Review of Expedition Australia

Expedition Australia

Expedition Australia is part of a new E-book series by Amanda Bennett, and the Old Schoolhouse, called Download N Go.

With this new Download N Go series, all you have to do is pick your favorite topic, download it, and your ready to go! Nothing but a few simple labpbooking supplies are needed to complete this study.

This series is intended for K-4^th grade, but can easily be adapted for an older child.

What makes this series different than other unit studies, is the fact that it is interactive. Rather than using a book, you will be clicking your way to the information.

This study is 5 days in length, and includes a Geographic feature of the day, an Australian word of the day, and an Australian animal of the day.

Your child will track the time and temperature each day for his location, and compare it with the days location in Australia. Your child will also be making a map that he will add to each day. By the end of the week he will have a wonderful map of Australia.

Each day's section has links for you to follow that will take you to all of the information you will need. Some of these links will take you to beautiful videos that will show you Australia up close and personal. This is a really great feature, and one of our favorite parts of this truly interactive unit study.

The provided notebooking pages are extremely cute, and very creative. Your K-4^th grader will love them.

When your child has completed this study, he will have a beautiful notebook of all that he has learned about Australia.

At the end of each days lesson, your child will complete the lapbooking activities. At the end of the week, your child will have everything completed to put together his own Australia lapbook.

If you do not know how to lapbook, there is information  included to help you along.

Each days lesson includes spelling and vocabulary words that your child will add to his lapbook.

In between each days lesson, Amanda has included a beautiful photograph with an Australian verse on it, that could easily be used for copy work.

I did this study with my 12 year old daughter, and I have to admit, that not having done one of these units before, it was a little confusing to navigate.

Now that I have completed an entire unit, I have a much better understanding of how one works. There are some things that I would have done differently.

For instance, I would have printed out all of the necessary pages before starting the study, instead of having to stop the lesson to go print off a page, and then try to get back to the lesson. This was very disruptive.

Of course this had nothing to do with the study itself, it was my lack of knowledge of the how the study worked that caused this.

Once we got a little further along into the study, we really got the hang of it, and began to enjoy it.

My daughter really had fun doing this study, but wished that there would have been notebooking pages for her age included. This study can be adapted for an older child without them, as we did it, but it sure would make it a lot easier if there were notebooking pages for an older child included.

It would be so easy to add these to this study.

We did this study a little differently than called for, since the included pages are more suited for the K-4^th grader.

We answered all of the same questions, we just did it notebook style on our own paper. We did not do the included lapbook, because she had already notebooked in greater detail all that was included in the lapbook.

Ultimately, my daughter really liked doing this study, and actually wants to do it again, now that we understand how it works a little better.

She would like to go into more detail this time.

An older child can very easily do this study by their selves, and notebook in a lot more detail than a younger child would.

The next time we do one of these studies, I will let her do it by herself, so that she can notebook what she wants to. 
This unit study is so easy to do, that your children can do it on their own, and the parent doesn't have to be there the entire time. You can be working with one child, while another is working  independently on this study.

If you are looking for something safe that your child can work on independently, this series is definitely worth checking out.

You can find the Download N Go series at Amanda Bennett's website www.unitstudy.com and at The Old Schoolhouse at www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com

You can purchase Expedition Australia, or any book in the series for $7.95, or you have the option to purchase a subscription.

You can purchase a one month subscription for $30.00, with a savings of $1.80.

If you would like to incorporate these studies into your everyday homeschool, you can also purchase a semester subscription for $114.00, with a savings of $37.05, or you can even purchase an entire years subscription for $190.00. Wow! That's a savings of over $112.00.

Any option that you choose for your child will be time and money well invested, and remember that these studies can be used again and again with younger siblings.

If your child loves to do his or her work on line, they will definitely

love this series.

Have fun on your next Expedition!

Review of... When I grow up, I want to be a Firefighter... From the WannaBe series

When I grow up, I want to be…
A Firefighter!

