A Colonial Kind of Time

I love the CurrClick web site and all it's lessons & online classes.  Their products are affordable to most all budgets and you can't beat their freebie of the week! Their classes have, thus far, been great.  Very informative, well organized, and the kids love them. 

Today is one of the classes we enrolled in.  The kids are taking a live class titled "Thanksgiving Fun: Colonial Days and Pilgrims".  Their teacher sent some great links and project ideas early on in preparation for the class.  She had quite a list :)

Our family has done a lot with that time period so, we also had some great resources on hand.  Mainly we used our Homeschool Woods: Time Travelers Colonial Life CD for the resources.  With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching the timing couldn't be better.  So for one whole month we have have put aside our RC History trek in Rome to spend some time in Colonial America.

I'm going to post our progress as we go along here on the blog and take any of you on a little time travel adventure.  It'll hopefully be a blast with the comforts of all 2010 can offer too.

Part of what we did was spend time in the kitchen

Rose is setting up the apples to string and dry them later.  She's done this before and was really happy about doing it again.  In fact she nagged made this suggestion at least once a day:)

She made me awfully nervous while she cut her slices.  I ended up taking over.

Tada....

our sliced drying apples

Rose's paper doll colonial girl

and her cornucopia

There were lots of other projects  and we'll spend a whole month in this time period.  I bet I'll have some pictures to share.

Giveaway

Hearts at Home Store is offering two of the Time Travelers CDs to two lucky winners.  These are the same history unit studies by Home School in the Woods.  If you haven't seen or used these products before I highly recommend them.  The CDs are easy to use and the projects are fantastic!

• Easy to follow directions
• Hands on learning
• Fun projects that bring the history to life
• Pictures of completed projects are included for those visual learners out there 

Simply follow the guide rules by Lapbook Lessons and try to win a CD

Good luck!

History Text

This review over at love2learn caught my attention.  I am forever looking at history texts, books, videos or just some review of something that I can use for older girl.  Anyway, I am lucky enough that our library carries this book and now it waits patiently in my book bag to be read...by me.  Here is the summary of the review from love2learn: 

Ms. Ana Braga-Heneby M.A gave this book rave reviews and compared it to another favorite of hers:  A Child's History of the World by Virgil Hillyer.  Now, I picked up a copy of A Child's History of the World at last years Catholic Homeschool Conference but I wasn't impressed with it and ended up giving it away.  Once I read this review I kind of regretted that move until I got to the section on how both these books dealt with specific events in history involving the Catholic Church.  Virgil's book is stated as being more Anti-Catholic when addressing events like the Inquisions.  Thus, the parent/teacher would need to discuss these topics with their children/students prior to reading them.  On the other hand, Gombrich's book includes actual accounts of the Reformation Period and includes an entire chapter on the Counter-Reformation.  This author's tone with Christainity's influence through out history is supposedly both factual and respectful in tone.  I don't have great issues on the anti-Catholic stuff in history books because I can use this as a teaching tool for my own kids.  Teaching them how some of the world warps facts and bases views on Catholism on lies and myths.  That said though, one does need to be careful over the material chosen to use when teaching their kids something like history.

Ms. Braga-Heneby also suggested using Van Loon's Story of Mankind alongside/complementing it with  A Little History of the World.  She states using the above mentioned books would make up a great World History curriculum for elementary school aged kids.  I haven't read Story of Mankind to do any kind of comparison.  Once I do I'll post my own review of the above mentioned text.

First Stop...Colonial America

The American Trail

First Stop

Each stop is approximately 1 week long but we can take longer when needed.  The entire trail is meant to last 8 weeks

little kids (L k-2)

middle kids (M 3-5)

big kids (BK 6+)

Book list

* if found in library a L will be next to title

American Kids in History-Colonial Days L (used for the 1st 4 weeks of entire theme)

American Kids in History-Revolutionary War Days L (used for the last 4 weeks of entire theme)

What's the Big Idea Ben Franklin? L

Ben and Me L (this can be used for language arts block)

A Picture Book of Benjamin Franklin L

Geore Washington's World L (bk)

Sea to Shining Sea (bk)

update: 

We added the  Colonial Life CD for projects and lapbooks and these books

Johnny Tremain (bk)

Warrior Scarlet (bk)

The Sign of the Beaver (bk)

The Witch of Blackbird Pond (bk)