Homeschoolers! Declare your Independence! Have a School Day! Huh?

Only a homeschooler would have SCHOOL on a National Holiday like 4th of July. But, we are. Why?

There are always such great unit studies and activities that come out for Independence Day, but we are always on summer break. Sure, we learn about these things during the school year. But, wouldn't it mean more to learn about it on it's anniversary?

Now, this day will be fun, and won't even really feel like school (for the most part). We will count this as Day 4 of our 180 day school year.

Here is what I have planned:

Literature. The cornerstone to all we do is literature. I always try to mix in both non-fiction and fiction books. We will be reading ...

Independence Day (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by Trudi Strain Trueit

The Fourth of July (Wonder Books) by Kathryn Kyle

Independence Day (Rookie Read About Holidays) by David F. Marx

Hurray for the 4th of July by Wendy Watson

Henrietta's Fourth of July by Syd Hoff

Happy Fourth of July, Jenny Sweeney! by Leslie Kimmelman

Fourth of July Bear by Kathryn Lasky

Looking for Uncle Louie on the Fourth of July by Kathy Whitehead

Videos. We will pull up the good ol' Schoolhouse Rock videos on Youtube to watch Revolutionary War, Fireworks, and America's Independence.

Activities. While listening to patriotic music on Pandora, we will do several activities:

• Homemade crossword puzzle for the vocabulary words: Justice, Equality, Freedom, Liberty (these were the words on our sheet of stamps yesterday. Brynne was mailing some letters to her friends in her Keeper's Club and asked what the words meant. So, we will learn them.)
• Copy "The Pledge of Allegiance" for copywork. This will be attached to the following craft project.
• "Stamp" fireworks made out of toilet paper tubes (just cut slits in the end so that when it is pushed down on the paper, it will look like fireworks). We will stamp these on black construction paper using yellow and white paint, and maybe some glitter. Then we will attach this to our copywork to display in our house.
• Paint wooden stars made out of glued-together popcicle sticks. We'll hang these from our kitchen chandelier.
• I made red, white, and blue popcicles for a special treat tomorrow using koolaid, small cups, and popcicle sticks. I had to make the blue this morning so it could freeze. I will add the white later today, and then the red to freeze overnight. I saw bomb pops at the store yesterday but thought homemade popcicles would be more fun.

We will end our day having a cookout as a family and doing just a few fireworks (sparklers, snakes, poppers, and maybe shoot off just a couple of cheap ones.) I hate spending money on fireworks!