Our (other) 1/2 week Ahead ~ Monday 25th May 2015

We're still continuing on from much of what we typed up last week, as it's a 1/2 week here again ... so I'll just add our new item of interest for this week :)

Scotland Mapping Worksheet D, and Script

Both children are still listening through Lorna Doone, as having guests to stay decreases the amount of listening/reading time we would normally get to.  We thought helping Granddad celebrate his 80th birthday and to take he and Nana on a few 'field trips' was more important last week than listening to Lorna Doone ☺

I always find it interesting when other home educating bloggers keep it real and tell what they've switched around , dropped or just didn't get to due to life getting in the way of their best laid plans; so I'll detail our latest dropped, switched, and lost educational opportunities too, in the hope that it may encourage someone else that's it's okay to not get to all the things you hoped, or thought, you would get to do.

Dropped, Switched or Lost Opportunities 
(some of these will go in the book basket to be enjoyed later, somewhere):
Dropped 
Trial & Triumph Ch: 28 & 29
MOH vol3, wk 27, The Salem Witch Hunts (already covered the content in Biblioplan)
Switched
Rob Roy the book to Rob Roy (abridged audio) 
(Jay wants to continue on with The Screwtape Letters worksheets, as opposed to dropping that and studying Rob Roy)
There is also a well read unabridged edition that I'd like to go through at some stage.  This wasn't available during the last audible sales, so we purchased the abridged addition.  There is another unabridged edition of Rob Roy, but I'm not fussed on the irritating affectation Frederick Davidson uses to read many of the books he narrates; it gets pretty wearying after a while!
Lost Opportunity
The Crucible (audio)

It took Jay much longer than I'd hoped it would to complete A Parcel of Patterns ~ Walsh, which he said was quite good but he kept getting distracted by other things he was wanting to read or listen to :)

We've been listening through a series that Kendra, of Aussie Pumpkin Patch, suggested to me (thanks Kendra, Jay and I are enjoying it so far!!) :
Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter (which is a Mystery Series) by Susan Albert
The first book starts out rather slowly, but is sweet and wholesome and is setting the stage for the rest of the series.
We're just finished book 3, The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood which had a very strong 'fairies' theme in it - I'm not a fan, yet I appreciated the way Susan Albert tied the fairy theme off in the end... and the scripture quoting cat is very good ☺ 
If you don't like animals that talk in books, skip this series. 

Albert also writes about the change the younger generation of women started embracing in the way they dressed and acted during that period of British history; they started to wear trousers, smoke and 'liberate' themselves.
I have to say that the newly 'liberated' Sarah is not shaping up as a favourite character in the series, so far.
Book 3 also gives an example of how people navigated around the costly expense to divorce, and remarry ... these topics have made for some very interesting discussions in our home!

ETA: I've now completed the entire series.  The author is thoughtful to keep repeating key components of Beatrix Potter's life for anyone that may select out one title later in the series to try, which is fine for them; however, for someone who is familiar with every book it does get a little irritating after a while.  Susan Albert is ensuring her viewpoint, and world view, is weaved in and out throughout the story;  sometimes I agreed with her opinion - often I didn't :)

Geography Freebie

We really like geography (our way ☺ ) and appreciate being able to use good quality maps and extra online go-alongs to make the geography portion of our studies that much more interesting.

We don't study geography as a separate subject but alongside our history studies and inside the books we are reading.

Knowledge Quest has a  current freebie Globalmania  that have great maps and a very nice list of links to online games and extras.

Children Around the World Colour in Pages

Even if your children don't like to colour in, the art work off the geography colour sheets from Hugo L'escargot's site would make for great cut-n-craft embellishments for lapnote, lapbook, or notebooking pages.
We don't mind that the wording is predominantly in French and we're using some of the pages that are available as 'title' page dividers in the geography portion of Bobs and Daisy's history folders.I know I've mentioned these pages before on a previous colour-in-pages-and-clip- art post, but they seemed to deserve a post of their own :)

Story of the World 4 ~ Chapt 14 & a free Russian Tales tie-in

The title of chapt. 14 is The Next-to-Last Czar of Russia but we'd like to rabbit trail when we get there and allow that chapter to become a small leaping off point for Russian Fairy Tales with Russian history, and, Jewish immigration to Ellis Island.

