Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Monday 19 January 2015

History, Geography Science for 2015

This week's Virtual Curriculum Fair hosts are
  1. Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds
  2. Stacie @ Super Mommy to the Rescue
Our topic of the week is Exploring Our World: Social Studies and more Science---includes history, geography, world cultures, worldview, biology, botany, geology, etc., etc., etc.

In last weeks post I shared our Science plans for 2015 so this week I shall share about History and Geography.
History.
"In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction,
drawing the materials of future wisdom 
from the past errors and infirmities of mankind."
Edmund Burke
 
This year we will continue reading Story of The World Volume One and using the Activity Guide which goes alongside it.

I will  also be consulting Home's Cool and choosing books from the Sonlight curriculum to read out loud from this list Sonlight Books arranged by the well trained mind 4 year cycles

 "But living history books — even historical fiction — capture the imagination while informing the mind. The reader soaks in the the facts of history in a natural and enjoyable way that forms a much stronger base of understanding than rote memorization."- Jimmie Lanely
Geography
We will continue with incidental geography.  This will happen during our history lessons.  As we read about historical happenings I shall point to the areas on the map to encourage familiarity.

I haven't decided yet upon a resource to use.  Here are a few I'm contemplating using
 I think we may continue using Expedition Earth: A Journey through God's World.

I would like to also complete  Trail Guide to World Geography  This particular package is my all time favourite.

I saw a review on Wonder Maps and really like the look of this program.  Have any of you used it or seen it ?

This year I want to learn more about a Charlotte Mason approach and enjoyed reading Jimmey's post: Teaching Geography Without Buying a Curriculum

On this Blog




 What others are saying
Please visit my fellow homeschool bloggers as they share how they explore their world with social studies and science:

It's your turn

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Friday 1 August 2014

Field Trip to Sovereign Hill

When I first started blogging one of my goals was to share with family and friends both near and far our field trip adventures, home education en devours and photo journals of what we get up to as a family.  Over the years that has shifted dramatically and I have been missing that creative aspect of recording the things we do together for fun.  Over the next few months I want to share a few of our field trips again.  A few of them will be Throw-Back style as it's been such a long time since I shared and a few of them are recent.

A couple of weeks back we joined two other home education families and we explored and enjoyed a day together at Sovereign Hill. It's such a wonderful place to spend the day together. This is our second trip here and we still have not seen the whole place. We are looking forward to returning again.


It's Christmas in July up at Sovereign Hill and all the buildings are decked out.  It's so pretty. I loved seeing the traditional Christmas decorations.


We spent some time in the Printing Press building.  It was so interesting.  In the photo second from the bottom on the left you can see the word place.  This is how the typesetter reads as he places the letters to make the words for the page for printing.
  • When typesetting a they were always told to 'Mind your p's and q's " which could easily be muddled up.
  • The photo on the bottom right shows two cases.  All the letters for type setting are stored in these draws/cases.  When type setting the capital letter case was placed at the top and the lower letter case was placed on the bottom.  So capital letters were in the upper case and small letters in the lower case and that is why we call it upper and lower case.
  • They book bind all the news papers here for all the news papers.  Each week these papers are sent here.  They are put into a press for up to five days to expel the air from in between the pages.  Once they are ready a wood saw is used to nick the edges to make a tiny hole.  The papers are then hand sewn together in order to bind them.  Once sewn the book is given a cover and sent to the archives.   


This lady has a bucket of wood shavings which she has mixed with a little bit of linseed oil.  Every morning on rainy days she takes this mixture and sprinkles it over the shop floor.  It has two purposes.  The linseed has a beautiful smell and cleans the air.  While it rests on the floor it feeds the wooden floor oil.  The wood shavings stick to the mud on peoples boots and shoes thus keeping the floor clean.  At the end of the day she sweeps up the shavings and her floor stays clean.

Her other job is to keep the local town's folk informed of all the current news, gossip and keep the people informed of any sickness, death etc.

