Even though we began our homeschool years with a box set from Abeka, I began a habit of completely rewriting everything that came out of the box.
The math and phonics books helped us keep to a plan, while I created all the support structures to undergird the basics of learning: reading, writing, and arithmetic.
With beautifully colored pages that honor the Lord and well-planned lessons of the three R’s day by day, I had plenty of time to pick up and go…and adapt as needed.
ADAPTING OUR LESSONS
Since the hallmark of homeschooling is tailoring lessons to each student, I took advantage of that opportunity by using my toolbox of ideas which was both book-based and interactive.
Since my daughter had vision issues, I used a lot of auditory and tactile interactives to teach her phonics.
Thankfully our occupational therapist gave us phenomenal input on how to learn cursive writing.
SEASONS UNIT STUDY
Fondly looking back to favorite memories of my early school years, I recreated wall calendars to use as an interactive to teach: days, weeks, and months, which accumulate into the year cycle, and which can be sub-grouped by seasons.
So I chose a seasonal theme for each month, around which I built the calendar (as seen in the header) with interactive monthly activities, motivational stickers, etc.
Each day, we’d place the appropriate date onto the correct space on the calendar.
By the end of the month, the calendar was complete, and we’d start fresh with a new theme the next day.
For each month we read seasonal poetry to instill a sense of rhythm and literature appreciation, reciting the poem of the month each day.
By the end of the month the poem was often memorized.
Here is a photo of our calendar, with scripture, and our booknook reading corner with Wishbone.
GEOGRAPHY INTERACTIVES
For geography, I found some cute wall maps to reference throughout the year.
One was a cute poster of America that I turned into a bulletin board which can be seen at the bottom of the above photo.
Anytime we referenced a location, we’d find that on the map.
Extended family members sent post cards from their travels, which we tracked on the map while enjoying the pictures.
At the fabric store I purchased a length of a colorful world map that I hot glued onto a giant piece of foamboard.
We also had a world globe, which we also used to reference locations.
Despite the similarity in how the countries are shaped on the globe v a flat map, the kids came to understand the differences.
During the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, we looked up countries as they entered the stadium.
SEASONAL SUMMER BEACH UNIT
Perhaps our favorite unit, which incorporated all this wall-art, was about the beach.
At the time we were living on the Texas/Oklahoma border, on very flat prairie land with few trees.
When the kids were quite young, we took our first official summer vacation to South Padre Island, at the opposite end of Texas. That was amazing!
Our beach unit study was based on our recent second trip to South Padre.
Soon after we returned home, we read lots of beach books, including Mrs. Frizzle’s hilarious but educational field trip with her students: The Magic Schoolbus on the Ocean Floor.
Although that topic was quite a deep dive for my kids, they had seen it in cartoon form on PBS hundreds of times.
Thus, it wasn’t too crazy we did some activities related to what we learned in the book.
But first we started more simply with our hands-on activities.
The kids created their own globe by papier-macheing a balloon (a memory from my third-grade class, but for the solar system).
After it hardened, I drew general outlines for continents, then painted dabs of color in various spots so they could finish painting the globe themselves.
Then we marked the spot of South Padre Island on their papier-mached globe, which we then compared with the real globe and the flat wall map.
Then we made a flat 3D map (another memory from third-grade when we recreated our neighborhood map).
After all that, we made a poster of a cross-section of the ocean floor (seen on the wall above the 3D map) based on what we learned in the Mrs. Frizzle book.
We also posted a collage of the beach my kids had glued together from travel brochures picked up while visting.
Postcards from the area were also featured.
Then the kids dressed up for the Becoming History Presentation to share everything they had learned!