2012 is approaching faster than I'd like and now seems like a good a time as any to start tweaking our history learning schedule into line.

To help soften some of the harsher realties in SOTW4 I'm starting to compile cushioning for Daisy. While the audio, Russian Tales by Arthur Ransome, may seem geared more to youngers, Daisy and I will enjoy listening to it together since we like other cultures select fairy tales.

We'll also pencil in another read through The Memory Coat by Elvira Woodruff because, along with the story line, the illustrations in this book are just exquisite - a perfect opportunity for us to work on sepia ink-wash illustrations of our own.

Notebooking Pages New Zealand History 1700 & 1800's

Notebooking Pages New Zealand History 1700 & 1800's

We've created these notebooking pages to go with our New Zealand History studies, while we read through Story of the World Vol.3.

I guess they are more narration and dictation pages ... our way.

~

I've switched the header to History of New Zealand so that anyone else interested could use these pages instead of just crafting them as a Story of the World Vol 3 notebooking pages set.

~

Included are notebooking pages or lapnote pages for:

Captain Cook's discovery of New Zealand (Here is another extra too ... a Captain Cook Colour in page)

The Maori Wars

The price of a musket in the 1800's (complete with referencing link)

&, An art page - Complete the drawing of Hone Heke cutting down the British flagpole.

I'm not sure how much of look in New Zealand History gets in the earlier Sonlight Cores since we elected to go with our own chouce of history spine, Story of the World.

NZ history does come up in Core 6 & Core 7 since some of the history text for those two cores are Story of the World.

Again, our New Zealand History / Story of the World 3 notebook pages & art and craft pages can be found over at HSlaunch

Waitangi Day ~ February 6 ~ New Zealand

Notebooking Pages

We are planning to use some of our own notebooking pages for when Waitangi Day comes around again, and also for written narrations while we are read SOTW3 Chapter 41, New Zealand and Her Rulers.

We've stored our pages over at HSlaunch ...

Waitangi Day Notebooking Pages

ANZAC Calendar Notebooking Page

I've been meaning to get this page up for a while now - it's a handy little extra for when April 25, ANZAC Day for NZ & Australia, swings around again.

ANZAC Day Notebooking Page.

Paddington Bear ~ Lapbook or Lapnotes

A Bear Called Paddington ( Paddington Bear Lapbook or Lapnotes )

We're just about to enjoy Paddington Bear, again, as Daisy's reader this time.
So I decided we'd create some lapnotes for, some of, the geography that is covered in *that* book to correlate with our study of England, as well as throwing together some language arts pages as go-along helps.
___________________________________

(2013, link repaired and switched to dropbox)
To download from dropbox
Option : Follow the link over to dropbox, once there:

Click the darker blue Download button at the top of the screen.(Hold down the Ctrl key) and click on download as a zip file,
which will open another tab,
Save to a file on your computer before opening.
___________________________________

The Paddington Bear Lapnote pages can be now be found here,  (it's a large file, with about 40 pages, so could take a while to load).

Please excuse the typos in the instructions part - can I balme it on l.a.t.e (!!) night typing? :-)

New Zealand History and Geography Notebooking Pages

I'm sorting out my pc files (it's amazing what I have stored away in those!!) and thought after getting these notebooking pages sorted out into pdf that we'd share them here too - no point just us using them, if someone else can also. ....

I noticed another mom (mum) over at HS launch has created some NZ history pages too. Really nice to see!

More Paper Dolls to Go with Sonlight's Core 2 Geography

Paperdoll - Scotland

Since Daisy likes to colour...... & paper dolls, see here

New Zealand History Links

New Zealand Flora and Fauna

Instead of rabbiting on at length about what we are doing for New Zealand History, alongside chapter 10 in Story of the World Vol.2, I'll type a quick overview of what we're using for early/middle ages NZ History and then share all the links we currently have in our files for others to enjoy as they wish.

We are doing early New Zealand history and have chosen to make our 'science' New Zealand flora and fauna during this time.
Polynesian Explorers by Kathryn Rountree (oop)
The Fish of Maui by Peter Gossage

DVD: What Lies Beneath

Look under the Leaves by Elsie Locke (oop)
If you can source this book, we think it is a worthy purchase, Locke's focus is primarily on the NZ eco-system and nature study which she has undergirdered with our history.

