Walking by the Way

Pizza Party!

Another week filled with Download N Go fun! After Chocolate Challenge, Elijah decided that we’ll do all the food studies (so we’ll eventually get to Hoppin’ Popcorn and Crunchy Cookies too!). 

We started this week off with breakfast pizza (something we’ve never tried before). Elijah was also trying out new smiles when I took pictures Monday morning. Not sure what this one is!

Don’t be deceived by the name of this study. Pizza Party is about SO much more than pizza! We learned a ton about Italy. We also were introduced to five famous Italians: Marco Polo, Vivaldi, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Galileo. I have a feeling that Elijah might be turning his focus & energy to learning about Galileo over the next few weeks. He was very curious about this Italian astronomer. 

I made an easy tic-tac-toe board for the boys (the link was in the study). So cute and it added a little extra fun for them. 

On Tuesday we had a peanut butter and jelly pizza for lunch (Elijah’s request). If you attempt this, make sure you make the crusts high on the sides. Put the toppings on AFTER you bake it.  

The boys LOVE this pizza ’cause it’s like a warm PB&J sandwich made with super fresh bread. YUM– even if it is ugly and messy!

On Day 4 we did a Yeast Experiment. 

We also made personal pizzas for dinner on Thursday. Simon helped out by chopping up the bacon.

Elijah got to sample some of the new toppings he wanted to try (bacon, sausage, and ham).

Simon put EVERY topping on his pizza!

And, of course, by the final day of our study, Elijah had a notebook to put together. We use spiral bound Bare Books.

Pages 1-2

Pages 3-4

Pages 5-6

Pages 7-8

Pages 9-10

Simon didn’t make a lapbook this time, but I printed an extra copy of the "Pizza Adjectives" pizza and cut it out so Simon could decorate his own paper pizza. That is one HUGE ring of green pepper!

He also had fun helping cook and with our Tuzzles Pizza Fraction Puzzle. 

I think we’ve found our groove with Download N Go! We won’t be doing these studies all the time, but they are nice to use when the topic fits Elijah’s current interest. They are also great for sparking NEW interests! We hope to use Crazy Cartoons, Davy Crockett, Rockin’ Robots, Kite Capers, Crunchy Cookies, Magnificent Moon, and Hoppin’ Popcorn sometime this year.

A few notes about DNG
It took me one hour to plan our week (from start to finish) including printing pages, deciding on recipes & making a shopping list (pizza ingredients, felt for pizza tic-tac-toe), pulling books off my shelves, etc. It doesn’t have to take this long, but I looked through the extra links in the study.

I don’t print every page (that would be 112 pages!). What you see in Elijah’s notebook is everything I printed (about 25 pages this time). We do most of the worksheet pages orally (Elijah narrates answers to me) instead of printing them. 


You can read more about how I get ready for DNG in my Sunny Seashells post.

Easter Unit and Notebook

Here is a slideshow of Elijah’s Easter lapbook (in a notebook). We spent about three weeks learning about the life of Christ with Amanda Bennett’s Easter Unit Study and the free corresponding lapbook at Homeschool Share.

Elijah used a spiral bound Bare Book for this project. Pages 18-22 (not pictured) are vocabulary pages.

Flight Finally Finished!

Obviously, I am ridiculously behind in blog posts, so I am posting LOTS to get caught up.   I should’ve posted these pictures of Elijah’s Flight Journal three weeks ago, but better late than never.  

Before I post pictures, I am going to try to answer questions you might have.

1.  What did we use as our spine for this study?
Amanda Bennett’s unit & FIAR’s unit- The Glorious Flight

As for additional resources, I am not going to give you a list of books we read.  It would be ridiculously long, and most of the suggestions were found right in the Amanda Bennett unit study.  

2.  How long did you spend on this unit? 
About four weeks.  We didn’t get through the entire Amanada Bennett unit.  We can always pick back up where we left off OR do the unit again when the boys are older.   We were ready to move on to a new topic.   

