Starting Second Term 2013-2014....

We wrapped up our first term (12 weeks) a couple of weeks ago.  Then took off for the week of Thanksgiving, which also happened to be deer hunting here in WI.  Yesterday, we started back in, beginning our second term.  Riley Ann finished her final book of Pictures in Cursive.  She's got a good foundation in the art of cursive writing.  She will continue this term writing the first 27 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, by George Washington, in cursive.  This fit right into our history study this year since we are studying exploration, colonization, and the revolutionary war.

I am really LOVING our history study!  I'm using a conglomeration of things as you can see pictured above.  I pull book lists and use commentary from TruthQuest American History for Young Students I.  I use some of the lessons and copywork from Beautiful Feet.  Then I use activities from Time Traveler CD-Roms and History Pockets.  Riley can't wait to include parts of the Portraits of American Girlhood Unit Study when we hit those time periods.  Now this may seem very overwhelming to some and I don't recommend going out to purchase all these different programs just to study history.  I happened to have them on the shelves from years of accumulation.  If I had to settle on one, I would pick the TruthQuest History Guides.

These guides are chuck full of lists of wonderful living books to make your history study come alive!   I like some of the other resources for activity ideas and notebooking pages.  But, you could research and find plenty of things online or by using library books listed under the activity section of the guide. 

I have divided our year into three sections to correlate with our three terms.  The first term, we studied exploration covering everything from what is an explorer, to the life of an explorer, to parts of a ship and navigation tools.  We also covered twenty different explorers starting around the year 1000 AD with Leif Eriksson and ending in the early 1600's with Captain John Smith and the Jamestown settlement.  Below are some photos of the kids completing various activities as well as some sample notebooking pages.....

 Baking Spice Cookies....

Baking Hard Tack....

 Tying Ship Knots...

 Studying the Anatomy of a Ship....

 

Notebooking...

and Painting Shoals....

You can also read about some of the amazing books we read here....

The Vikings

Roanoke

Jamestown

This term, we'll be studying colonial life starting with the Pilgrims and Native Americans through all thirteen colonies, then to a few missionaries and some frontiersmen.  I'll try to post again towards the end.   How's your first term going?