Don’t forget that we have a core set of additions that we use when something needs extra focus or help in clarifying a concept.
And we always fill out our journal and do our sign language practice.
These weeks fell (for us) on the two weeks approaching the United States holiday week of Thanksgiving, so we used this little homeschool bundle for Thanksgiving.
It contains a printable booklet for Native Americans, one for Pilgrims, and a final one about the first Thanksgiving.
For the Octopus Unit and Letter O, We Added:
We focused on Native American culture this week. There is suspicion that my husband has Native ancestry, so we started digging into that during the process.
- Read the first “story booklet” in the packet I mentioned above. It’s a really nice little book about Native Americans.
- Hunter’s hair is long, so he was fascinated with Native American braids. We decided to learn more about the significance behind Indigenous men’s braids (strength and wisdom for some tribes) and Hunter wanted to try them. We lacked traditional trim of fur, but we did have a wrap to put in to try.
- We watched several videos of Native dancing, though we couldn’t really find a very good one.
- We watched this video from Sesame Street “Listen to the Wind Blow” by Buffy Sainte Marie, a beautiful classic Native American song.
- Honestly, Hunter was so interested in the possibility that there may be Native Ancestry and fascinated with learning more about Native Heritage, that the extra octopus lessons got pushed aside.
- We went to a Chinese buffet where I knew they served octopus, so Bug could take a closer look at an octopus out of the octopus salad. I believe he probably would have tasted it, but I had my extended family with us, who made a big deal about the octopus so he didn’t. Still, we had the opportunity to touch and examine the octopus tentacles and learn a little more close-up.
- Our favorite part of lessons this week was the “eight reasons to praise God.”
For the Water Unit and Letter W, We Added:
- This week we did the Pilgrims unit from the homeschool bundle above.
- Watched the Mayflower portion from the This is America Charlie Brown DVD Collection. The DVD collection is out of print, so we bought ours used on eBay.
- Used to globe to see how far the pilgrims traveled to get to North America.
- We set up a water table to experiment with water and ice. This doesn’t have to be expensive. We don’t have a lot of space, so we used an under-bed Sterilite storage container, set on top of our outdoor coffee table. The one I used is this one, but it’s much cheaper to buy it individually in the store than have it shipped. It’s easy to just throw all the tools and toys inside of it and take it off the table when we’re done using it.
- In addition to the water table, we also did a water experient with salt water versus fresh water.
- Used the Bernstein Bears Book of Science and Nature page 152-171 to learn more about water and gas, liquid, and solid science.
- Watched the Mayflower portion from the This is America Charlie Brown DVD Collection. The DVD collection is out of print, so we bought ours used on eBay.