Celebrating Thanksgiving

We have a busy last month learning a lot about the Thanksgiving holiday!  So busy that I just haven’t had much time to do a post quite like I wanted!  I would love to share more detail with you on these, so please let me know if you are interested!

A friend and I had two classes (one a week) to learn about this special time of year.  The first one that she did was based on the Mayflower.  The second one that I did was based on turkeys.  We had a great time together.  Here are a few pictures…

Last week moms and children of a homeschool group gathered together for a Thanksgiving feast.  This was thought of after a friend and I had our own last year.  This one was a lot of work!  There were a dozen adults and thirty children there.  They were all so adorable.  I was able to receive many wonderful donations from businesses around town, so we had a delicious feast.  We also had stations for the children to participate in crafts and such related to that time period or just Thanksgiving in general.  We had a great time together and plan to do it again next year!

A friend had a backdrop set up and got some great shots of all the children individually.  I will have those soon.  Here are a few I got.  I didn’t have time to take too many!

We have a load of Thanksgiving books in our own library.  So lots of fun learning these last few weeks!  I find joy in every holiday, but it seems like this one gets more and more interesting to me when I am teaching my children.  It all goes too fast, though.  For heavens sake, I have my Christmas tree up tonight!

I hope you are looking at some enjoyable days ahead.  I am thankful for friends like you!

 

Human Bones Unit Study

It’s a great time to learn about the bones of the body!  Halloween time offers lots of fun skeleton goodies!  We don’t do the ugly part of Halloween, but happy skeletons are a fun way to get my boys excited about what they are learning!

We have had a blast doing this one.  My boys really have been interested and excited about this one.  I think it has been one of the most loved unit studies yet!

The most fun was our two “Bones Classes” we had with another homeschooling friend.  We both gathered ideas and had more than enough to do during each class.  I will give you ideas of what we did during our class and at home.

I made these memory verse cards for the children to learn.  They earned a prize for learning it, and for having pleasant words!

Some books I have, bought from Amazon or checked out from the library:

The Skeleton Inside You

Jessica’s Xray

Dem Bones

The School Skeleton (A to Z Mysteries)  Andrew loves these!

MSB – The Search for the Missing Bones  We read a few chapters each night with this.  Love it!

Your Bones – An Inside Look at Skeletons  We really liked this one, available from the library.

A Magic Skeleton Book – The Human Body

Uncover the Human Body

Websites that are great for learning games and printables:

Label the Bones

Build Mr Bones

Skeleton Game

Mr Bones Relay Race- we did this at our co-op party!

Teacher’s Clubhouse worksheets were very fun and helpful!

I made a sensory bin for the kids to play with.  The rubber skeletons were $1 at Target.  Nothing super fancy, but my boys always love these bins!

For science we got ideas from the book Play and Find Out about the Human Body.

We made a vertebrae.

We stripped calcium from chicken bones to make them rubbery (yuck!)

For some art, we made “x-rays” of our hands.

Andrew also showed us how to make an x-ray on paper.  Draw a person on one side of the paper.  The other side you would draw his skeleton (draw it darker).  Shining light through it will reveal his bones!

Snacks for our classes were fun.  For the breadsticks, I just made a sweet dough, rolled them into a long rope, tied each end and put butter and cinnamon sugar on top.

Bone ice cubes in their drinks from a mold bought from the dollar store.

We also had some Funny Bones made from pretzel sticks and mini marshmallows,  dipped in white chocolate.  Yum!

We got several Dollar Tree skeleton goodies.  Other stores like Walmart and Target were good resources for prizes!

Several You Tube Videos were used.  Here are some of them:

Dem Bones – just like the book!

The Skeleton Dance – get them up to dance!

Stanley the Skeleton

School House Rock – Dem Bones

 

We played a game called “Tickle the Bone” that I made up.  I think it was very effective!  I would tickle a bone and they would name it.  Easy, but a good and fun way to laugh and learn.

Human Anatomy Puzzle by Melissa & Doug I found at a yard sale for $1!!

A neighbor bought this for us to use.  It’s a cute foam puzzle from a dollar store, just not sure where!

