Lesson Plan

My hope was to get so super organized that I could/would post our lesson plans for the week. I follow many other blogs of home school families that do that and it's so helpful to me to see what everyone is doing, steal ideas or tweak our own ideas to fit what we're studying.

I realized, quite early, that homeschooling fits my personality to a T! I am obsessed with the planning and have loved learning almost as much as Tyler has. And it's true what everyone told me, the other kids will be eager to do work right along side of us. (I'm not there yet--planning a lesson for Jessica--and she's pretty happy to do quiet busy things while Isaac and Ellie nap--win win WIN for us all!)

It's so awesome to be able to write up a lesson plan that suits our needs, schedule, learning style and subjects we're interested in.

Our first study was on all things Chickens! We got six chicks last week and needed to learn the information anyway, so it was a nice fit for us all to learn about these darling little chickie's before they came to live in a Rubbermaid tub in the garage. I'm sure I will post about our chicks later on...they are growing SO fast and we can't wait to put them in their new home in the yard and watch them grow more, interact with the kids and each other, and eventually lay us some tasty eggs!!

Currently we are in the study of Time/Clocks/Calendar. I thought we'd breeze right through it but when I started to dig up more and more information, I realized that we could spend a YEAR doing this. But we're not going to. We're spending six weeks, instead!

Here is a rough list of what we have learned or will cover in the coming weeks:

Past, Present, Future and about 35 vocab words, all having to do with "time" (think earlier, elapsed, eternity, eventually, extinct...)
yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, next week.
day planner/scheduling
days of the week
months of the year
seasons
day light savings time
standard time
Earth's rotation
tide
prime meridian
extreme weather/time (think 24 hr dark in Alaska)
Y2K
Leap Year
all National Holidays
Ancient calendar
Farmers Almanac
world travel
time zones
Greenwich Mean Time/Zulu/Military time
International Date Line
world records
time to the nearest second, hundredths of a second....
time measurement instruments
Big Dipper tells time?
all things Clocks
pendulum
chimes
digital
quartz
sundials
atomic
hourglass
cuckoo
grandfather
watches
regulator
analog
Big Ben
glockenspiel
Roman Numerals
Eschatology
Bible (KJV) uses "time" 563 times (other words for time: "number our days")
the Beginning and End of time
Ancestry
family tree
journal/documentation

FIELD TRIPS:
Beachum Clock Co. in Sisters, OR
Fort Vancouver, Vancouver, WA (journals)
Vancouver Clock Tower, Downtown Vancouver, WA
Evergreen State College Clock Tower, Olympia, WA

MOVIES/BOOKS:
Lewis and Clark, PBS Special (journals)
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (time travel...and for fun)
Groundhog Day (holiday/time travel/and also for fun)
Back to the Future
Flight of the Navigator

Alice in Wonderland
A Wrinkle in Time
Hickory Dickory Dock (for Tyler to read to Jess)
and 22 other books on the study of time, calendars, seasons, tide, extreme weather, clocks, day light savings time, national holidays, past present and future fashion styles...the list goes on!

We have a few cool science projects and even more cool art projects to do! We are going to of course build a shadow clock, sundial and a wall clock--using roman numerals. (Thanks Joann's for having all the supplies to do that)

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My favorite thing so far has been that as holidays approach, we can study them right along with what we're doing. If you know me but at ALL you know that we actually do celebrate just about every holiday/tradition/celebration there is, including some wacky ones like Waffle Day and Take a Walk in the Park Day! We do 'em up big here in this house...because...WHY NOT?! :)

Check back here now and then, I might have a "real" lesson plan posted! That's the dream, anyway.

Keep us in your prayers, as always...we need lots to stay motivated and organized!

*SIDE NOTE*
The feedback on Tyler so far has been ALL praise and encouragement!! He's doing so well. He's still a 10 year old boy that loves to fight me on just about everything, but as that starts to fade away, we're able to uncover a hilarious, sweet, incredibly smart, wholesome man. Praise God for making it so VERY clear this is what we're supposed to be doing!!

Josh and I are so proud of him.

*sigh*