3.  Where did you get the notebook printables?
I made most, found a few online, and one was a printable from a Scholastic book (Amelia Earhart mini book).  I will be sharing them at Homeschool Share soon.  I’m not sure if I will go ahead and make printables for the entire flight unit study (since we only did 2/3 of it).  I might.  I might add a few generic minit books…who knows.   

4.  This isn’t a question, but...
We have had so much fun with this unit.  If you have a student interested in flying things, give this one a go!   Here is a list of some of the fun we’ve had with this unit.

~Hot Air Balloon Project
~Constructing a Model of a Biplane (and making paper airplanes, too!)
~Orville Wright Birthplace & Museum Field Trip
~Fly-in Cruise-in (at our local airport) 
~Toured an Airport (free!)
~Visited National Museum of the US Air Force  (free admission!)


Here are the pictures of Elijah’s Flight Journal.  A few printables are from around the web; the links were given in the unit study.

Pages 1-2 (Icarus, Leonardo, Hot Air Balloons)

I think this is the first time that I didn’t write in any of the minit books for Elijah. He put a lot of hard work into completing them! 

Pages 3-4  (gliders, four forces, and label a helicopter)

Pages 5-6 (Wright Brothers, Bessie Coleman, Harriet Quimby)

Copywork (all the ideas are included in the unit)

Words of Wisdom (each day of the unit study gives you 2-3 words of wisdom to look up)

Amelia Earhart

Elijah’s Glorious Flight Lapbook is glued to the inside back cover of this notebook.   

Here are a few more shots I want to include– Elijah & his model plane. 

Ancient Egypt Unit Study

I determined that this year Elijah would get to choose more of his unit study topics, and he decided to start off 2nd grade with Ancient Egypt.   I hope to write some posts this year about Delight-Directed education (the philosophy we are working toward).  I can honestly say that Elijah taught himself more about Ancient Egypt than I taught him.  He knows MORE about Ancient Egypt than I do.   When you let your child have a hand in his own education, he just might surprise and delight YOU.  

I inteded to make this a series of posts, but laundry and dishes and gardening keep getting in the way of blogging, so you are only getting one (very fat) post.

Becoming an Egyptologist (or is that archaeologist?)
We started with a kit I picked up at Frye’s for about $5.   Elijah could barely breathe when he saw it in his workbox on the first day of our Ancient Egypt study. He worked on it for a long time and was happy with his finished product. 

Making a Mummy
Another fun project we did the second week of our study was to "mummify" an apple.  We also tried preserving with water (freezing) and Elijah predicted which one would be in the best shape when we checked on them a week later. 

We took three apple slices and washed/dried them  (something weird about eating an apple slice during a mummifying experiment…).

One apple gets coated in a mixture of salt and soda (about 1/4 cup of each).   Then you roll it up in some guaze. 

Another apple gets placed in a ziploc of water.

The final apple gets placed in a dish.


The apple in the water goes in the freezer while the other two go to a dark, cool place (scary!) for seven days (don’t peek!).   

Want to see our results?  Are you sure?  :)

the control apple (ew!)

the apple mummy

the frozen apple

Ziggurat Lego Model
After learning about architecture, Elijah decided to try his hand at building a (very colorful) ziggurat complete with treasures stored inside.  I had no part of this…didn’t even know it was how he was spending an afternoon.

Making a Pharaoh Mask

We followed the Pharaoh Mask instructions found at DLTK kids.  You can do the same, but here are a few tips:

1.  Make your pattern by folding a piece of posterboard in half.  You won’t see the fold after you paper mache.   Also, draw it in pencil as many times as you need until you have something you like.  You won’t see the pencil marks after the paper mache, either. 

2.  Smooth the newspaer pieces down after your student is done.  I didn’t do this for Elijah, and after we spray painted it, I saw all the lumps and bumps.  It’s okay (he doesnt’ care!), but I thought I would share that tip.

