Weekly Wrap-up ~ Frontier House (Prairie Primer

Weekly Wrap-up ~ Frontier House (Prairie Primer - Little House Week 4)

As we were finishing up the last few chapters of Little House on the Prairie this week, I decided that it would be the perfect time to invest our study hours into watching my favorite mini-series Frontier House.

Frontier House was a PBS series that first aired in 2002. It is about three modern day families who took on the challenge of living as pioneers in 1883 in the Montana frontier. It was an epic exercise in survival. They had to build their own homes, manage their own money and food, decide how much livestock they would have, and then spend five months preparing for their first winter. At the end of the five months, experts came to evaluate whether the families would have survived. It is reality television at its best! I have now watched it three times, and it never gets old. If you can get ahold of a copy of it (our library has it), I highly recommend that you watch it. It really is just that good.

The series took up the majority of our study time this week, with the exception of daily CNN Student News, math (expanded notation), grammar (verbs), and personal reading. Eli finished one of the Middle School books by James Patterson and Brynne is still working through One White Dolphin by Gill Lewis.

We also did some extra reading and study about prairies, Native American housing, and the life of a Plains Indian. We read the following books:

To finish our week we watched the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

And that was it for us. We actually got in all of our hours this week. But they were just spent soaking in the lifestyles of the frontier life, both of the pioneers and the Native Americans.

I am hoping to get us to a prairie preserve in the next couple of weeks before yucky weather hits. If I can muster up the stamina, we will make a trip back to Oklahoma to see the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and get up close and personal with the Osage Indians at the Osage Tribal Museum. I also want to go to Kansas City to see a working fort at Missouri Town 1855. We might wait to do that until December 13th when they have their Christmas Celebration. Yeah, we need to do that.

Next week we are moving onto our four-week study of On the Banks of Plum Creek. This Prairie Primer series has been just about the best thing that has happened to this homeschooling family. It's awesome!

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.

A New Year, the Same Me

Happy 2019! It is that day of the year where everybody is up extra early starting their new exercise routine, eating only healthy foods, cracking open the pages of a new planner and Bible study, and debuting their Word for the year. You chuckle or roll your eyes, but you are doing at least three of these things. By the way, so am I. So let's start with the Word of the Year. Mine this year is Lagom. It's the Swedish word for "not too little, not too much, just right". It's a concept of being, doing or having just enough. So let's rewind to last New Year's Day. My Word was Might. And that's how I planned to tackle my year. And, I did. I worked out hard, I mommed hard, I traveled hard, I worked hard. And it was a good season. It prepared the way for this year. I accepted the Challenge I set for myself and succeeded. But, I don't need to keep up that pace. I am at a place in my life where I can kind of sit back and enjoy my life without f...

Science Sunday ~ Hmmm ... Let Me Think About It!

This week in our study of the Human Body , Brynne moved on to the Nervous System . Our first stop was a Pamela Hill Nettleton book called, Think, Think, Think: Learning About Your Brain . As part of our discussions about the brain , and the fact that it's the BOSS of the body, we discussed the importance of the spinal cord . We did a hands on spinal cord project by alternating gummy Life Savers and wagon wheel pasta on a pipe cleaner. We talked about why there was the "squishy" stuff in between the vertebra and how the back can bend and sway because of it. We completed "The Brynne" by adding the stomach, small intestine and large intestine, from our study last week of the Digestive System (although I just realized I have the large intestine coming out of the stomach, when the small intestine should be) and the brain and spinal cord. We are now done talking about the parts of the body and will conclude our study of the Human Body with a two-day unit ...

Aloha AcresOctober 17, 2014 at 1:53 PM
Ahhhh. Spirit. Bradley wore that VHS out! (Yes, I'm old) and we had to have 2 soundtracks so we could have one in both vehicles. He was a little obsessed. Good memories. I miss them being little .... sometimes.
ChristyOctober 17, 2014 at 8:25 PM
The fort sounds like a lot of fun, but it's quite a trek for us being on the wrong side of the state. You'll have to take pictures so we can visit through you guys!

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