Sunday

Summary Saturday: Tree House World Tour 2013

So many exciting things have happened in our homeschool since the New Year!

The biggest change has been starting our world geography study. We are having two students join us for our trip around the world. One of my best friends, just happens to have two daughters the exact same ages and grades as Chipette and Magpie. Back in the fall, we met up for a playdate at the local park and I was sharing our plans for world geography. A few months later she mentioned that she was really busy with her new business venture so homeschooling her girls had become just the basics. Well, I couldn’t let those sweet girls only study math, reading, and handwriting, so I offered to let them come over twice a week and join us for our world geography study. It has been a lot of fun having two extra students and, of course, my girls have been thrilled because two of their best friends are in our house on a regular basis!

Since you’ll be seeing quite a bit of our new students in these Summary Saturday posts, I’ll be calling them Miss Jane and Miss Elizabeth because of the mutual love their mom and I have for all things P&P.

World Geography

We started out the first week learning the continents and oceans. We learned their names and are working on learning where they are on the map. Well, the kindergarteners are working on it. My big girls, Chipette and Miss Jane, already know it.

We made this paper plate craft that I found on Pinterest to show our position from the universe to our bedroom. The order goes: Universe glued on plate, Milky Way, Solar System, Earth, North America, United States, our state, our town, our house, bedroom.

We got a little messy…


But the end product turned out really nice.


I bought sketch pads to use as our notebooks and gave one notebook to each set of girls to share.


Our first entries were vocabulary pages about continents and oceans.


For our second week we learned about maps and globes, specifically latitude, longitude, equator, hemispheres, and prime meridian.

We finished up our art project called Mission to Mars.


And on our final class of the week, we made apple dumplings (recipe coming soon!)


And read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.

Next week, we’re heading to Russia!

If you would like to see my lesson plans as I post them just click on world geography or Globe Trotting Girls labels, or it’s also located under the curriculum and homeschool tabs.

Science

I tied science into our world geography study by working animals and their habitats from each country/continent we study.

We worked on animal classification our first week by studying the characteristics that determine if a vertebrate is a fish, mammal, amphibian, reptile, or bird. Then we played a classification game where I had six pictures for each of the above categories and the girls had to sort them correctly.

Miss Jane doing a wonderful job!
They did a really good job, and by the end the little girls, Magpie and Miss Elizabeth, had figured it out and were helping out quite a bit.

The second week we learned about food chains using my pathetic drawing skills to explain how they work. Think marker board and very sad looking animals.
For our activity I had each set of sisters make their own food chain using pictures from a workbook I got from the Target dollar aisle.


Then we practiced food chains on the computer using this game from Sheppard Software. 

They really liked that!

Chipette

We started a new writing program for third grade, Institute for Excellence in Writing’s Student Writing Intensive A. Chipette adores this program! She asks me every day if she gets to watch her writing class.

Here she is rewriting her very first paragraph using key words.


I think the main thing she likes is being told she HAS to write in pen and Mr. Pudewa’s teaching style. After watching the first lesson, she asked me if that man taught any other subjects so she could take them as well.

Magpie

Magpie is continuing on with her schooling like a champ! She loves doing school and begs to have school time even once she’s finished for the day. Probably because we do things like Cheerio math:


And study really awesome kid books like Corduroy. Here she is having to tell and draw something she has always wanted.


 Her answer: I have always wanted God. That is her picture of God with wings, very large hands, and orange shoes.

Monkey

After Magpie had finished playing a math game, I looked over and saw that Monkey had decided to try his chances at it.


He’s definitely going to win!

Looking forward to another busy, but fun week in the tree house,

Chelli

2 comments:

  1. It looks like you had such a fun week :) How fun to add a couple of new students! We are doing a state stdyy. I look toward to when we get to world geography.

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    1. It has been a blast and brings a totally different dynamic having two extra students. We'll be working on United States geography next year.

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