3.  Put plastic lids under the mask as it dries so it won’t stick to your work surface.  

4.  You might want to cut holes in your eyes BEFORE you paper mache.  I had a really hard time cutting the eyes out.  I think we could’ve paper mached around them easier.  I don’t know for sure.  

5.  Use a thick flat brush for painting the stripes. 

6.  Have fun!  I don’t know if Elijah will ever let me get rid of this mask! 

Ancient Egypt Notebook 

We used the Evan Moor History Pockets book to make our notebook.  I skipped some things as this book is targeted for 4th-6th graders.  I am only going to post some of the pictures (we filled an entire Bare Book).  You get lots of informational pages to print in the History Pockets book.  We pasted most of them as full pages in the notebook, but a few were folded (as simple folds or tri-folds).  

Learning about Daily Life was great (my favorite part!) 

Government, Leaders, & Occupations



Religion

Very cool mummy book that demonstrates the layering of the coffins… (cover is "Where’s My Mummy?" above)

Architecture

Courtyard Pop-up (cover pictured above "An Egyptian Courtyard"

"Elijah" in hieroglyphs

Resources Used


Evan Moor History Pockets ~ Ancient Egypt
Usborne Beginners ~ Egyptians by Stephanie Turnbull
Who Built the Pyramids? by Jane Chisholm & Straun Reid (Usborne)
Mummies and Pyramids by Mary Pope Osborne (Magic Treehouse Research)
Tutankhamen’s Gift by Robert Sabuda
Adventures in Ancient Egypt by Linda Bailey
Mummies Made in Egypt by Aliki
Egyptian Life Stickers by Dover
Safari LTD Ancient Egypt Toob
note:  Something fun I did with the Acient Egypt Toob…I put all the pieces in a workbox and told Elijah that he had to tell me how each one related to Ancient Egypt.  If he didn’t know, he had to do some research and find out.  He loved this much more than I thought he would!  I might have a little researcher on my hands. 

Links
Your Name in Hieroglyphs
Explore Ancient Egypt (includes some great printable activities!)
Ancient Egypt Paper Dali (cover image)
Pharoah Mask 

Mailing May Lap ~N~ Note

We finished our study of Mailing May yesterday.   We used the lessons from FIAR Volume IV.  For Eiljah’s notebook, he used the FIAR Fold N Learn, resources from Homeschool Share, and a train project pack from HOAC (a super member freebie).

Elijah’s favorite part was learning about trains.  Yesterday, our loveseat became a train.  He was sining I’ve Been Working on the Railroad at the top of his lungs (and a little off-key!).  He was telling Simon things like, "You, fresh fish!  Grease the pig!"   (Which means– "Hey, new worker…oil the engine!")

Books Used
Mailing May by Michael O. Tunnell
House in the Mail by Rosemary Wells
Hail to Mail by Samuel Marshak
The Post Office Book:  Mail and How It Moves by Gail Gibbons
Who Was Daniel Boone? by Sydelle Kramer
Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Train of States by Peter Sis (we only used the Idaho page)

Desert Finale

Well, we didn’t really do anything for our finale, though I suppose we should!   Maybe Jason will take us to a Mexican Restaurant tonight to celebrate! 

My other posts on deserts are here-

Week 1- Roxaboxen Notebook Pages
Week 1- Roxaboxen Mini-books (details)
Crystal Mining and Desert Glass Candy (from Roxaboxen)
Week 2- Desert Animals
Sunset Sand Painting

Here are this week’s Lap N Note Pages from our study of The Gullywasher.   We used the minit books from Homeschool Share as well as a few things from the Evan Moor Giant Science Resoure Book (reflections, water cycle).  We also used Draw Write Now.

We decided to make a "table of contents" page for the first time.

Learning more about the desert…

Spanish Words and names for Tall Tales

Mexico!  (I just googled the images for map and flag.) 

Science Pages
Learning about gullywashers is a good time to learn about…

the watercycle…

thunderstorms, and lightning.   We also learned about reflections.

