Tag Archives: homeschool

20 Picture Books of Amazing Women in History and Science

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As you might have seen, The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood was on my recent Farm Reads list from February. Great book! I’ve also been working on some picture book manuscripts of my own and reading a lot of current picture books as research. So it was really cool to come across the Secret Engineer: How Emily Roebling Built the Brooklyn Bridge. This lead me to a wonderful rabbit trail of new picture books about amazing women in history! So many of them I wasn’t even familiar with before … Continue Reading…

10 Book Series About Library Adventures for Middle-Grade Readers

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Are you a book lover, or have a book lover in your home? Or are you hoping to make a bookworm out of a more reluctant reader? I’ve stepped out of my historic fiction box lately and found a couple of new middle-grade series that are all about BOOKS. Library adventures, book characters coming to life, the hunt for a famous author, falling into the book’s world…fun fiction adventures to give the kids a mental break between assigned reading. The Book Scavenger Series. By Jennifer Chambliss Bertman The 12-year-old female … Continue Reading…

Reading Log Book Selfies Printable for Summer Reading

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Do you have a daily reading requirement for the kiddos over the summer? Or even during the school year? We do. So after reviewing a ton of book lists and reading log options on Pinterest, I came up with these fun printable Reading Log Book Selfies for our kiddos to use. Based on Instagram and good old-fashion Polaroids (which are all the rage, again!) they are snapshots with either book spines to be completed or blank to insert an “actual” selfie or draw a picture. Then they can be posted … Continue Reading…

Daily Learning Routine for Non-Homeschooling Moms

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Boy, the world is quite a mess lately, hmm? Our kiddos are home full-time until September and Mr. Fix-It and I are both Essential workers at our off-homestead jobs, so our house has been kinda reeling lately. A little bit of organization goes a long way! We have always done summer home-learning activities, but I had to look over my previous activities and make some adjustments for this new phase of Crisis-Schooling. It’s not really the same as homeschooling. I’m not trying to cover a complete school year or curriculum. … Continue Reading…

Coal Mining Communities Unit Study for Middle Grades (5th-8th)

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Resources for a Unit Study on coal mining communities, including FREE Amazon and YouTube video list, website links, book lists, and templates for student projects and reports. Perfect for grades 4-8, but could easily be aged up or down to suit a general family unit study as well. via Walking in High Cotton

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How to Make a Paper Mache Shark for Shark Week

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If you’ve been following us on Facebook, you’ve probably seen some of our Shark Week activities. We’re doing a summer unit study on Marine Biology (along with our unit on Archaeology) and Discovery Shark Week has been a great fit for some hands-on family fun learning! We’ve had some ocean-themed food, some shark games, and our big group project of building a paper mache shark! This is a very simple project with no special supplies needed. We had everything on hand already. I’ve shared it here in a lot of … Continue Reading…

Resources and Ideas for a Family Unit Study on Archaeology

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Well, the school year is starting to wrap up. Now that our Spring Break road trip is behind us, I’m focused on pulling together some unit study materials for the summer. Our family topics this year are marine biology and archaeology, and this year we’re really focusing on professions in those fields. We want the kids to start seeing and understanding what following your passion really looks like, day-to-day. What jobs do people do if they love history or ocean animals? Archaeology started out as a bit of a stretch for … Continue Reading…

Visiting Fort Boonesborough State Park in Kentucky

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About 2 weeks before leaving for our road trip, the boys and I watched the premiere of the new Men Who Built America–Frontiersmen series. Episode 1 was about Daniel Boone leading the first group of permanent settlers through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. The settlement was called Fort Boonesborough, and it played an interesting role in the Revolutionary War. Since we were getting ready to leave for our trip, and Kentucky was already on our route, we Googled “Fort Boonesborough.” Turns out there’s a state park (with camping!) at the … Continue Reading…

DIY 50 State Passports…with FREE Printable

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One of the special projects I did when planning our spring break trip was making fun 50 States passports for the kiddos to get “stamped” as we traveled. It wasn’t that hard, and I’ve got a free printable for you if you’d like to try it yourself. I found a lot of ideas and a few awesome templates on Pinterest, but I didn’t want to mimic a real international passport too much. The Ladybug just got back from a mission trip and we spent a lot of time emphasizing (and re-emphasizing!) … Continue Reading…

How to Build a Pirate Ship from Corks

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We’re a little behind around here, but we wrapped up our summer unit study on pirates (our astronomy unit study is continuing because we’re just loving it too much to stop!) and I wanted to share some of the fun projects we did! One of our hands-on projects was to build a pirate ship that would really float from corks! Flexibility has become our family motto! With relaxed learning plans, there’s no need to feel behind or rushed. If it takes longer, that’s ok. You just keep fitting it in, … Continue Reading…

History, Adventure, and Treasure…The Ultimate Guide to Studying Pirates

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In the spring I mentioned that we would have two family unit studies this summer. One is our Astronomy unit study–which is continuing casually through the whole summer and has been very fun so far! (I’ll have an update on one of our projects soon.) The other topic I chose this year is Pirates. I had no idea they would overlap so much, but space pirates is totally a thing so it’s worked out great! The history of Pirates is an interesting topic because it can involve a lot of … Continue Reading…

The Quest for Truth Sci-Fi Series for Middle Grade Readers…A Review and GIVEAWAY!

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We’ve continued with our slow, steady, and FUN family Astronomy study this month. So far we’ve already seen and documented several moon phases including a full moon and a new moon; visible Jupiter; visible Mercury, and learned to recognize the Big and Little Dipper.  We’ve also watched several space and sci-fi movies as a family, including a special at-home family movie night presentation of Rogue One (which my kiddos hadn’t seen yet) and a splurge on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 in the theater. We’ve been keeping a list of … Continue Reading…

Space and Science-Fiction Adventure Books for 8-12 Year Olds

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When outlining our simple family unit studies, I mentioned that I like to use a fiction read-aloud on the topic as the backbone of our unit. Then I laid out our summer-long Astronomy unit study for you and there were no fiction books! I struggled with finding fiction books in the space and sci-fi genre because it’s not one that I’m very familiar with, personally. It took a lot of searching, chatting with our librarian, and reading reviews on Amazon to find a list of books to consider that meet … Continue Reading…