We stopped by the Post Office and had a look through the post masters house.  He was quite affluent and his home reflects this social status.  At the post office we were given our pass out for the day so we were able to exit and return at our leisure.


As it was Christmas in July it would not be complete without snow.  We enjoyed a two snowfalls with the towns folk.  As you see Santa came for a visit and Mary handed out lollies to the children. I think I would really like to attend this one evening next year.


We went up to the gold museum to watch a gold pouring demonstration.  The top left shows the bullion we witnessed being melted and poured.  It was a really interesting talk in which a few characteristics of gold were shared with us.


The old buildings are so interesting up at Soverign Hill.  Here are a few of the business buildings we saw.


We took some time to peep into a mining shanty home.  It contained a bed and the kitchen basics.


I loved seeing the beautiful things in this store.  The old clocks, Christmas decorations and jewellery.


In the afternoon the local police showed up and showed us a rifle demonstration.


We took some time to go up to the hard boiled sweet demonstration.  This was so interesting.  They have been contracted to make boiled lollies for a few different companies in Australia as there has been a shift in the market wanting these as they only contain three ingredients.
  • Sugar, water and glucose is boiled till the correct hard boiled lollie heat is obtained. To test if it is ready to make hard boiled lollies it is poured into a cup and cooled.  If it cracks with a loud crack when broken it is ready.
  • It is poured onto the table where it begins to cool. The herbal flavouring is added.  The lolly is rolled in on itself to prevent the flavour evaporating and disappearing.
  • Today white lollies were being made.  No colour is added.  The white colour is created by incorporating air into the lollie.  You can see the more he folds it the more air is caught and this makes it become white.
  • Once it is white enough and cool enough it is cut into blocks and then placed through the lollie forming template.
  • Corn powder is sprinkled over the lollies to stop them absorbing moisture from the air and becoming sticky.

We finished off our day at the candle making demonstration.
  • Candles were hung on racks to stop the rats eating them over night.  (They love to consume Tallow)
  • The loom rack was the responsibility of the apprentice who had to thread it in under a minute.  
  • Once threaded it was put onto the wheel.  Three to a bracket.  
  • This bracket was then dipped into the warm wax.
  • In winter a candle needs around 60 drippings to grow to the correct thickness and in summer up 160 drippings are needed to form the same size candle.
  • The counter weight on the dipping arm helped them to know when the candles were ready as it would balance perfectly.
  • Once ready the candle base is lowered a cm into the warm wax for 25 minutes in order to melt the excess wax off the bracket and make the base of the candle straight.
  • The metal base was cut off at the strings leaving a pair of candles which were hung from a beam from the ceiling.
  • Candles were sold at what is the equivalent of $50 each in today's currency.
  • Due to this steep cost of candles a special tallow pan was used in homes so that when cooking the evening meal the tallow could be collected and you could make your own candles.
  • The only candles that were coloured were the ones belonging to the mine owner to prevent them being stolen as they were so expensive.
More Information

Blessings
Chareen

Photo collages made with: Photoscape a FREE photo editor
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Saturday 5 July 2014

Experience History Through Music {Review}

A few years ago I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting Diana Waring and her amazing family over in New Zealand.  In fact the whole family blessed our home education community with a weekend long home education conference. Diana, Bill and their children shared insights to get Beyond Survival in our homeschooling experiences. It was the very first home school conference I ever attended.  Over the years I have been encouraged and inspired by Diana and Bill and was really excited to hear that Experiencing History Through Music was coming back into publication!

The Experiencing History Through Music series was the first curriculum series that Diana produced back in the early 90's.  The series was born out of her convention workshops in 1989. Sometime in the mid 90's this curriculum went out of publication due to a series of unfortunate events and seemed to have been lost for good.  Unbeknown to Diana the Lord had been working to bring about restoration and making a way for it to be restored. You can read the full story of how it all came together over at Diana's blog.

