Star Spangled States

This year we studied the 50 states. We used the Star Spangled States Book and workbook, by Joel King, as the backbone of our study, and this was a great way to go.

There is a page to read about each state-- we divided up each page's reading between the three of us who were doing the study-- Molly always read aloud a certain section, James read another section, and I read a third section.

We also read about each state from a book called, The Arrow Book of States, by Margaret Ronan, published by Scholastic in 1972. This was a Goodwill find, and I was so thankful to have it-- the additional info was very interesting, and easy for kids to understand (not that the Star Spangled book was uninteresting or hard to read; it was just good to learn even more). By the way, this book is out of print, but can be found at used bookstores like www.abebooks.com.

On the same day each new state was read about, the kids also each traced the outline of the state, by puting blank paper over a copy of a blank outline map. Then they colored their drawing in, while listening to the Arrow Book of States. The kids liked trying out different media for coloring in-- that was fun-- like watercolor paints, chalk, crayons, felt pens, color pencils, and tempera paint.

There are some Star Spangled States workbook pages to do after each new state is introduced. These are for review of states already covered. After all the states have been looked at, there are more review workbook pages-- to practice what states border other states, and what the capital cities are.

At the beginning of last summer, when I was planning for this study, the kids had the great idea of making a huge wall map. Then they would paste on/color on some things related to each state.

Drawing is something that comes easily for me, but this was a bit of a challenge. I bought a tall roll of paper and put it up across our dining room wall the week before school started. Then, by referring to an atlas book that had a U.S. map, I sketched the states in-- starting at the east coast and going west. As the states started to take shape I found I had to examine them, do some erasing, and revise . . . and revise . . . trying to get close to the correct proportion and location compared to other states. So this project took a while. After a couple of hours it was finished, and I went over the outlines with a gray felt pen.

This wall map was an important part of our study-- we took one or two days to put up facts/figures/images for each state. Doing this generally took some preparation on my part-- I made a list of things we could put on for each state, and the kids chose a couple of items to make. I made several more. Sometimes I drew a picture that James would color in. Sometimes James or Molly or I would look for images on the computer, using "Picsearch" on the internet. We'd print them out, add color highlights, and cut out the images.

It was fun to see the map fill in, through the year. Since we were going through the states in alphabetical order, spots that had facts and pictures were scattered over various parts of the map. Eventually there were more filled-in states than blank ones. And then one day the map was all done. It had taken about 2/3 of the school year to do. And it stayed up the rest of the year; we liked having it on the wall and looking at the fruit of our labors, as well as being reminded of various facts and state locations.

When the kids had a question about what states were near a certain state, it was simple to just look up at our wall map and point out the states. I think I, myself, also found it easier to learn all the locations of the states from this extra large map than if I'd only been looking at a small atlas page.

And having the map up made for some interesting table discussions at dinner, sometimes. My husband like to see the new things we put up, and sometimes commented or asked questions about them.

A couple of other elements to our study, added in as memory aids and also for fun, were a song and a chant. The song, called Fifty Nifty United States, has been around a long time. It is by Ray Charles, and is popular in schools-- I watched several different You-Tube videos of it, and we slightly altered the lyrics to come up with our own version. We sang this song together about twice a week.

The chant was one I made up, that we used many years ago when our oldest children were younger and they were doing a U.S. Geography study. It is for all the capital cities with their states. It is a fun chant to say, and I would lead while the kids chimed in. (If anyone wants to hear it/have a copy of the words, let me know; a recording is in the works). We said the chant together two or three times a week, and it took all year to get good familiarity with it. Doing this chant repeatedly helped us remember the capitals, which came in handy for the second part of the Star Spangled States workbook.

Oh, one more extra part to this states study-- we also used a cookbook called The United States Cookbook, by Joan D'Amico and Karen Eich Drummond. We tried out some of the recipes for regional foods as part of our lunches and snacks (both James and Molly usually make some lunches and some snacks, as part of their school schedule). Some favorite recipes from this book were "Banana Berry Pancakes with Real Maple Syrup" (for Vermont), "Cincinnati Chili Over Pasta" (for Ohio), "Baked Apples" (for Washington), and "Cheese Quesadilla with Vegetables" (for Arizona).

Astronomy!