So a great unit study that I would totally recommend doing!  After Halloween would be a great time to do it, too!  Grab those bones on clearance!

Linking to the Round-Up!

Rocks and Minerals Unit Study

We have had a good time with this summer unit study.  Boys and rocks seem to go hand in hand, anyway!  We always have rocks a plenty around here, that’s for sure.

The first thing that I did was download some great stuff from Teacher’s Clubhouse on this subject.  Well worth the few bucks!

We had some good  books around the house, and we also got a few from the library.

Let’s Go Rock Collecting

Usborne’s Spotter’s Guide to Rocks and Minerals

Janice VanCleave’s Rocks & Minerals

Rocks and Minerals (Eye Wonder)

Ready Reference Rocks Chart

Step by Step Science Rocks & Minerals

I made this to use during our study, because the Lord is my Rock, and I want Him to be theirs!

We did all the worksheets from the Teacher’s Clubhouse study.  They were very helpful and fun!  Here are some examples:

We did the worksheet on erosion by building a “mountain” out of sand.  We added trees and boulders and used different forces of nature to show erosion happens…like wind in the picture.

We made sedimentary rocks using wheat bread and white bread.  The boys love stomping on the bread between wax paper!

Explaining minerals vs. rocks was fun by making “rock cookies”.  I used my own recipe and added several “minerals like chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, nuts, m&ms and raisins.  They had a blast being geologists dissecting them and recording each of the minerals.

We did an acid test using vinegar.

We made fossils using fun objects like Lego guys!

We had a fun Smithsonian Rock and Gem Dig Kit that I ordered a while back.  I wish I would have three of these they had so much fun!  And made quite the mess!

I found a rock tumbler for $3 at a garage sale!

We went to the park and collected some neato rocks.  I made these simple rock collection boxes for them that they were quite proud of.

For a treat, we had rock candy from a state park where we went camping.

Kids always enjoy painting rocks!  We did that as a little art project.

A neat iPhone app we found and used was Rocks and Gems.

We also watched some very fun, yet informative videos about rocks from Discovery Education.

An easy sensory bin was fish tank gravel with hidden gems inside!

We had some great resources for identifying rocks.  A poster from a friend and a chart that came with the cheap rock tumbler!

This kind of study can and will go on and on!  This was over a period of a couple of weeks.  Good learning fun!

Strawberry Unit Study

This was a fun summer unit to do!  I thought it would be a great one, based on a field trip I had planned to take…picking strawberries!

I had to search a lot to find info, but I came up with quite a few things to go along with strawberries.

First, I will list some fun downloads I found:

S is for Strawberry -coloring page

Favorite Strawberry Foods

Cute Strawberry Maze

Strawberry Commodity Fact Sheet

Strawberry Anagrams

Strawberry Wordsearch

Here is  a good picture of the anatomy of a strawberry plant:

Here is a link to a great list of fun strawberry facts that I printed out.

I found some good books at the library.  All I could find was fictional titles, but they were cute!

Sweet Strawberries

The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear

Molly and the Strawberry Day

The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher

I found a cute game on my iPhone that the boys love to play.  It’s called I Love Strawberries!  Quite appropriate for these guys!

We made some cute Do a Dot strawberries:

I made a sensory bin from some strawberries I purchased at Target a few years ago that I used for decoration.  I got the little baskets from the strawberry farm, along with the fun little hullers for less than a dollar total.  The boys loved this one!  Their tractors ended up hauling off all the berries!

We did a great science experiment!  We extracted the DNA from strawberries.   The results were really amazing!  It was a great time to talk about how amazing our God is!!!

Our trip the strawberry farm was fun.

We have also had a great crop of strawberries in our own garden!  I love this picture…

Between strawberries from home and from the berry farm, we had lots of strawberries to cook with!  The best part!

Andrew requested Papaw’s Strawberry Pie.

We also made Strawberry Leather from the fact sheet I referenced earlier.  That was neat, and the boys ate it up!

We also made smoothies and a dessert while camping.  I got this cute set to use.  The boys loved the slicer!

On my chalkboard I drew a big strawberry and wrote the different fruits of the Spirit as a reminder to us all!  So that was it!  Our first summer unit study!

