Unveiling A Special Unit!

We have begun our study of the "Fifty Nifty United States".   I've been really excited to unveil this unit to the kids!  We began with watching this YouTube video of The Fifty Nifty United States song by Ray Charles... as my son later told me, "Mom, I wish you wouldn't have taught us that song because now it's stuck in my head and I can't concentrate on anything else!"

We love this video - I used it an infinite number of times when I taught elementary music, and my own children love it just as much.  I gave them an alphabetical listing of the states to help them follow along.  Right now Target has great state flash cards and puzzles, too. I also ordered this map of the United States and put it up in our kitchen... we are always looking at the map this way.  

In planning our state study, I found Jimmie's Squidoo lens to be very helpful.   We chose to use a 50 state notebooking set which we downloaded from Currclick.  My oldest will be expected to complete several notebooking pages on her own each week for the assigned state.   For my youngest, we are using the state printables from Crayola, which are perfect for his age.   

Thanks to Christine, at Fruit in Season, we have been receiving lots of postcards from different states.  If you ever have the opportunity to participate in a postcard swap, you should... it's enhanced our learning so much! Of course there are always a few people who don't hold up their end of the bargain in these swaps, but if you go into it realizing that, it's not so bad.  My children and I sent out our postcards in July and had fun learning many facts about our own state to include.  

I plan to choose a different patriotic song to highlight each week with my children.  This week the song is "This Land Is Your Land" by Woodie Guthrie.   They love it when we sit around the piano and mom plays and they sing...I just have to be intentional about doing it.

Our first state was Wisconsin.  I let the children choose which they want to study.  We have a lot of relatives in Wisconsin, and it was also the most recent postcard we had received.  Coincidentally, we read that malted milk was invented by James Horlick in Racine, Wisconsin.   I have an old Horlick's Malted Milk glass container from my mother, so we set the table tonight with that and our postcard.  We planned a dinner with malts for dessert and invited our granddaddy to share it with us.  

Chocolate Peanut Butter Malts with mini Oreos and marshmallows are quite decadent I must say.   Miss B and her dad made them.

I'm not sure if every state will get its own special dessert, but this was a fun way to remember this interesting fact about Wisconsin.

Have you done a 50 states unit with your children?    Do you have any suggestions and/or resources for me?    I love to fly by the seat of my pants, so I'm open to anything!  

Weekly Wrap Up #3 - We Accomplished?

Our weekly verse:


Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.


Psalm 119:105


We begin each day with our devotion and then scripture memory, using the Charlotte Mason scripture memory system.   It is such a routine now, that we feel lost without it.  I loved our verse this week.  We would turn on the Amy Grant song and then follow it with Michael W. Smith's instrumental version.  Click this link to hear it, and then just enjoy listening while you read the rest of my post!  


My children have gotten very good at WAITING.  Each week I have physical therapy twice... and each time they come armed with lots to do.   Miss B always reads her Kindle, and GMan reads his current book for half of the time and then he is allowed to play on his Leapster.  It's working well, and I must say everyone has complimented me on what good children I have - major score for homeschooling!  

Oh, and a major score for mom, too.  My physical therapist homeschooled her own children for 18 years.  They are now grown and this is her second career.  She gets me and she gets my lifestyle.  She is a Godsend and I am slowly feeling better.  Today I swam laps for an hour  and then went to therapy for another hour - and I'm not in massive pain.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.    I'm brought back to our weekly verse this week:  "They Word is a light unto my feet and a light unto my path."

Miss B has also loved working on this simple weaving project she got for her birthday - she takes it with her everywhere!  

In science this week GMan was learning all about magnets (more on this later in a review I'm doing for The Old Schoolhouse!)... I had purchased a great magnet game and book which he loved!   

Now that my daughter is getting older, she is doing more independent work.  Some of her science this week involved research on the computer.  She learned about the five kingdoms in depth.  She was quite proud of herself.  She was helping me do some research for a review I'll be writing soon!  

My favorite photo of the week - my precious daughter reading her Kindle at her brother's baseball tryouts.   She is most happy when she has a good friend and a good book!   A victory with Miss B this week was also understanding and kind of enjoying long division and multiplying three digit by three digit numbers.   

We are loving our spelling curriculum, Spelling Workout.  It is very traditional - and by that I mean it could probably be found in a traditional school.   For some reason my kids like the exercises, and yes, you see some "bubbling in" in this picture.   It's a valuable skill, because my children will have to be tested every three years.  This is the only experience they get with it, so I hope they remember!   (I'm linking this to Susan's Favorite Resource Linky each Friday, too!) 

We incorporated some rhythm instruments with our grammar this week, learning the state of being verbs from First Language Lessons.  I posted a video of GMan's improvisation here.  

Finally, the kids really enjoyed learning about ancient Rome in The Story of The World.  They built an aqueduct out of Legos!   I was thrilled with their cooperation and creativity... I know it's not exactly architecturally accurate, but the water runs through a channel on top of the bridge and into a public bath (on the right side).  See that mini figure?   That's Alexander the Great in the public bath!  

Tomorrow I will be attending a lunch with the women from Apologia Live Retreats.  I'm very excited to meet them and also some other homeschool moms (many of them bloggers I know online but not IRL!).  

That was our week in a nutshell.... how was your week?    Sometimes it feels like we don't accomplish much in a day, but when you look back on the week you see just how much your precious children are learning under your care.  Isn't that amazing?  

*linking up to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers