The Seashore- A Unit Study

July 7, 2013 
What better way to learn than walking along the shoreline, while waves lap at your feet and the sun warms your skin? I can't think of a better way, or a more relaxed learning environment! All senses are engaged while standing on the shoreline. I love to feel the gentle breeze, the warmth of the sun, the sand and the cool water; the scents of the ocean and sunscreen. I feel comforted by the sounds of the waves crashing, and seagulls’ cries. The sight of the vast sea, ships on the horizon and dolphins playing bring me joy and remind me how small I am on this earth. The taste of salt is always present while relaxing by the shore. 

  The seashore is a favorite place for me to teach my children. It is a Charlotte Mason nature study at its best! The book Hello Ocean brings you on a journey to the seashore, focusing on every sense. It’s a perfect book to use as a tool for both a unit on the senses and the ocean. Homeschool Share offers a free lapbook that you can print and create based on the book. 

 Here are a few photos from our Hello Ocean lapbook....

 

Here are some of our favorite books that go along with this theme....

...and a few we will add to our summer book basket this year...

 

{Since creating this post we have checked this one out 

from the library and loved it so much we bought it! Another favorite!}

Another great set of resources from Homeschool Share, based on the ocean unit theme can be found here. 

I hope you enjoy your seashore study~

God bless, 
Jen

 

Island Ponies Part 2

 

Ponies at Assateague

June 19, 2013
If you read part 1 I am sure you are aware of my significant love for horses as well as the seashore. So combine the two and I am about in Heaven! Because of this, when we read Misty of Chincoteague the first time, I ventured off into a unit study researching more about island ponies. I couldn't believe how many places wild ponies can be found along the East Coast. Today I will share with you some of the things we did for our study on island ponies. This seemed to naturally lead into a unit on the ocean and seashore. I will discuss that unit in another post sometime soon.

 My daughter was at the age where she was very interested in lapbooks, and let's face it, so was mom! So I decided to create a lapbook to enhance the process of learning about the wild ponies and to document what she learned. Below are the pictures and explanations of our Island Ponies lapbook.

{Many components inside my lapbooks come from Homeschool Share's free template section. }

Here is the cover. I just typed up the title and printed a photo I found online. Then I laminated both and used double sided tape to stick them to the front of a file folder... 

Here is the initial view of the inside. At the top there are two "matchbooks" with explanations of two different theories about how the ponies arrived on Assateague.

In the middle section I have added two flaps using blue card stock. On the blue flaps you can see a map of Assateague and Chincoteague as well as an accordian type of book. I can't find the template for that book now, but if you look below you can see some close ups of it. The green "accordion book" is a piece of construction paper that measures 10.5 x 5 inches. Along the length I created 6 folds that are each about 3/4 of an inch. (These folds should be in the middle, allowing for a front and back that are about 2.5 inches.) Then I glued the back into the lapbook. On each of these folds I glued a little square piece of card stock that showed the cover of a book we read for this unit. (I found images of each book cover on google images) The top and bottom rows of squares were glued on opposite sides of the folds. This allowed the flaps to go one direction on top and the other direction on the bottom.

 Here are two more close ups so you can see how the booklet works...

As you pull the front cover out the flaps will lay flat, revealing the pictures on the squares.

The rest of the middle section just has a few of our photos from our trips to Assateague and Chincoteague.

Here is the view of the inside once the two blue flaps are opened.

On the left we placed a map printout of the East Coast. On the map we labeled each place wild ponies can be found. On the right side you can see a "graduated layer book". This book has a page for each island or coastal town where wild ponies roam. Each flap has a photo of wild ponies from that place. (This was a great way for my daughter to learn to search the internet)

The middle has two "file folders" and a "mini accordion book". One file folder has a photo of the ponies swimming. Inside is an explanation of the annual Pony Swim. The second file folder has a photo of the cover of the book Misty of Chincoteague. Inside this folder my daughter wrote a little bit about Misty. 

The mini accordion book has little bits of information on each flap about how the ponies live.

A few of the books we used, in addition to Misty...

There are many more wonderful books on wild island ponies. These were just a few we really enjoyed.

To finish up our unit we watched Misty!

Here are a few links to some helpful websites:

Chincoteague Pony Center and the Misty Museum

History of Misty

The Misty Foundation

And finally a few of our photos from Assateague...

 And Chincoteague...

I hope you have enjoyed our Island Ponies unit. I will post soon about our ocean and seashore unit. Until then, have fun learning about Misty and all the other wild ponies that roam our coast.
God bless, 
Jen

Playing With Money

April 12, 2013
My third grader is having a difficult time understanding money concepts, so once a week we "open our store" to practice money counting skills! She is a very hands-on learner so it helps her to touch, feel and use money instead of just looking at it in her math book. On the day we do this store game we put away the math book. This is her math lesson for that day. She sets up whatever she would like to have in her "store" and puts price tags on everything. We take out our play money and shop! We take turns being the shopper and the store clerk. But I always have her do the counting. ;)

Here is the money we use

This is a little card I put together to help her remember the values of the coins

And here are some photos of her store set up!

For now we are keeping things very simple. I am not even working on counting back change yet. She really needs to understand the concept of the coin values as well as quickly adding dollar amounts. The rest will come later.

Another great tool for learning money concepts is this Discovering Money Lapbook from Homeschool Share.

Have Fun!
Jen