Here are a few DWN pages sprinkled throughout Elijah’s notebook

Desert Animals Lapbook in our Notebook

We started our desert studies wth a one week study with Roxaboxen (from Five in a Row Volume IV).   Last week we took some time to learn more about desert animals (North American). 

Desert Arachinds
Desert Reptiles

Misc. Mini-books

Desert Birds and a few other simple folds

Roxaboxen Day 4- Notebook Complete!

Pages 1-2
Design Roxaboxen (from FIAR Fold N Learn)
Lizard Poem (from a children’s poetry book we have) and Lizard drawing (drawing from Draw Write Now)

Pages 3-4
Mini books from Day 3
Pages 5-6
Page 5 mini books were done on Tuesday
Page 6 mini books were done today

Page 5 close-up
Jewel Shutter from Homeschool Share
Desert Glass Candy is just a simple fold with pictures from our cooking adventure
Desert Glass definition from Five in a Row FNL; three small pictures from FIAR FNL
Mineral Chart from Crystal Mining Kit; lifts to show pictures of Elijah mining

Page 6 close-up
How Many Days?  Calendar poem – from HSS
Buried Treasure from HSS
Seasons Accordion from HSS
Seasons in the Bible – inside pictures/verses from FIAR FNL

Pages 5-6 Books Opened

Roxaboxen Day 3

Today we had a geography lesson (deserts and the Southwest U.S.) and a social studies lesson about good leaders/followers (using Moses and the Israelites as examples).  We also talked about our Roxaboxen town from Monday and laws (including God’s Law).    I purchased the FIAR Roxaboxen Fold N Learn, and we used various pieces from that today.

Here are Elijah’s mini books from today:

1. What Will I Find in the Desert?  Tri-fold
designed by Elijah

Inside pictures from FIAR Fold N Learn
There was also a picture of an Ocelot, but Elijah just had a fit about this.  He was insistent that they are much more common in the rain forest than in the desert and would not paste the picture in his book.  He even grabbed two or three encylopedias and started researching!  I didn’t argue.  I’ve learned that he’s usually right — especially when it comes to animals!  

2. Where are the Southwestern States Simple Fold
(from Homeschool Share)

Inside the Southwestern States book

3. Places in Arizona Mini-book 
pictures are from the FIAR Fold N Learn

4. Deserts of the World Simple Fold
outer clipart and definition from FIAR Fold N Learn
Inside from Evan Moor Giant Science Resource Book
5. God’s Law Envelope Book (designed by Elijah)
The Ten Commandments piece is from the FIAR Fold N Learn

6. Good Leader/Follower Book
I designed this one today

Inside I recorded Elijah’s answer

Rainforest

Well, once again, plans thwarted by real life.  I spent two weeks (about 8 hours/day) working on the house to get some ongoing (think seven years) projects we’ve had undone DONE.   

Here you can get an idea of just how huge the notebook is

Inside cover

First Page

Layer Puzzle Pieces

Misc. Animals Matchbooks

Close-up of Elijah’s Rhinoceros Beetle (love the drawings kids do in their lapbooks!)

Cats of the Rain Forest

Who Am I?  Close-up

I am a… JAGUAR!

Lepoard Draw Write Now

Plants of the Rainforest

Blue Morpho Butterfly and Vine Poem

Opened Butterfly

Poem

Birds of the Rain Forest

Toucan Draw Write Now

Birds Book Opened

Chocolate Page!  Elijah designed his own chocolate bar.  We went on a fun field trip to a chocolate factory, and we made our own chocolate at home with a kit! 

M and M Graphs

Chocolate Process Sequencing Cards

Sloths

Sloths Page 2

Sloths Draw Write Now

Manatees Page 1

Manatees Page 2

The Amazon River – piranahs and anacondas! 

All Things Bright and Beautiful Copywork with Dover stickers
Elijah designed this all by himself.  I really just need to let go and let him do his own thing!  This is my favorite page in the entire book.