While we learn and grow over the summer we take a long break from our formal schoolwork. This works well for our family during the busy summer season. We try to wrap up most of our studies by Memorial Day and we start back our formal schedule the day after Labor Day. Thus we enjoyed our official first day of school this year.
We got started with our history program by spending a bit of time looking over America’s Story Volume 1 which we are using for our spine for this portion of Our Journey Through History. Then we enjoyed a chance to discuss the various ideas that we would be studying this month. The children had a chance to choose their independent projects, we enjoyed some read-aloud time, and started planning our family timeline of US History.
The kids loved looking at the pictures and timeline that were in America’s Story. We have the digital version so I put the pictures up on the TV screen so they could all look at one time without having to crowd around the computer screen. In hindsight, I will probably get the paperback version of the next volume so they can look at it on their own but putting it up on the screen worked did give them a chance to see it. I think that having it in paperback would make it easier for them to go back and use it as a reference after I had read it aloud and to see the pictures a bit closer than the TV screen allows.
For our read aloud we worked on If You Lived in Colonial Times . This was a great book that follows a question and answer format giving common inquiries and age appropriate answers. It can be read as a whole book or they can just pick the questions that are interesting to them while focusing on early colonial times in the New England area. I read about a third of the book to the children and they are planning on reading the rest of it on their own because they really enjoyed it.
We also had the chance to do one of our ‘You Are an Artist’ Chalk Pastel lessons. The children drew pilgrims and they loved it. The drawings turned out adorable and the children were proud to display them. The lesson only took about 15 minutes and everyone had a good time. We are using the American History Video Course from ‘You Are and Artist’ this year to tie into our history. If we finish that one up we may add the landmarks course to it as well. If you want to learn more about their art courses check out my review.
Both children are excited about the projects that they picked. My daughter is going to be working on weaving a basket. In addition to learning this new skill for our history she will be able to enter the basket into our state fair. My son decided on a puppet show featuring colonial children. He has been hard at work this week creating stick and paper puppets, complete with colonial toys.
Last year the children did a video about various colonial games for our North Carolina Junior Historians. If your child is interested in the games colonial children would have played, please check out their Youtube video: Colonial Children’s Games.
Next week (assuming our impact from Hurricane Irma is not too great) we will be sharing about field trips, some colonial cooking, and project updates. We cheated a bit on our field trip schedule and started this summer with a trip to Roanoke Island. I’ll share some pictures and information next week about the trip to Roanoke Island.
If you would like to join us on this journey through US History, join our mailing list and get access to our free library. Each month I’ll post a list of resources and ideas for the time period we are going to cover the next month. You can learn more in our post Our Journey Through History. The colonial resources are already in the free resources and October’s Revolutionary War resources should be posted sometime next week.
When you sign up for our free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.
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