London's Burning!!!

My kids have been away since Wednesday and while I've gotten so much accomplished over the past few days, I am looking forward to their return home this afternoon. I miss them terribly and I would be lying if I said I wasn't totally geeked out about teaching them this week.

Before I do go all crazy telling you about what we'll study this week, here are some pictures of our "London" that we burned in the driveway. It's a little lame looking.....I wasn't feeling well at all that day and didn't feel like putting tons of effort into the project but we did it and here it is.

I have no idea what they were doing in the first picture...trying to look scary and fire-y maybe?

The Time Traveling Hamster

Ok. Where do I begin?

Today was an emotional day for me. We have a lot going on in our family.  I haven't slept more than 3 hours a night for at least a week. My oldest daughter began her senior year of high school today. Then, as I was sipping my morning coffee, I noticed Maddie's little hamster's leg was caught in the corner of the cage. After about 5 minutes, I was able to get her free, but her poor little leg is flat now. It's definitely broken. I read that hamsters in pain will starve themselves to death, so I was a bit of a wreck trying to figure out how to tell my daughter.

All of the emotions I've been feeling lately just welled up and I had to cry. Over a hamster. Really. But only for a minute and really only because I knew my daughters heart would be so sad if she lost her little hamster.

Thankfully, the lcritter seems to be eating and drinking well, and we moved her to a new glass home. Hopefully now she won't be able to hurt herself again.

After the emotional day we had, I guess we were all a little loopy and I let the kids stay up until 10 o'clock so that we could make background scenery for the hamster. Today she traveled back to 1666 to the Great Fire of London. The kids had the best time making the flames and coloring the picture for the background, and I know this is something they won't forget. In four years when we are studying this time period again and we cover this topic, they will remember the Time Traveling Hamster and the Great Fire. This is what I love about homeschooling. We can decide on the fly, at 9:30 at night to do an off the wall history project.

Week 4

Yes I just blogged about last week, but now I'm planning the coming school week so here I am at the computer looking for more resources on the great fire of London, the plague and King Charles. This is my plan for the week:

Books

Story of The World Volume 3, chapter 12

A Child's History of the World, story #67 The King Who Lost His Head

William's House by Ginger Howard

*The kids will read other books too. This is just a short list of our history books for this week.

Websites-

http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/

SOTW3 Activities-

Build, then burn London

Bake Bread

Jamestown Wrap Up!

We just wrapped up the third week of the 2011-2012 school year and really enjoyed our study of Jamestown. In my previous post, I listed the activities that I had planned, but as always we didn't do everything and we also found a few more things to keep us busy.

To my surprise, the kids really enjoyed playing archaeologists at the Historic Jamestowne site. They were able to excavate a piece of land, then examine and study several artifacts. Some of the activities were a bit advanced for my 1st and 3rd graders, so I'm keeping this one on file for the next time we study Jamestown.















We built a miniature Jamestown using the a free sample of Homeschool In the Woods' American Revolution unit study. This was amazing and I do think that I'll go back to purchase the entire kit when we get back to the Revolution in a few weeks. Look at this. Doesn't that look fun?


Madelyn really enjoyed reading about Jamestown from the perspective of a fictional 9 year old girl in a book from the My America series called Our Strange New Land: Elizabeth's Jamestown Colony.

The kids enjoyed learning about Pocahontas much more than I had expected, so they read a few books about her including Pocahontas: Princess of the River Tribes and The Story of Pocahontas. They even watched an animated dvd about her, but not the Disney version. Netflix had this one so I hoped it would be a bit more accurate. To be honest, I didn't watch it so I have no idea. Actually, I'm not a historian so I probably would have no idea about the movies historical accuracy anyway!

I also found a great book series by Mara L. Pratt called American History Stories. We only have volume 1 at the moment, but I think I'll look for the other three volumes.  The book seems to be perfect for 3rd graders and Maddie enjoyed reading her assigned chapter very much.

Story of the World was not a big hit this week, but the kids really enjoyed reading the 66th story in A Child's History Of The World by  V.M. Hillyer. They thought it was hysterical that King James knighted a cut of meat and began calling it Sir Loin. Personally I prefer a filet mignon. Maybe King James never had the pleasure of having one.

It was a good week, and once again I am so thankful I can travel this journey with them. I know that every day is a gift and the memories we are making when we built little Jamestown replicas, make a batch of colonial "pottage" stew, and read together, will be treasured for a lifetime. 

Next week we'll learn about King Charles, the plague, and the great fire of London.