Showing posts with label Sonlight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sonlight. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

US Elections Unit Study

 



Back in July, I shared our our 2020-21 Homeschool Curriculum Choices with all of you. Unfortunately, I forgot to tell you about the lap book curriculum we bought to work on with the girls this school year. Oops!! As a result, I’ve decided to share how I intend to use this US Elections Lap Book as a “mini” unity study.

Without further ado, our main curriculum for this mini unit study will be the US Elections Lap Book from Sonlight. Lap books are hands-on activities, which give children a fun and creative way to learn about the US Election process. In case you don’t know, Sonlight is a curriculum, whose focus is heavy on books and reading. Several years back, Sonlight debuted a variety of lap books, which pair very well with their curriculums providing more of a well-rounded and balanced teaching for children with a variety of learning styles. 


In total, there are 21 projects for you to finish, so we will be doing these 3 times a week for the next 7 weeks, so we can finish the week after the election. The lap book kit comes with everything you need to complete the lap book project, an instructor booklet, and even the double sided tape. At the beginning of each project, you read an excerpt from the US Elections text booklet and then work on the specific activity.



My girls had fun working on our first few projects together!!



Additionally, there are a lot of ways, I plan to bulk up this lap book curriculum. First, I went on YouTube to find some fun videos for my girls to watch, which will reiterate what I’ve already taught them. So, I searched “elections for kids” into the YouTube search engine and saved some videos for us to watch together like, “Voting for Kids”.


Another way I want to teach my girls about the election process, is by coming together as a family to watch the presidential debates. I’m not here to just tell my kids who to vote for, but I want to let them learn about the process and foster a love for our country in my girls hearts.





Finally, we’re also going to read a book from the Heroes of History series called, “George Washington: True Patriot” by Janet & Geoff Benge. My girls had a lot of questions about voting and our country. I thought it would be helpful to start where it all began with our very first president. 


I hope and pray as we work through this unit study, my girls will see the privilege and responsibility placed on each of us as US citizens. We know so many people around the world who have never been given the opportunity to vote. All that being said, I don’t want my girls to ever take our freedoms for granted.



Thursday, November 1, 2018

Homeschool Project: Building LEGO Pyramids



For our 2018-19 school year, we are currently going through Sonlight's Core B: World History 1 for our Bible, memory verses, history, and read-alouds. The past few years, we have used Sonlight and it has been such a great fit for our family. We specifically picked this curriculum, because we knew it would be best for us if/when we moved overseas. You see Sonlight mails you a box with all the books you need for the whole year. This is great, especially now that we live in Hong Kong and don’t have the same resources that we did in the States. I have everything I need for the whole year and don’t have to worry about not being able to find a particular book.

We're already on week 7 of our curriculum and one of the books that we are currently reading is called, "The Usborne Book of World History" by, Anne Millard. Earlier this week, we read pages 20-21 which talks about "Building the Pyramids". This was an interesting section and even I learned something new, like it took 20 years to build a pyramid. That's a long time!!

As a result, I really wanted to take time to build a pyramid with my girls. After talking with my husband, he agreed to help me with this project. His idea was to build a pyramid out of LEGOs, because our girls really love playing and building with them. When I looked on Pinterest, I discovered that lots of people build LEGO pyramids. In addition, there are YouTube videos that teach you how to build your own LEGO pyramids as well. How fun!



On Monday, after we finished our daily schoolwork, we read this section about "Building the Pryramids" again to refresh our memories. Then my husband taught us (even me) how to build our own LEGO pyramids. At first the girls were disappointed that they couldn't build whatever they want, but it didn't take long for them to change their minds and create wonderful LEGO pyramids. Even after completing their pyramids, they continued to play with the LEGOs until dinnertime.

I'm so thankful for my husband's great idea!! It was a memorable project and I am glad we all got to do together.

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