Teaching Tuesday

A couple of years ago I started a homeschool book club for my son and some of his friends. One of the books they read was Where the Red Fern Grows. Here are some of the things we did while studying it, fun little lesson extensions.

We made butter and cornbread, just like Billy's mom would have. I actually have a butterchurn (thanks to my antique collecting dad!). You can just shake the cream in a jar though if you don't have a churn. The kids really enjoyed this. They also made the cornbread from scratch, all by themselves.

They watched the movie and as a treat I gave them strawberry soda, just like Billy had in the book. It was a big treat for Billy and for some of the kids too! None of them are really allowed to overindulge in soda, some had never even had strawberry soda before!

They also did individual reports on various topics from the book: mountain lions, coonhounds, the Ozarks, Sycamore trees, raccoons, etc. This was a good cross curriculum activity as it included science and nature and geography too.

Teaching Tuesday

Here is a link to our local paper. They have pictures of artwork that was done by area schools. Each piece represents one of the days of the "Twelve days of Christmas" They were very creative. I got lots of good art ideas from them.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/photos/gallery/1111118.html

Teaching Tuesday

Most homeschoolers I know are not doing school this week, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t teach! This is a great time to learn about St. Nicholas.
The following is a brief summary of St. Nicholas’ life from americancatholic.org.
St. Nicholas
(d. 350?)

The absence of the “hard facts” of history is not necessarily an obstacle to the popularity of saints, as the devotion to St. Nicholas shows. Both the Eastern and Western Churches honor him, and it is claimed that, after the Blessed Virgin, he is the saint most pictured by Christian artists. And yet, historically, we can pinpoint only the fact that Nicholas was the fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Lycia, a province of Asia Minor.
As with many of the saints, however, we are able to capture the relationship which Nicholas had with God through the admiration which Christians have had for him—an admiration expressed in the colorful stories which have been told and retold through the centuries.
Perhaps the best-known story about Nicholas concerns his charity toward a poor man who was unable to provide dowries for his three daughters of marriageable age. Rather than see them forced into prostitution, Nicholas secretly tossed a bag of gold through the poor man’s window on three separate occasions, thus enabling the daughters to be married. Over the centuries, this particular legend evolved into the custom of gift-giving on the saint’s feast. In the English-speaking countries, St. Nicholas became, by a twist of the tongue, Santa Claus—further expanding the example of generosity portrayed by this holy bishop.

Check out http://www.stnicholascenter.org for more info.

Gingerbread house

Here is the gingerbread house that went along with the Hansel & Gretel unit.

(see Teaching Tuesday post below)

My son decorated the back

and my daughter decorated the front.

They both decorated the little people.

Teaching Tuesday

This week my daughter (kindergarten) is doing a unit on Hansel and Gretel. Each day we are reading a different version of the book and doing a fun activity. Yesterday we made peppermint bark and dipped pretzels. Yum!

She loved breaking the peppermint bark into pieces!

Today she will be doing a little math and making a graph. I made a simple chart in Word and bought a box of skittles. She is going to count how many of each color there is and graph it. (I counted them first so I made sure to have enough room on the graph.)

Tomorrow we will finish with the Witch's version of the story and the activity will be making a gingerbread house! (I cheated and bought a kit for that)

I will post a picture of it when it is finished.

Here are the books we are using. I got them all at our local library. There are lots of versions out there.

Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm Brothers

We Both Read Hansel & Gretel: Adapted by Sindy McKay

there is a parent page and then a simple child's page so the child can read

every other page.

The Witch's Story by Sheila Black: Tell's the witch's version of the story. It's cute and makes the witch a little less scary.

If you turn this book upside down and over there is the tale of Hansel and

Gretel as told by Sheila Black. So this is neat...two books in one.