New Zealand Nature Study Links:
NZ Conservation Club
New Zealand Fact File
New Zealand Sea Birds

New Zealand Birds
Janet Marshall New Zealand Birds
NZ Penguin
NZ Penguin Species
New Zealand Kiwi

Kiwi Colour-in
Kereu Unit Study
Pania of The Reef - Fish
NZ Educational Nature/Science worksheets

New Zealand Animals

Enchanted Learning NZ animals
TVNZ meet the locals
Nature Journaling Pages
Activity Finder Activities to do in NZ
Photos
New Zealand Insects

New Zealand Geography and History:
NZ UnitStudy
KnowledgeQuest Maps
NZ Map 1
NZ Map Outline
NZ Maps 2
ABC Teach Blank map
Maori Place Names
NZ Geog Sites wick Ed
NZ Craft to make
Crafts For Kids NZ maori crafts
Auckland Museum Poi Making
NZ Recipes Recipe Page
NZ Educational Te Papa Museum
teara NZ online encyc
NZ Gold Strike gold
Historic NZ (click on each loaction, some have extras of interest)

Our Book list post number 3 here
TeacherPlanet links
NZ Theme NZ unit study links
Maori Curriculum photographic . good ideas gr3-6
NZ Carving Maori Carving

New Zealand History:
History Pictures PAID for time line figures
NZ Early History
NZGovt
History Timeline
MrDonn

NZ Maori
World War 2 their story
ANZAC's for NZ.ers

New Zealand Missionaries:
NZ History
Maori and the British

Australia

Australian Geography, Australian History and Australian Animals unit cont...

One of the read alouds we've been using for Australian History is Our Sunburnt Country by Arthur Baillie. I've had the Children complete some of the notebooking pages Michelle created to go with this book. It's been a good first 'full' introduction to Australia's history for our family.

We are still meandering our way through the Australian States, creating some lapnote pages as we go and incase anyone is interested below are some more of the Australian lapbook lapnote creating (etc..) links from our files.

Australian Animals & Nature Australian Nature Study Downunderlit Paid

Lapbook Australian Marsupials
Australian Animals Fact File

Australian Animals Paid
Tasmanian Devils Printable
Tasmanian Devil click bright green Video tab
Australian Nature
Platypus Printable
Platypus 1 - Click bright green video tab
Australian Animals Paper Craft
Colour in - Kangaroo
Colour in - Koalas
Australia Notebook Pages (used title page for our project)

Australia Notebooking, mini books etc..
Australia Lapbook for youngers
Farmer Shultz Ducks Unit studyAustralian Geography Unit Study Five in a Row Style. Paid from Downunderlit (The map is wonderful!!)

Click bright green video tab for
Aboriginal Art
Australian Paper MoneyAustralian Flags Lapbook
Australian Memory Match or other card younger years

For Australian Maps please see previous posts.
HSShare - Pumpkin Runner Lapbook  (No longer available)
Australian States & Territorities Review Game

Australian Paper Dolls (again)
Outback Paper Dolls
Australian Guide Paper doll
Australia - Explorers Clothes
Australia - Doll set 1
Some 1920’s Paper Dolls

Australian Craft

We enjoyed a few days 'glancing' at Australia with a dear friends children - All the children crafted some work they enjoyed, but here we'll just show our families offering.

Our nature study walk, with a Gumnuts baby theme, produced the crafts above & just below . (Bobbi's L.O.T.R's hand was his free-lance contribution (-: Both of our children love self-hardening clay but we haven't quiet mastered the 'art' of getting the creations to s.t.a.y. together.)

Next was Aborginal Art .

We printed out a page of symbols and had a trial run before painting a symbol on gumtree bark.

Not 'perfect masterpieces' (much to one child's disappointment) but the children really enjoyed themselves and learnt. For me that counts the VERY most!
I wish my friend had a blog (hint hint) so we could show the wonderful idea of what she's done with her children's paintings. (Cut them up and created a craft page with explanations of the symbols the children painted)

Our source links are found in this post. ( Our not.a.workbox ideas)

Australia

Australia (For links to the book titles not linked in this post, please refer here )

This is our week , or so, for enjoying a small study on this continent - I thought we'd better pause 'here' for a small look around since my parents immigrated from there :-)

Now is a perfect time for us to start reading the pages we have of Janette Casey’s book & history timeline figures/colour-in C/D….

here
I'm sure Janette's narrative will tie in beautifully with SOTW 2 - Chapt 10.1

We've enjoyed Our Sunburnt Country ~ Arthur Baillie, as an easier, quicker, narrative history of Australia, since I'm only wanting an overview of Australian history for Daisy - we'll go into social injustices later.

