TOS Review - If You Were Me

What Is It:

The "If You Were Me" series is a new line of books from Carole P. Roman and Away We Go Media that takes kids to different countries through a simple story.  These books focus on some basic parts of these cultures, including what they call school, words for mom and dad, what their money is called, and what they eat.  Each book also shares other interesting facts that are great jumping boards for further studies.

For this review we were sent four books; If You Were Me And Lived In Mexico, If You Were Me And Lived In South Korea, If You Were Me And Lived In Norway, and If You Were Me And Lived In France.

We were also sent two passports with stickers and an inflatable globe.

How We Used It:

I decided to use these as more then just a story and make it into a mini unit study.  I picked one book a week and we read it and did some kind of project to go with it.  I also had Josie write down each countries word for school, mom, dad, and what they called their money.

For each country we completed, they got a stamp in their passport.  I plan to keep using these passports as we learn about other countries throughout the year.

My Opinion:

I really loved these books.  I feel like they are age appropriate and had some great facts in them.  Josie really enjoyed learning the different words and seeing what the kids lives were like there.  While the books don't go into great detail about each country, they do teach the things that young kids are interested in when you discuss other cultures.

I think these are a great set for early elementary school.

Product Details:

www.caroleproman.com

If You Were Me And Lived In Mexico - $8.99
If You Were Me And Lived In South Korea - $8.99
If You Were Me And Lived In Norway - $8.99
If You Were Me And Lived In France - $8.99

Landforms Unit

At the start of the Summer I pulled up our states 1st grade objectives to see what things I wanted to touch on from it.

I'm not really interested in what public schools are doing.

Wait, that's not true.

I am overly interested in what public schools are doing, but try really hard not to be.

My goal in homeschooling isn't to recreate a public school setting or curriculum, it's to foster a love of learning while teaching my kids in a way that works best for them.  And as much as I'd love to say that stays front and center at all times, I'd be lying.

Cause a lot of times I see what my friends kids are doing and I start comparing.  And if Josie's isn't quite there yet, I stress.  But I'm working on shutting that down.  Learning to celebrate all the different ways kids can learn without letting it make me feel uncertain about what I'm doing.

But that's totally off point.

This is a post about landforms, which happened to be on the 1st grade objective sheet for our state.  A lot of things on the list I decided she already knew, or they weren't, in my opinion, worth spending school time on.  This one looked fun and interesting though.

And we did have a blast with it and learned a lot!  It was also neat to take a few field trips to see the different landforms first hand.

We started by learning the vocabulary words and listing the different landforms.  From there, we focused on one landform each school day (we only did school two days a week in August) and worked on science experiments, art projects, and field trips where we could.

resources: File Folder from Hands of a Child; Activity Pack from First Grade Wow

TOS Review - Hands of a Child

What Is It?

Hands of a Child is a curriculum company that offers downloads for notebooking and lapbooks on a vast variety of topics.  They have something to offer for all grade levels in the subjects of Bible, economics, geography, history, and holiday.

This company was started by two homeschool moms that just couldn't find what they were looking for. I love when people see a need and decide to fill it themselves instead of waiting for the answer to come along.

For this review, we were sent a pdf download of the Exploring Landforms Curriculum.

How We Used It:

One of Josie's first grade learning goals is to learn about landforms.

I had already planned for a four week unit covering a ton of different landforms so this review fit in perfect.  The lap book we were sent covered mountains, canyons, and waterfalls so on the days that we were going to be covering those landforms, we added in the lap booking activities.

I have never used a lap book before so this was a bit of an experiment.  Basically, you fold a manilla folder into a flip book and then create different additions to it for each topic you cover.  Hands of a Child has many activities in each pack so we were busy on the days we studied mountains, canyons, and waterfalls!

Since I had no clue what I was doing, I appreciated the intro to the unit.  They included pictures of what it is supposed to look like as well as directions for how to fold each part.

On the days we added to our lap book, I would read from the teacher's guide and then we worked together to do the cutting and putting everything together.  As we did the parts of the lap book, we reviewed what we had read.

We did most of the activities and have a very nice looking lapbook to look back on.

My Opinion:

After finishing our lap book, I understand why so many homeschoolers are such fans of them.