The time has now come and all THREE books have been updated been reprinted.  All three CD's have been digitally remastered and are now available for purchase!  I have had the privileged to be a part of a group of wonderful home school families that have been using the books and CD's over the last month. 

What we received

  • Experience History Through Music contains 3 book/CD sets. As the name of this series implies, these book and CD sets allow you to Experience History Through Music. 
  • Each title contains one book and one CD. The pages of the books hold dozens of historical pictures; bright and interesting stories connecting each of the songs to its moment in history, even sheet music and chord charts! 
  • The CDs are rousing , professional recordings that draw in all listeners. The two combine for fond memories and a grand, knee-slapping good time.



How we used it

Recently Sir N and I have been thoroughly enjoying The Little House book series via audio book from our local library.  It's been so much fun to listen to the families adventures and learn about all the amazing skills that Pa and Ma had.  Wow they did some amazing things on their ten year pioneering move across the USA.  The particular audio books we are listening to have had someone play the fiddle at each part of the book that describes Pa playing his fiddle.


When our books arrived we decided to work our way through Musical Memories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Oh my we have had such a wonderful time exploring.

Details 

  • The book is a softcover.
  • 56 pages
  • Written and Edited by William Anderson
  • Photographs by Leslie A. Kelly
  • ISBN 978-1-930514-49-2
  • Covers 13 songs (see a list here)
  • Back ground stories to each song along with photograph
  • Sheet music for each song

Contributors

The CD comes in a plastic sleeve which is glued into the back of the cover of the book. This is a good thing so that the CD and book stay together and there is no risk of me misplacing them!  The beautiful music on the CD has been digitally remastered and is excellent quality.  You can here the words clearly on each song.  We took this CD in the car to listen to while running errands and listened to it at home while doing chores or just simply visiting with friends.  Sir N's favourite track is track number one: Wait for the Wagon. He has enjoyed the music so much he has asked me to add it to his iPod shuffle.


We took some time each week to look up the back story for each piece of music.  Here is a sample from Wait for the Wagon.  Each back story is approximately five minutes of reading and gives you some interesting information on the topic at hand.  The photographs enrich all the stories and take you on a journey to the time of Laura and her family.  There are photographs of paintings, historical buildings, homesteads, historical photographs and family photographs. It's been good to see the actual people from the books and samples of the things spoken about in the books.

All three books from the series follow the same format as Musical Memories of Laura Ingals Wilder.  One of the neat things about the back stories is being able to answer Sir N's questions about the songs.  Instead of saying I don't know I now say lets look it up!

Cost
  • America  $18.99
  • Westward Ho! $18.99
  • Musical Memories of Laura Ingals Wilder $18.99
Deal alert!
Hurry…this deal ends July 31.



About the Author
Diana Waring is the author of Beyond Survival, Reaping the Harvest and Diana Waring’s History Revealed world history curriculum.

She discovered years ago that “the key to education is relationship.” Beginning in the early ’80s, Diana homeschooled her children through high-school—the real life opportunities to learn how kids learn. Mentored by educators whose focus was honoring Him who created all learners, and with an international background (born in Germany, university degree in French, lifelong student of world history),

Diana cares about how people learn as well as what they learn. Audiences on four continents have enthusiastically received her energetic speaking style.

For those of you who would like to know more about Diana you can read a full author interview over at Crystal Starr and Ben and Me. 

Connect with Diana

Facebook Google+ Pinterest Twitter RSS Feed

What we thought
We are thoroughly enjoying our Experience of History Through Music! We have grown a love for and appreciation for life in days gone by.  The books and songs have enriched our lives beyond measure.  I have been delightfully surprised at how many of the songs I know from singing them in my childhood.  I am delighting in watching Sir N enjoying learning the songs and  snuggling on the couch together reading about the stories behind the songs that we are now learning.