For Mapping along side our SL map, & our flag sticker map we'll use these:
Geography Songs - Track 19
Around the World Coloring Book (Dover) - Pg 2

Evan More ~The World Reference Maps & Forms - Pg 94 Australia colour in code (mum calls, the children colour):
New South Wales (NSW) Bright Green
Victoria (VIC) Bright Pink
Queensland (QLD) Yellow Western Australia (WA) Purple
South Australia (SA) Pale Blue
Tasmania (TAS) Dark Green
Northern Territory (NT) Brown
Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Red
Here is a blank black line map if you need one. (Coloured in and cut up that map would make a quick puzzle for a lapnote pocket, or you could just print this ).
We are hoping to create lapnotes adding the lovely pictures we've googled, like the Gang Gang Cockatoo below, using the list of Australian States/Territories emblems listed here
Downunder Literature has this free Australian flag book.
Other books and items we have lined up so far are:

• DK Children Just Like Me - Pg 76
• Wee Sing Around the World - Song 42
• String Games From Around the World (Klutz) -Pg 14-23
  
• The Voyage of the Poppy Kettle by Robert Ingpen (Daisy really likes this story, so we're revisiting it along with the book below & C/D)
  
• Waltzing Matilda by Banjo Paterson. Freya Blackwood sing-along by John Williamson (thanks Aunty S !!) This folk song along with the book is a slightly more sobering study to 'Queensland history'. Great tool to use!
  

The same Aunty purchased us an audio set of Mary Gibs Snugglepot and Cuddlepie which the children have enjoyed *often* and have been a wonderful 'pre-learning' tool for us to go off hunting to find just what each of the characters in the stories actually are. ** Some stories would be too much for a sensitive younger child.
And to that end .... today during our walk/nature jaunt we collected some gumnut 'hats' to make clay Cuddlepie faces tomorrow for geography art.
The scanned picture below makes a perfect print out to add chalk pastels colour to.
This blog has some lovely nature sketches relevant to "Banksia Men" & the Gum-nut babies.
Here are 2 nature study type colour in go-alongs which we ended up watercolor painting.
I know Bobbi will enjoy crafting the kangaroo, &, koala-go-round 'for Daisy' which is sourced from here )

And I think we'll stop there with Australia, until next time :-)

Just a few extra links first though ....
This site has a few free printables that may be of interest to others.

Waterford Press have some worksheet type pages also, be sure to look under the Games & Activities tab - you will need to sign in first.

And Homeschool Shares Australia Resources
Downunder Literature , do stop by and take a look at the wonderful resources Michelle has!
Here, and Art Links has more than just Aboriginal art . New - added 18 Sept

New Zealand...

history, flora, fauna, general geography, and, literature studies?

Someone(s), have asked about more NZ related posts... yes! we do have a few 'things' we're still polishing before we hit PUBLISH POST :-)

We're just about to start a small jaunt through Australia's earliest history first, ... then NZ follows after that.

Geography Update

This is what we are currently doing, and the children and I are really enjoying ourselves.
I'll make our example, below, using the study we have just done on Canada, since happyHSer helped birth this post with her question ... thanks A {{smile}}

Canada

SL - Geography Songs pg 43

We use the Twister Game discs set out as a hop, skip, &, jump morning exercise game to assist in learning our geog songs.
We alternate the way the game is played to keep it interesting.
This morning we sang along to the C/D and used our skipping ropes - Yes, inside :-)

Wee Sing Around the World (Song 2 Going Over the Sea)
(not singing to learn just listening to for enjoyment while we load/empty the dish drawer some mornings).

World Sticker Atlas (match flags to correct country - wall map)
I can't find a sellers link for this book, we purchased from a bargain bin. The ISBN is 13:978-1-7415-7711-2 and is produced by Hinkler Books

Around the World – Colouring Book by Winky Adam. Page 5
Sonlight’s Markable World Map (we have the older black line one).

We use the 4 items, above, in conjunction with our atlas/book first (!) and what we're doing, though very simple, is just making the lessons an enjoyable referencing ‘find xyz’ game for Bobbi and Daisy.