My children and I have just finished a new unit study from The Old Schoolhouse called,  When I Grow up, I want to be ... A Firefighter!
We had tons of fun doing this study.
This book is intended for ages 4-10.
I used it with my two children ages 5 and 12, and while I think that even a 4-5 year old can learn from this, and enjoy it, it seems a little more suited for around ages 6-12.
It held the attention of my 12 year old, and she especially liked the section about the history of firefighters, and how far they have come today. To tell you the truth, I really enjoyed this section as well. I didn’t know most of what they taught us either! It was also really interesting to learn how firefighter dogs came to be implemented. 
You and your children will learn all about the history of firefighting, the equipment that firefighters use, building codes, and what it takes to be a firefighter.
This unit study also teaches about robots, and they will even get to build a robotic arm!
We finished this study in 7 days.
Each day I started by giving my children one of the coloring sheets that are included with this study, and they would color while I read the lesson aloud.
At the end of each lesson, I would go over the vocabulary words with my 12-year-old, and then both of them would do some of the included copy work.
This book includes copy work for both print and cursive, which I found greatly helpful, since I have 2 children who are at different stages in their writing.
When you have completed the main part of the study, you will get to choose from a plethora of activities to reinforce the lessons, and your children will have a blast doing these activities.
Some of the activities include making a diorama of a firehouse, making an obstacle course, reenacting a bucket brigade, and baking a fire engine cake!
We are planning a get together with a few other home school families in a couple of weeks, where we are going to have a firefighter themed lunch. We are going to incorporate all of the food and drink ideas given in the book, and some of the activities also.
My children will have a great time pretending to be firefighters with their friends! 
My children loved making the diorama; they worked on it together.
I appreciated the fact that they included the firefighter math in this study.
All in all we really enjoyed learning about the firefighters, where they have come from, and what they do for us today.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone, whether or not they are interested in firefighting.
My daughter enjoyed this study a lot more than I thought she would; I was pleasantly surprised.
The only con that my children or I could think of is that there were not enough coloring sheets included.

Although you do not need anything extra to finish this study, there is a list of books available that would go along nicely with this study. 
You can find this e-book and the rest of the series at www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com
You can purchase this book alone for $8.95 or you can purchase the entire set for $89.50.
The set includes:
Firefighter
Veterinarian
Chef
Military
Doctor
Police Officer
Missionary
Artist
Pilot and
Farmer.
My children and I would definitely like to do another book in this series. I think we may choose the Farmer one next!
 Here are some pictures of their diorama, copy work, and the robotic arm!

Update: We had our Firefighter Party, and it was a blast! We had so much fun, with 15 children attending. I wanted to add a picture of the cake we made for the party. I hope everyone will choose to incorporate this into their study as well.

Getting Started in Homeschooling Part 5

OK, last time I ended by saying that we would talk about what to do for Language Arts without buying a curriculum for each particular area of LA.
If you have not heard of copy work, I am here to tell you that this may be your biggest help in the Language Arts area.
Copy work just might become your best friend.
When your children are younger and just starting to learn how to write their letters, you typically get them a handwriting workbook, and they trace their letters, and then progress to copying their letters,and then progress to copying words and sentences.
Then we typically stop the handwriting books until we want to learn cursive.
Here is what I want you to try. After your child has completed his print workbooks, I want you to basically continue what you have already been doing. Copy work is not difficult at all.
When they know how to write their letters well,have them continue to copy short sentences to keep practicing their letters and their handwriting. Copy work really becomes indespensible after a child can read.
When your child can read, have them copying something every day that is interesting to them. It could be a poem, a favorite book, a quote,a bible verse,anything.
The key is to make it interesting to them so that they want to copy it down.
The benefits your child will receive form copy work are many. Obviously, they will be continuing their handwriting practice, but they will also be learning basic grammar, spelling, sentence structure, writing and writing style. As your child copies a favorite book for example, he will see that you must capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. They will see that you must put some kind of punctuation at the end of a sentence. They will begin to see that you put a period at the end of a statement,a question mark at the end of a question, etc..They will be copying the words,so they will be seeing the words spelled correctly, so they will be writing the words correctly. They will see how a sentence goes together,how sentences should sound,they will learn to recognize when a sentence doesn't sound right. They will learn about different writing styles from reading and writing, from different authors.
As you can see, they will learn all the basics this way and there is no need for a more formal curriculum yet.
You may eventually want to add some more formal grammar and possibly some writing exercises in the upper grades, but you can still benefit from copy work even through high school.
Remember,we do not need to push our little ones with too much work too early. This is all they need for Language Arts for quite a while.
Add some things here and there as you see fit.
I recently told my daughter, who is 12, that I was going to leave her copy work up to her, and she surprised me by wanting to copy a WHOLE book!
Let them choose some of their copy work and they will be learning all of their language arts skills plus learning something at the same time!
Dig in and let me know what you think.

TOS Homeschool Crew Weekly Giveaway- College Prep Genius!

College Prep Genius has offered to provide one reader with their "Master the SAT Class" DVD set!
Head on over to
www.homeschoolblogger.com/HomeschoolCrew/Contests/
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Clean House!

A few months ago, I posted that we were going to be moving. We are still going to move, but it has taken longer than I thought it would to get ready to move. Many months ago, I packed up a LOT of our stuff in the garage.
Needless to say, we haven't really missed much of it. Now, I feel like I do not want to bring all that stuff into a new house.
So, I think, I am going to go out there and go through each box,and see what else we can get rid of and have a garage sale.
it will be a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it.
I am finally able to keep my house up now that I have gotten a lot of it out of the house.
I will keep you updated. Maybe I will take a before and after picture for you guys. You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff out there. I do not want that burden in another house.
Ok, off I go!