Preparing for Unit Studies

I plan to do a few unit studies this summer.  I started thinking about them the other day, and wanted to organize my thoughts.  So I made a form to use.  I wanted to share it with you!  It’s nothing fancy at all, but it helps me have my info all in one place.  I really enjoy writing, so I print this front and back of one page.  You can even print it on some fun paper that matches your theme!

Click on the above image to download!

Chocolate Challenge – Download N Go

 

A unit study on chocolate?!?  Are you kidding me!?!  Not only was I excited about this one, by my boys were, too.  Andrew’s reaction was quite funny when I told him we were studying chocolate!  There really is a lot to learn.  And learning doesn’t add calories.  Well, almost. 

Here’s a look at what your week will look like:

Day 1: Chocolate – What is it?
Day 2: Chocolate – The Story
Day 3: Chocolate – The Types of Chocolate
Day 4: Chocolate – The Science of Chocolate
Day 5: Chocolate – Have a Chocolate Party!

Looks like fun, huh?  I think the best thing about unit studies like this is that the whole family can get involved!  This was a great way to close out the school year.  I am tired, so it was great to just download all I needed for a study packed full of great information.  Make learning fun!

I asked Andrew what his favorite chocolate was.  His answer was not surprising.  No Bake Cookies.  He’s just like his daddy.  I think party of why he likes them so much is because he can make them himself!  All my boys enjoy helping out in the kitchen, and I (most of the time) welcome the help.  Lots of learning to do in this lab!  But instead of cookies, we made a chocolate souffle’, as suggested in this study.  Andrew enjoyed beating the egg whites, Ethan enjoyed dusting them with powdered sugar, and Samuel enjoyed licking the bowl!

Visit Amanda Bennett’s Download N Go’s website to purchase this unit study for only $7.95.  There’s lots of choices to check out, too!

I was provided this unit study download free of charge in exchange for an honest opinion.

Download N Go Review – Mother’s Day

I know it’s Easter weekend, but Mother’s Day will soon be here, too!  What a neat way to celebrate this special holiday.  A Mother’s Day unit study that’s all put together for you and ready to download!  There’s so much to learn, so take a peek at what your week would look like!

Day 1: What Is Mother’s Day
Day 2: The History of Mother’s Day
Day 3: Celebrating Mother’s Day
Day 4: Preparations for Mother’s Day
Day 5: Goodies for Mother’s Day

Here’s a good picture of what is included in the download…

 

To be honest, I was a little hesitant about doing this study.  “Ok, boys…we are going to do a study on ME…your mommy!! “  As appealing as that does sound, this study is so much more than that!

You will learn about the history of Mother’s Day, how they celebrate Mother’s Day in different countries, and best of all you will learn about moms of the Bible!

Each day is filled with fun stuff to do.  The boys always enjoy watching the videos, especially the “how to” videos.  We tried some of the crafts suggested in the study.  They turned out pretty cute!

All in all, a fun unit study to do with your children.

 Purchase it  here for just $7.95!

See others on the DNG blog tour here!

Popcorn, Indiana – Munch Better!

Remember our fun unit study on popcorn?  We had a great time learning about all things popcorn.

Well…after doing that I received a box full of popcorn snacks from Popcorn, Indiana.  What fun!

First of all, did you know there was an actual city in the great state of Indiana called Popcorn?  I sure didn’t!  And I wasn’t so familiar with the snacks, either.  During our popcorn study we purchased some Chip’ins from our local grocery store.

Why eat popcorn?  Popcorn, Indiana answers that here.  Yummy, healthy snacking!

Popcorn, Indiana makes all kinds of great snacks!  We received the following:

From the Classic Line of products:  Sea Salt, Aged White Cheddar, and Kettlecorn

And from the Chip’ins Line:  Sea Salt and White Cheddar

That’s just a few of their awesome choices!

Because these are too good to not share, I took them to our homeschool co-op group.  Every last crumb was eaten!!  All the children gave these a big thumbs up!

You can find these in many retail locations now.  I am seeing the product “pop” up everywhere.  So grab your bag today, and make some more popcorn memories!