Blessings
Chareen


Thank you Diana for blessing our family with this wonderful resource and giving us an oportunity to review these products.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Wednesday 2 July 2014

Veritas Press - Self Paced Hisory {Review}

I have had a love affair with history since high school.  As much as I enjoyed history in high school I really did not grasp the full scope of history as we learned it in a disjointed manner.  One of the things I have really loved about our home education journey has been discovering the joy of learning history chronologically.  Oh my did history come alive once we started learning history as it happened.  Recently Veritas Press blessed Sir N and I with a year long access to the Self-Paced History: Old Testament and Ancient Egypt. Every day he begs me to do Veritas history. It's become our all time favourite resource. Today he begged me to do a lesson before bed time!

Grab a cuppa and let us take you on a tour of this excellent resource for your homeschool.

What we received


How we used it
Once we were signed up Veritas sent us a detailed welcome letter along with an excellent set up tutorial with step by step instructions. I have a teachers log in and Sir N has his own log in.


Teacher log in features
  •  As the teacher I can log in and see a summary of what my students have been doing. The log in page shows the student, his course and over all grade for the year. Once I select a student it takes me to the above page.
  • The top has a bar shows the overall progress my student has made on the course.  The green indicates the correct answers and the yellow indicates questions he has missed. 
  • A completed lesson is indicated in blue highlight along with a tick. I can click on any completed lesson and view the complete lesson without it altering his progress.
  • Upcoming lessons remain locked until the student completes the current class.
  • The center column is a record of his assignments.  There are two types of assignments: worksheets and tests. 
    Once a concept has been taught in a lesson (s) there is a Worksheet which is a test of the subject matter.  Once the test has been submitted you can not go back and retake in order to change your grade.  The worksheet marks however do not alter your overall grade for the year.
    Every fifth lesson is a test.  This test is also a once off.  Once it is submitted your grade is recorded and contributes to the over all grade for the year as indicated by the progress bar at the top of the page.
  • The third column contains four documents. (Supply list, Card samples, Level 1 and Level 2 recommended reading)
Student page
This page is almost identical to the parent page.  Once logged in the student can choose to resume their lesson or click into their course and choose wether to repeat a lesson, resume a partially completed lesson or start on their next lesson.  They can see when the next worksheet will be coming up as indicated in the center colum.  They can see their over all progress and current grade in the top bar.

Each days lesson launches in it's own window.  This week we are on lesson 32.  Lessons are presented in a slide format.
This window contains a number of features
  • Top left - name of the course OTAE (Old Testament Ancient Egypt) and the lesson number.
  • Top right - table of contents and any available downloads for that lesson are in the attachments.
  • Bottom left - Slide number indicator.  Here you can see the total number of slides in the lesson and the progression numbers.
  • Center bottom - here you can see the slide loading and the progress player.
  • Bottom right - standard rewind, play or jump to next buttons.
There is a full tutorial on how to drive the program when the students first log in and they can not access their class work until that is completed.  The tutor fully explains each aspect of how the program is presented and what is required of the students in order to progress.  It is completely interactive and a lot of fun.

Lessons contain

  • So far we have had three main teachers.  Hadassah, the Great Sphinx and Simeon.  
  • Every day the students practice the memory song which helps them to remember the chronological order of things.
  • Teaching is done interactively.  Sometimes the next slide auto loads and sometimes the student needs to do an activity to show that they have grasped the concept in order to unlock the next slide.  At other times they might need to click next in order to access the following slide.
  • There are games each day with revision questions for the days lesson.
  • Some of the games cover all the main time line information covered.
  • No two games are the same.  The graphics are excellent.
  • Some of the games are time sensitive and I had to help with reading the answers available and helping Sir N click on the ones he wanted in order to beat the clock.  A couple of times I had to retake the game a couple of times as I did not succeed.
  • The purpose of every game is revision of what has been taught in order to bring about mastery.
Sometimes the answers in the multiple choice questions are really funny.  At other times they keep you on your toes and you need to carefully read them as they are so similarly worded you might get them wrong if you don't take your time.