This winter we studied astronomy, and here is a picture of the balloon/small ball solar system model that has been hanging across our living room ceiling for the past few months. It was pretty easy to make-- Saturn was made by blowing up one of those extra long balloons and curving it around a regular balloon, attached with tape. All the balloons/balls were hung from thread and attached to the ceiling with pushpins. The dimensions were approximately to scale, except for being much closer together than in the scale of the real solar system, and Jupiter and Saturn needed to be bigger-- probably using a large punch ball would have been better for each of these planets. There was a handy list of approximate sizes to make each ball/balloon in the book we were using, Exploring Creation With Astronomy, by Jeannie Fullbright. We used a couple of small balls for the smallest planets--Mercury and Mars, and a large bead for Pluto.

Grassheads!

Here are some pictures of our "grassheads." These little TP tube people were fun to make. We put a sandwich bag inside, attached with a rubberband across the top outer rim. They are filled with potting soil, then planted with wheat grains, to make wheat grass.

The "hair" came up within a few days. One picture is of a couple days of growth; the other one, after about a week, looked like a "bad hair day"!

This was a craft during our homeschool kids group.

When the grass was up and growing well, our kitten had a great time knocking over the tube people, and chewing on their hair; we had to grow her her own dish of wheat grass. But she still seemed to prefer knocking over the grasshead people, even when her own grass was up!

New E-Books!

About the New Website!

I forgot to explain about the new website in the last post...

We are constructing several new pages for our website. We are switching to selling e-books on our own site, instead of through Lulu. We will still be having hard-copy books be available through Lulu's print-on-demand services.

New Books! And a New Website!

I always feel much jubilation when I finally get another book finished! I guess that is because I have so many, many computer files for books that are pretty much ready to go, except for needing a little formatting and a cover design. And it seems like the cover designs are what take so much time, that making new books has gone very slowly...

So I am excited and happy to have these two new e-books available. My sons helped me with learning how to format the cover with computer text and graphics, but the underlying picture for these covers was a piece of marbeled paper that I and Molly and James made at the beginning of this school year, as our first craft project. We made lots of other pieces of marbled paper, too, but I especially liked this one. Will probably make some more covers with marbeled patterns, but using some different colors.

In case you don't know how marbeling is done, it's really very simple. You just put water in a rectangular pan, put some drops of oil paint on top of the water, swirl it only very slightly, and lay a sheet of paper on top. Then you lift up the paper and let it dry. And everyone who looks at these says, "Ooh, " and "Ahh."

Oh, ya, I guess I should tell about what's inside these new e-books, too!

These are writing prompt books. A topic is given, for making a picture, with a large box on the page for drawing in. There are lines for writing, under the picture box, so the child can write something about the picture or make a story about the picture.

There are two sets of these, because although we originally used these with 2nd to 4th grade kids, we later decided to try them with some of our middle school-aged kids, and found that they enjoyed them and did some very skillful and creative art and writing with them. Sometimes older school-aged kids don't have many assignments for creative writing; a lot of times their writing is mainly related to school subjects like history or science. But given an opportunity, like using these pages or other simple, open-ended projects, they will often come up with very imaginative ideas for both drawing and writing.

We needed to alter some of the prompts for the older ages set, and make more lines that are closer together for writing. There are 36 pages in each set. This makes it easy to do one page a week through one school year. Or, you can do one page every two or three weeks, and use the pages over several years.

The Old Schoolhouse Store: new WeE-book

The Old Schoolhouse Store has published a WeE-book about homeschooling young children. I wrote the two articles in it; the first tells about an easy way to teach using "notebooks." These are not large 3-ring binders, but smaller-- report folder-sized collections of pages that can be read through daily. They can also have pages removed or added whenever needed. This is something I did with my kids... and still do! James, who is 10, is going through a notebook this summer to practice some math things like square numbers, place value to the billionth place, and some Spanish vocabulary. We're also doing a fun song about sandwiches (I Love Sandwiches, an adaptation of Bob King's song).

But this thin notebook method is especially great for young children; I thought it should be called "the rocking chair method" because I remember having my young preschoolers on my lap on the rocking chair while we went through their pages.

The TOS WeE-book gives more details and examples about this method, and there are even five ready-to-print preschool notebook pages included at the end of the WeE-book. In the second half of the book, there are lots of other ideas of things to do with young children-- many of these use materials that can be hand-made-- along with color photographs of some of the activities.

To find this WeE-book, go to www.theoldschoolhousestore.com and look in the WeE-books section. It is called Homeschooling with Young Children, and costs $1.95. (In case you're not familiar with WeE-books, what they are is short e-books; you will not receive a printed book, but a download for an e-book. You can then either read the book on your computer, or print it out on a printer. )