted yet...
Here is a Herni Matisse inspired scissor painting....
Here is a Georgia O'Keefe inspired water color of a lily pad...
When BabyGirl and I are busy with school work, Little Man likes to do his own "school". Some of his favorite things to do are: sort marbles, string wooden beads, play with Felt Friends, stick magnets, mold Play-doh and Moon Sand, color and paint!!
Our Red Cross club has also been very busy! A couple weeks ago we got together at our library to make Valentine's for some local seniors. We had 9 wonderful families come participate!!
The result was 45 ADORABLE hand-made Valentines!!!
In the next couple months our club will also be putting on a show for some local seniors, learning about pet first aid, and participating in a nationwide Red Cross fundraising event. :)
In January we joined many of our good friends to celebrate the Chinese New Year! This has become an annual event that we look forward to each year!! Here are a few pictures....
Reading some stories....
BabyGirl got to perform in the lion dance....
We got to eat some amazing traditional foods!!
We played some fun games....
Ate some chocolate coins...
And painted some lanterns....
One new addition to our school week is our yoga sessions on Friday mornings. We gather with a few of our friends to practice yoga with song, game and fun. The kids have their own yoga class, then the kids play and the adults get to have class. This has been such a blessing to our lives in more ways than one! We get the exercise, friendship, homework (this is so good for me--it forces me to make time for myself!) and fellowship. The adults are reading a book together and having a weekly discussion over the chapter we read that week. This is prompting to much healing within me that I cannot even express my gratitude to these ladies! I am so happy to share this experience.
So....that's about it!! We are nearing the end of several things, and looking forward to new and different books and lessons! We'll keep you posted!! Until next time.....
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