Even today's colour and print slide had questions pop up in order to continue and colour in the next portion of the graphic.


  • Once a topic is completed a medallion is placed on a map indicating completion of the topic. 
  • There is a fully interactive time line containing the graphics identical to the memory cards on it.
  • A time line card is added to the time line upon completion of that specific cards lesson.  
Testing




  • Every fifth lesson is a test.  If you choose to do one lesson a day the test would be taken every Friday. 
  • As a parent I was required to agree to supervising this as a closed book test.  No notes or time line cards are to be used in order to take this test. 
  • All tests are done via multiple choice.
  • Upon submission the test is immediately marked and the score is given.
  • You are then given the option of looking over the test and printing it.
  • Once you close a test it can not be retrieved in order to look over and is not available for the parent to look over in the teachers section. This is the only thing I would love to see changed in the program.  It would be really good to be able to go in on the parent log in and look over a test to see how my student  responded to each question and helpful to me as I would know what they needed to review for future lessons and tests.
  • If a student answers a question incorrectly it is highlighted in red.
  • The middle column shows the correct answers for each question and the right hand column shows you the student submitted answers. 
Exploring history with the flash cards.

Flashcards
  • There are a total of 32 flashcards in the pack
  • They are printed in colour on card stock and plastic coated.
  • Each card measures 12.5 cm x 20 cm (5" x 8") 
  • They are in chronological order. Each card has a number on the reverse so you know where in the deck the card goes as well as where in time order the event took place.
  • Each card is marked with a line at the top in order for you to know which one is biblical history (purple) and which one is general history.  Each series is represented by a different colour.
  • Each card is illustrated with a famous painting a picture relating to the specific time period in history. There is a reference note below each picture.
  • On the front you will find the title of the event. When applicable a scriptural reference is also added. 
  • On the reverse of the card you will find the name and reference refered to on the card and a summary of the event 
  • The bottom square contains a list of resources to expand your students learning opportunity of the event. (Bible, Greenleaf Guide, Children's Illustrated bible, Child's story bible, Journey Through the bible, Streams of Civilization, Time Traveler and Kingfisher History Encyclopedia to name a few) 
  • They are excellent for review.
  • A good hands on time line tool.

Cost**
  • Old Testament and Ancient Egypt Self Paced History $199.00 for the first student. This fee gives you one year of access to the program.
  • Veritas Press is currently offering a sibling discount of $100.00
  • Old Testament & Ancient Egypt Flashcards $19.95
  • MP3 Old Testament & Ancient Egypt Memory Song $6.95 (view a sample)
** Prices are current at time of review and can change at any given time at discretion of the company.  Please double check the price before placing your purchase.
There are a total of 5 streams in the Self Paced History classes
  1. Old Testament and Ancient Egypt
  2. New Testament, Greece and Rome
  3. Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation
  4. Explorers to1815
  5. 1815-Present 
 Hardware and Software Requirements
  • Web browser (Mozilla, IE 10 Chrome or Safari)
  • It runs on Windows Vista, XP, 7 or 8
  • For a Mac you need the following OS 10.6 or 10.7.4 or  10.8
  • Adobe Flash 10.3 or higher
  • Good internet connection. 
Recommended Age Range
  • Veritas recommend a minimum age of seven on the first day of class. The course has been designed with 2nd - 6th graders in mind.
Find out more

Connect with Veritas Press 

 Facebook Twitter Google+ Pinterest YouTube RSS Feed

What we thought
I don't know who is enjoying history more this year Sir N or myself!  We are both learning so much together. Although this is my third time through history chronologically I have learned so much more with Veritas that I am looking forward to doing the next four years of Self Paced history classes with them.
Every now and then Sir N will say "Oh I didn't know that !"  

This program has superseded my every expectation and has been the highlight of our homeschool year!


Blessings
Chareen

Restoring Our Culture for Christ ... 
One young heart and mind at a time! 

Click to read Crew Reviews
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)