Constitution Day Preparations

Did you know that this coming Tuesday, September 17, is Constitution Day? I knew but actually

forgot until I got an email from Jolanthe over at Homeschool Creations. She shared what she was going to do with her family and also shared some printables she created to go along with their lessons. They looked pretty great so I decided that we would take advantage of them and integrate some Constitution learning in our homeschool next week as well.

I am planning on using her printables along with the Constitution Day DVD from Shlessinger Media that we got from our local library. This is a short 12 minute educational dvd that explains some key points about our Constitution and what it means to be a US Citizen. There are also discussion questions on the video and a Teacher's Guide that can be printed out from the link above.

We will also read some books we checked out including the following; A More Perfect Union, We the People, and If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution.

The book I am most excited about however is one entitled Constitution Translated for Kids by Cathy Travis. I have read through this book and find it so valuable to our week's studies. The almost 100 page book has pages divided into two columns, the left column for the Constitution in it's original wording and for the right column, Mrs. Travis has painstakingly translated each paragraph, article and amendment into language that is more easily understood by children (and adults!) Here is a peek:

The original, "No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

Quite a mouthfull!! The right, translated column reads,"Congress must tax according to the number of citizens there are in the country based on the census. (The Sixteenth Amendment changed this so Congress could charge and collect taxes any way they wanted.)"

Makes it more understandable doesn't it? The book includes the 7 Articles, The Bill of Rights, Other Amendments, Words to Look at While You Are Reading and more. This may be one book that I end up purchasing for our family. It would be a great reference tool to have on hand.

I am also hoping to work hard on having our older kids memorize the Preamble to the Constitution next week as well. (Jolanthe included this in her printable packet linked above.) I memorized it in 7th grade and still know it to this day! We will take a look at the Preamble sentence by sentence and talk about the meaning of each. 

With so much going on in our country right now I feel it's so important that our children learn about this document that our Founding Father's thought was so important to create. I am hoping that they learn, at least a little, about why our nation is so great. 

And also, Sept. 17th isn't just Constitution Day for us, but it happens to be the 8th birthday of our Boy! Wow, can't believe this handsome fella is already gonna be 8. What a blessing this guy is to our family. Couldn't imagine our 4 pinks without this blue!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Christopher Columbus

Over the weekend I recieved an email from The Old Schoolhouse's Teacher's Toolbox newsletter. Posted, big and in front was a link stating that we could get a FREE unit study/lapbook from In The Hands of A Child.

I was excited about that because I have always heard great things about their products but never tried them. I quickly downloaded my copy and then decided that we would do nothing but that Unit Study and Math for the next two weeks.

Well we started today and the girls loved it!!

I prepped on Sunday by printing out the entire teacher portion of the download so that I could have something tangible. I made divisions on the lesson plans of sorts so that I would know what information we were going to cover on each day.

Then I printed out the pages for our first day.

This study is set up pretty well. The information that you read to the children is gives great detail but gives not so much that the child gets lost in all of the facts.

I also LOVED that there was a book list included with some great titles including Where Do You Think You Are Going Christopher Columbus? by Jean Fritz, If You Were There in 1492 by Barbara Brenner and A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus by David Adler. I chose one of the books for myself to read so that I could get some solid background information and I couldn't put that book down!!! All but a couple I was able to locate at our local library. Yay!!!

 Great selections.

A few things that I like about this product is how they have an easier assignment and a slightly harder one for you to choose from. The difference would be more writing and more information to remember and record for the olders while the youngers have the information already given Mom just needs to choose between tracer letters or bold pre-printed letters. I like that all the clip art for this particular study is in black and white. I honestly hate using so much colored ink on one project. Vocabulary is included and the word choices are great! The book list is great, as previously mentioned and the organized yet not cookie cutter plans. You can use this to fit YOU!!

So, if you are wanting to study about Christopher Columbus (we celebrate his day on the 11th) then check out Teacher's Toolbox today!!!

Oh, and if you hop on over to In the Hands of a Child you will see that they have their Thanksgiving study marked down from $18 to $5 this week only!!

Lovin' Learnin'

Egypt unit study

I know that it has been a LOOOOONG time since I've posted-no real excuses just been very busy! But in a nutshell here is what we've been up to in our homeschool:We took a break from our lovely Heart of Dakota material for two weeks and worked on a unit study from Galloping the Globe. GtG is a book full of unit study ideas for countries around the globe. It is a great book and I had planned to work through this book last summer but as things go around here we never were able to get around to it! I was very excited to finally be able to work through some of the activities from it!I asked the girls which country they would like to learn about and they decided on Egypt. I was excited about this because I knew it would be easy to tie it in with the Bible. I decided to go with the 2 week plans so that we could take our time with this study. I am glad we did because, for us, 1 week would have not been enough time to really do this country justice.There are so many activities that we were able to do in this study!! Of course we learned some geography; where the country is, what rivers and oceans are near it, and some basic mapping exercises. We learned some science; the climate of Egypt, animals that are native to the country, and how to construct pyramids. We learned about the religion of the Ancient Egyptians, modern-day Egyptians and how that compares with our own faith. (That was one of my favorite days!!) We also learned how the ancient Egyptians lived, how important the Nile River was to them and their process of mummyfying their Pharaohs. And what study would be complete without costumes?! We did all of that!! It was great, the kids had a blast and learned a lot about this country!! The girls complete a notebook along with this study so that they would have a place to keep all of their work and of course be able to review it over and over each time they take their notebooks out!This was a great study and I highly encourage anyone wanting to incorporate unit studies into their homeschool to take a look at GtG. I am glad that we did!!


Here is a slide show of some of our activities.

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