Beach Unit Study

What fun this unit study was!  The beach!  Oceans!

We always have lots of great books to read for any unit study.  I had several this time from our own collection.  We also picked up a lot at the library!

Some on our list:

Clam I Am – All About the Beach

Hello Ocean

Beach Day

Sea Critters

On the Seashore

Under the Sea

Oceans Kids Discover Magazine

The beach means sand.  I bought some colored sand at a craft store real cheap.  I also picked up a set of sea creature necklaces.  The boys really loved this project.

Samuel always wants to do worksheets like his big brothers.

They also enjoyed making ocean pictures out of the same sand.

I found some sea creature animals at the Dollar Tree.  These have been a hit!  Samuel likes to pick them up with tongs, pretending they will bite.  I smiled at him finding the tongs and the buckets himself to sort the animals.  We have two fleece blankets that a friend made for Samuel when he was a baby.  They pretended like they were in the ocean!

I found some fun ocean snacks last time I made a trip to Trader Joe’s.

Andrew picked out a starfish to grow.  That was the big story for the several days while it was growing.  It did real well!

I made some beach playdoh that the boys have used like crazy.  I added blue coloring, blue sand, and coconut flavoring.  They used some sand toys I found at Target last year for a quarter!  Best 75 cents I have spent!

Samuel played the fish/coral matching game again.

The boys took a trip to Nature’s Workshop with Nana and Papaw last week.  They found these beauties!

We watched two Netflix shows:  Coral Reef Adventure and Under the Sea: IMAX.   We all learned something from those!

We had an Easter egg hunt with these fun ocean eggs!

Now we are off to discover the beach ourselves!

Download N Go Hoppin’ Popcorn Unit Study Review

We had such fun with this unit study from Download N Go unit studies!!

It’s loaded with all kind of poppin’ fun!  My boys loved this study…everything about it.  They especially liked the amount of popcorn we consumed all week!

What do you get to do?  Take a look!

Day 1: Popcorn—What Is It?
Day 2: The Story of Popcorn
Day 3: The Flavors of Popcorn
Day 4: The Science of Popcorn
Day 5: Fun With Popcorn

We have this popcorn popper that we love.  They enjoyed watching it pop at my moms, so we were excited to find one for super cheap at Lowe’s.

And popcorn is just always such fun!  We had popcorn parties every night!

And speaking of my mom…She fixes the best caramel popcorn anywhere!  So we attempted it and it actually turned out to be delicious.  Almost, but not quite like hers.  Let me know if you want the recipe.  Super yummy!!!

We learned about the “corn belt” states.  Since we are in one of them, that was fun!  We bought some semi-locally grown popcorn in fun colors…Ruby Red and Sunburst Red.

I put together a popcorn sensory bin for the boys.  They got a ton of fun out that one.  I cleaned up a lot of kernels, but it was it worth it!  They enjoyed passing the corn through funnels,pretending to pop it, and transferring into containers.

One of Andrew’s favorite activities was the graph he made from surveying people about what their favorite way to eat popcorn is.  He called grandmas and grandpas and asked a few friends.

The acrostic poem he wrote was so darling.  It read:

P  opcorn is so yummy.

O  h so yummy.

P  opcorn is in my tummy.

C orn is where it comes from.

O n farms it grows.

R ight from the plant God made it.

N ever burn your popcorn!

The boys painted a picture of popcorn using popped popcorn as their stamp!

I had fun drawing on our chalkboard!

There were so many fun video links that my boys loved watching.  Anything that has to do with farming is right up their alley!

And we couldn’t leave out the birds.  As suggested in the unit study, we made a popcorn ball covered with seeds for the birds to enjoy!

And the best part?!  I get to give away one of these downloadable unit studies for you to do!  To enter, leave me a comment about a popcorn memory you have.  But hurry!  I will be drawing a name next Tuesday, March 8th!

See other reviewers on the Blog Review Team and keep up with Amanda Bennett’s fun DNG blog!

I have been provided this product, without charge, for the purpose of writing an honest review.

I am also linking up to Homeschool Creation’s Preschool Corner and Granola Mom for God’s Round Up!  Great learning fun to be had all around!