still inspired and bubbling(or babbling, you decide!!)

Still riding on the inspirations I got at the homeschool seminar, and the amazing classes I took, we are off and running toward a few new and interesting ways to learn and understand our subjects. In science and history we are making a lap book, before it was going to be a simple folder style, with minimal flip ups and folds, but now, after taking a class of lapbooking and its applications to almost every subject, we are blinging out the solar system lapbook. Now we will have a section of the constellations, and a fold out on the scientists who made looking at the stars possible, and even a gate fold card on how early sailors used the stars to navigate and the ancients used them to guide them in travel. Wow, such fun, and so hands on, I am sure that none of the kids will forget Copernicus and the advancements he made to astronomy, or where to find Ursa Major, and Minor, such fun!!!!

We are also going to make a sundial(obviously not a lapbook!) to show how time used to be measured. We will use this to finish off our study of telling time and reading a clock,the girls are pretty proficient, and this will be a fun way to use that knowledge, and also make a gift for Mother's Day.

We are beginning our Century books too, and the classes I took on time lines and mapping, and history through literature will be great ways to explore and fill in our Century books. This will give us lots of different areas to explore in history, cultures, religion, and sciences, so much to do, so few school years to accomplish it in.

People wonder why we school year round, and this is the reason, there are so many interesting things to learn, and so many experiments to try out, we need all the time we can get! I am still bubbling about the school books I purchased, not curriculum stuff, (boring!!), but cool books on ancient Sumeria, Babylonia, etc. Great additions to our Century books, and some great reading titles for fiction in these ancient times. We also got the coolest book, showing Biblical places, and the travels of Biblical people, and there are overlays with the current places mapped out, awesome!!!! Now I know where, and when people moved through out the Bible, and this too can be added to our Century book. Whew, at the rate we are going this book will be much larger than the art book I bought for each of them, but who cares, it will still be fantastic and a way for them to look back and trace time and people in concurrence, a very important skill that is no longer taught in public schools. I am excited to learn this history with the kids too, as most of this was just skimmed, or passed over when I was in school, I cannot wait!!!

OK, I need to calm down now, and go make lunch for my starving tribe, then onto dating more of the Century books(these things might take over my posts, possibly even my life;-)