Thursday, July 8, 2010

Starting our Unit Study: Colonial Life

The girls had a sleepover last night, which meant that they went to bed VERY, VERY late (P claims that they never slept!) and woke up VERY, VERY late (which gave me time to get a lot of housework and laundry done!).  We had a nice big batch of blueberries and made some awesome blueberry pancakes, before our sleepover guests had to go home.

Since I had already accomplished most of the housework and laundry and the girls had all shared in cleaning up the basement, we declared the rest of the day A Book and Movie Day!  Or, as P said, "It's like being sick but you feel good!"

We started our unit study on Colonial Williamsburg (I got that fancy term from the Cathy Duffy book, before that I just called it books I got from the library on Colonial Williamsburg! lol!).  P wanted to read "If You Lived in Williamsburg in COLONIAL DAYS" by Barbara Brenner, while I wrote down some vocabulary words and took some notes in a notebook we have earmarked for Colonial Williamsburg.


After that, they wanted to draw pictures about what we had read



After that, inspired by the Cathy Duffy book, I found this great unit study on Colonial life!  I was thrilled to find that our library system had most of the books, and that I can get them through inter library loan!!  (So glad that the state budget allowed for $5 million to be put back toward libraries so we can still have ILL!)

After cleaning up, we spent some time perusing the websites for the places we will go on vacation this year.

Then, we all took some time to read books of our own choosing!

A is reading Letters from Wolfie by Patti Sherlock, about a boy that goes off to Vietnam.


P chose a slew of picture books at JFK Library yesterday (going to libraries other than our town library is something we all enjoy!).


And, in addition to perusing homeschooling books, I must admit I enjoy a good novel, I just started
  The Island  by Elin Hilderbrand.  All of her books are set in and around Nantucket, so they make for great summer reading!

This is just a trial run of what homeschooling may be like.  It's very loose and we aren't doing anything very in-depth, but all in all, above all, I REALLY enjoyed the time the girls and I spent together today! And they REALLY seemed to enjoy having my attention and sharing this time together.