How it looks in action....
1: Find the right country/page in the atlas, taking note of Canada's shape.
2: Using World Sticker Atlas locate the correct flag sticker for Canada, run out to the hallway and place it on our wall map.
3: Colour in just the flag on the corresponding Around the World Colouring Book - Canada page 5 .
4: They help me to find the land area on SL’s markable map & call out/tell me the correct spelling of Canada.

5: Evan Moore World Ref Maps page 27
(We are using select maps from this very in a Story Of The World-ish style – getting the children to identify by colour the areas being studied.
This could be done inside the Geog songs book, but I wanted those pages left clean for when we go through our geography review at the end of Core 2.)

Colour in Code For Canada
1: Novia Scotia - Lavender
2: Manitoba - Bright Blue
3: Ontario - Red
4: Prince Edward Island - Dark Brown
5: New Brunswick - Orange
6: Newfoundland - Blue
7: Alberta - Lime Green
8: British Columbia - Pale Pink
9: Yukon Terrritory - Pale Blue
10: Nunavut - Brown
11: Saskatchewan - Dark Pink
12: Northwest Territories - Bright Yellow
13: Quebec - Flesh

The next are books and are enjoyed on different days.
6: DK Children Just like Me Page 23

7: Material World (not scheduled just a casual pick up)
These 2 make good comparison viewing when both have the same countries. No page for Canada

8: Adding in at least 1 picture book to go with the country we are ‘learning’ about.
Five in a Row and Homeschool Share are excellent sources to start with though living in a smaller NZ township does make it rather a challenge for us to quickly source some of the lovely picture books, or chapter books, that are so readily available elsewhere to go with Canada:-)

The ladies on Sonlight gave us some excellent suggestions (!!) and so Anne of Green Gables (the Dvd) was a great visual substitute tie - in.

Homeschool Share - Canada Unit Studies and other books

• Flight of The Union
• Three Snow Bears
• The Very First Last Time ** use this - also covers levers & pulleys (Science tie-in)
• Mirette and Bellini Cross the Niagara Falls not a HS unit
• M is For Maple Leaf Shared by a SL forum mom. (Lovely picts) and we found this guide to go with it while doing a random search.

Geography ~ Needing some pages for Younger Ones?

These look like fun :-)
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4

China & Japan - Middle Ages

We are enjoying a gentle meander through the Middle Ages history of China and Japan with SOTW 2 and since we can not 'quickly' access many of the books listed in SOTW 2 we are pulling in a few extra’s, that we already have, for Daisy to enjoy.

Remember to pop over to Practical pages for some ancient history paper people (men & women) to colour and create.

Japan:
Choose some of the ideas in Five in a Row Vol 4 to go with

Grass Sandals – The Travels of Basho (17th Century) by Dawnine Spivak

Japanese theatre to craft

And here , though not 'ancients' or 'middle ages' looks like the sort of things Daisy would enjoy - and an origami pocket for Bobbi.

Colour, cut and glue to a flat stick for a Japanese Fan

China:
The Emperor and the Kite (era?)by Jane Yolen
& with such windy weather take an afternoon to go kite flying.

China mapping project Ancient & present
Ancient China Lense

Readers:
Daisy - Day of the Dragon by Mary Pope Osborne (Magic Tree house #14).
Bobbi – A Grain of Rice by Helena Clare Pittman (a bit easy for him but he’ll enjoy revisiting the story again.)

*The craft pages above we've sourced from a book called International Crafts and Games (published in 1997). And, the lovely colour in pages are free downloads via Dovers weekly newsletters

New Zealand Paper Dolls

Free Printables

(some Australian Paper Dolls also )

1958 New Zealand Paper Doll from Te Papa

Te Papa Collection full list of clothes and New Zealand Paper Dolls

Maori Paper Crafted Dolls Dolls from around the world

Maori Paper Dolls

Making Friends Use Pacific Island template

Australian Paper Dolls boy and girl guide

( Australian Paper Animals )

Girl Guides around the world
New Zealand Girl Guide Paper Doll

Patty Reed not strictly NZ but cute anyway

Aunt Minnie 1920's

Dover below (paid)

*Please feel free to add any other New Zealand or Austrailian Paper Dolls links you know of in the comments section below.

Australian Paper Doll