Study America Saturday ~ Iowa and Kansas

When I think of Iowa and Kansas, I do not get excited. However, the kids and I had an exciting trip through both states with our Road Trip USA unit study.

Iowa

We completed our Iowa notebook page and read Iowa: Facts and Symbols by Elaine A. Kule

We learned that the geode is Iowa's state rock. When we were visiting Jacob's Cave in Missouri with our friends this summer as a part of Lake School, we got to watch a geode get cut open. It was neat to see and we received some great information from the lady who worked there.

That led us to the book Rock On!: A Look at Geology's Groovy Gems by Christine Peterson.

We also did the coolest experiment!

We used our new science notebooking skills that we have been doing on our study of colors and rainbows. It was a very exciting and enriching experiment!

Kansas

We completed our notebooking page on Kansas and then moved onto some interesting and fun activities.

Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas. We started by reading the book Vanished! The Mysterious Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Monica Kulling. It was excellent and told of all of the different theories as to what happened to Ms. Earhart. Makes you wonder!

Then we watched a very short black and white clip about her disappearance from the bonus material of the "Flights of Courage" dvd.

As the sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, we read about it in Sunflowers by John F. Prevost

Then we turned to the queen of pastel tutorials, Tricia at Southern Hodgepodge, and completed her Sunflower pastel tutorial. I thought they turned out really great, and we all enjoyed doing them.

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Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

How to Build a Homeschool U.S. History Curriculum from "America: The Story of Us"

FINAL UPDATE (JUNE 2012): We completed our entire U.S. History course last month using the America: The Story of Us video series and the resources I had planned. We officially covered Episodes 1-9 which got us through the 1920's. We plan to use the remaining three videos when we study the World Wars in a couple of years. I just want to go on record as saying that I believe whole-heartedly that the use of this series with my resources would more than qualify your child for a full credit of U.S. History. And, it was exciting and enriching. Feel free to follow all of my lesson plans. You can see them all at this link: http://journey2excellence.blogspot.com/search/label/America%3A%20The%20Story%20of%20Us Update: America: The Story of Us is now available as an InstaStream through Netflix! We also had it available at our local library. If you didn't receive a complimentary copy, you won't have to pay the $30 for it! Many of us received a complimentary copy of "...

Journey to Excellence

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