Marco Polo; not just a pool game!

This week we started with our studies of early American History. This of course can't begin until we find out who discovered this side of the globe, and why they bothered in the first place. So Marco Polo is the character of interest for today.

The Light and Glory for Children by Peter Marshall and David Manuel. We will use this book for reference and order of our early American History Study, and flesh it out with some good story books relative to what we are covering.

We talked about where Marco Polo was from, and where he sailed to. And what he was looking for. This will of course lead us into why Columbus was looking for an easier route. For today, we laid out some ships, the route, and at the destination, some pictures of spices. We also placed some pics of camels to signify the journey on land.

We made a folded ship, sort of three dimensional, and sailed it around the Indian Ocean until we got to India. This is a Mark It map from Sonlight. It is laminated and has served our family in a number of wonder adventures and games. The map comes blank and you can write on it with dry erase type markers. One side has the world and the other side is a map of the US. Very wonderful resource!

After we sailed around the continent, we picked up the pictures of the spices and put them in the ship and sailed them back to Europe.

Assembling his lap book.

The final product. The lap book opens up to reveal all the pictures of what he learned on the inside. He has a section he labeled for the maps, one for the ships, one for the camels that Marco Polo used to trek across the desert sands, and one for the spices.

The part underneath the red card stock, where Daniel's hand is (it's white on the underneath) will house the pictures of him working on the map. We will glue those in after we print them out.

History Through the Ages Time Line Book

Have you seen this? It's History Through the Ages. You get a CD for the computer with all these images on it, and you can grab the time line characters as you need them and print them out. You can print them out 'wall sized' or 'notebook sized'. We print out wall sized ones for the younger boys to color, and the notebook sized ones for Franklin to assemble his book. I went ahead and bought the book they sell because the pages are already done and we also bought the placement guide. We used to have the timeline on the wall, but that never really worked out for us well in regards to space, so this is a happy solution. This company also has a couple other unit studies, and we got the Bible one at the beginning of the year. It makes a really involved lap book. I haven't had time to use that yet, but eventually we will get to it. There are also suggestions on the CD on how to make file folder games, card games, pop up cards, and other lapbooks. There are also printouts you can make for handwriting practice where the child can either trace the copy, or you can dictate it to him and he can write it underneath the picture if you choose the option of printing without the text. Way cool. It's made by Home School in the Woods. Very handy product when studying history!

Franklin; smarty pants

I was trying to get a picture of Franklin, he kept closing his eyes....on purpose. Then at the last minute, he pulled a "Dinozzo" (think NCIS).

Sometimes you just have to throw the curriculum out!

This has been one of those weeks. The workbooks have caused more grief than good, so we took a hiatus and went totally free-style. I pulled out a Polyopticon play set that I had stored in the closet since Franklin was 7 or 8 and forgotten we had, and let Daniel and Caleb just explore to their heart's content. And they learned how to follow directions (and what happens when you don't), and they learned what stuff looks like when it is magnified, and how important it is to keep the lens free from fingerprints. It was a good two hours before they finally were done with it....only because the dinner bell rang, and they are boys afterall...so the tummy always comes first.

Did they fill in all the blanks in the workbook today? No. Did they learn some really cool stuff that you can't get in a textbook? Absolutely.

This kit allows you to build several things. The binoculars were fun, but it was too cold to go outside to explore. Caleb starts a bird unit next week, so if the birds haven't all frozen to death this week, we should be able to thoroughly enjoy that study using these nifty specs.

The boys were amazed at how big the 'fine print' looked. Frankly, I was equally impressed.

Daniel is examining his fingers.
You can actually see each ridge of your finger prints with this magnifier.
It was way cool!

Caleb found the fibers of the carpet very interesting.

See the puppy curled up in front of the fireplace? She is so cozy right here.

Conductivity Experiment

Franklin's science required the use of all manner of wires and gadgets, a young man's dream. So he and Frank set out to make use of all the alligator clips, batteries, light bulb switches, and of course, the highly corrosive substances.

This was silicon. You would think by it's metalic look that it would be conductive, but in fact, it is not.

Now that's a fashion statement!


So glad to have a dad that will get involved....

Remember 10th grade?

Diligence...