This was a great way to organize all that we were learning in our unit.  Josie loved looking back through all the flaps and having me read what we had learned.  This little folder was able to hold a lot of information!

Josie was really proud when we finished it.  She showed it to her Dad, her Nana, and even brought it with on our vacation to show everyone there.  I love seeing her so proud.  And it was great to see her retain the information after repeating it so many times!

I wish I had taken the advice of the manual and printed on different colored paper.  Our activities were pretty bland looking.  We did try to color a few, but with all the black, our coloring didn't show up very well.  Josie didn't seem to mind at all.

I think that lapbooks are one of those activities that you get better at as you go.  I had to get creative to get all of the activities to fit!

I can't imagine all the work it would take to pull all of this information and graphics together for yourself.  The price is very reasonable for all the time and energy you will save.  Not to mention, the material is solid.

I love that you could easily do this with a wide range of ages.  Josie learned a lot that I would have assumed was over her level had I been putting this together.  An older child would have gotten even more out of it.  With just a few modifications and censoring out a few parts that I knew she wouldn't understand, we had a very appropriate 1st grade book.

While I wouldn't use this method for all of our units, I will for sure be doing them again.  Hands of a Child made it very simple to print our material and get right to building our lap book.  If you have a child that enjoys cutting, gluing, and making books I think that this type of project is a slam dunk.

Product Details:

www.HandsofaChild.com
Lapbooks - $8.00-$12.00

 

First Hand

Josie has spent the last few weeks learning about landforms.

We've studied mountains, volcanos, canyons, rivers, and oceans.  There have been nature books depicting amazing rock formations spread across our school table and youtube videos of glaciers and plains and the world's largest waterfalls.

The books and videos have been great, but I just didn't think she was getting the greatness of it.  Something was lost in the pages.  What about the sounds?  The smells?

I mentioned it in passing to Andrew and the next thing I knew, we were loading up the car and headed up to North Georgia for some first hand experiences with landforms.

We took the kids to our old favorite place to cliff jump.

Note: the thought of cliff jumping now gives me hives.  having kids has made us both a bit more cautious.

Even though we passed on jumping to our demise, we didn't skip on the amazing waterfalls.

The sounds were so great.

There is a natural waterside in the waterfall below, but all the rain we've been having has made the river super fast.  Even the invincible teenagers weren't attempting to slide down.

We did get to do a little rock climbing and the kids played in the freezing water until Gabe's lips turned blue.

Andrew, such a trooper.

The Desert

We are here in Arizona enjoying all the desert has to offer.

I love to use real life happenings as a spring board for school.  In the past I've brought theme work with us to Arizona.  Sometimes we got around to it, but most of the time we were too busy doing vacation stuff do much school work.  So this year we did our desert learning before we came.

We had a blast with this one.  I think the excitement of our trip kept everyone interested in what we were learning.

I'm tracking our days and trying to get in the required 180 days before the end of June so we will be doing school a few days while we are here.  But when the weather is this nice and you can do school at the park in between races down the slide, it's not that bad.

cat in the hat desert book (love this whole series); desert sensory boxes;

 sand paintings; handprint camels; clay cacti; fork print cacti; sunset desert art

Geography - Antarctica

Happy Halloween!
After snapping pictures of your little goblins tonight, remember to charge up your batteries for First Day tomorrow!  I wanna see your candy!

<a href="http://www.journeytojosie.com"><img src="http://i496.photobucket.com/albums/rr321/thehanchan/firstday.jpg"></a>

So last week we learned a little about Antarctica.

Since there really isn't much activity going on down there, this was a quick and easy unit.  We watched our All About Penguins DVD from Marshall Publishing and did an experiment to learn about how blubber keeps animals warm in all that ice.

The blubber experiment was a total hit.  

You just need a big bowl of ice water and a baggie of Crisco.  I had her put another baggie on her hand like a glove before she stuck it in the baggie full of Crisco to keep the mess down.  She was pretty grossed out by the texture at first but ended up loving it.

She stuck her blubber covered hand and uncovered hand in the ice water to see which hand got coldest.  She said both hands got pretty cold but the blubber did make it not so cold.

UGH!  That toothless smile gets me every time!

We are ending our continent studies this week with North America which will transition really well into our Thanksgiving unit for November.  After the new year, we are going to start working through all of the states.