Okay, this is a little silly, but for whatever reason the fact that there is a special Robinson Crusoe Day makes me smile.

February 1st is Robinson Crusoe Day, to commemorate the actual rescue of Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish sailor who is said to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe story.

Originally published in 1719, the story of a castway sailor deserted on an faraway island has long captured the imaginations of boys and girls (and men and women).

And as I really want the kids to listen to this book for literature, I think we are going to take the day off  our scheduled schoolwork and celebrate Robinson Crusoe Day too.

What can be more fun than tossing aside conventional schoolwork for a day of adventure and imagination on  a deserted island?

If you’d like to join us, here’s some free resources for you:

Robinson Crusoe Audio Books

Robinson Crusoe audio book (from Libriovx)

For younger children, here’s two more free audio book versions from Librivox that might be easier for them to understand:

Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin

Robinson Crusoe in words of one syllable by Mary Godolphin

Robinson Crusoe E-Books

If you prefer to snuggle up and read alound for the day and don’t already have a copy of this adventure story, here’s some free ebook versions of Robinson Crusoe for you:

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808 version) – Kindle Version (free from Amazon.com)

 Robinson Crusoe: Edited from Original Writings (1866 version)  – Downloadable scanned book from Google Books

Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin – Downloadable scanned original book with wonderful little pictures and easy to read typsetting (via Google Books)

You can also pick up text, epub, and possibly kindle versions for each of these at ProjectGutenberg, just search on the title keywords “Robinson Crusoe” and you’ll find all the versions they have available, including the ones for children.

Robinson Crusoe Activities

If you’d like to turn this into a larger unit study, or give the kids something to do while they are listening, here’s a few more resources to check out:

Geography/Maps

Interactive Map of Robinson Crusoe Island (the island Alexander Selkirk was deserted on) Zoom out to see it’s proximity to Chile and South America. Then have your student find it on a blank world map.

Interactive Satellite Map of Tobago – the island the bookRobinson Crusoe is said to have been actually based on. Zoom out to the 4th position from the bottom to see a nice view of where it’s positioned between North and South America.  Then have your student find it and mark it on the blank world map (above).

Art/Coloring Pages

Palm Trees amd then your student can press their thumb on a stamp pad or in a little bit of paint and put “coconuts” in on the palm trees  

Learn to draw:

A Row Boat

A Tropical Beach

Other Fun Activities to Try

- Get a coconut from the grocery story and make it an adventure to figure out how to open it. We did this one day and had a grand time with it.  Then we tasted the coconut milk inside and sampled the coconut meat. Very memorable and fun adventure. Also a good discussion point of how you’d open coconuts if you didn’t have any tools.

- Create your own 3-D island and Palm Trees, using a cake mix or dirt. Or use these instructions from Crayola to do it with construction paper and toilet paper tubes.

 - Ask your student(s) what they would do and need to find if they were deserted on a island. Brainstorm some ideas, or if you have a group of students, try this Island Survival challenge activity.

This is also a great opportunity for all ages to reinforce what is needed to survive (food, water, shelter, how to get it when there’s no grocery stores or hardware stores or internet in sight, and what skills would be helpful to know in survival situations, and of course God’s amazing provision.

Lesson Plan for Robinson Crusoe

If you like more formal teacher lesson plans, here’s a free one from the Colorado Unit Writing Project called Robsinson Crusoe: The Original Survivor. It includes 8 lessons, vocabulary words, activities, and writing assignments. It’s geared for 4th grade, but could easily be adapted for multiple ages or up or down based on your students.

Enjoy!
…Shannon

Earlier this month I shared why I don’t set New Years Resolutions, and how valuable it can be to look back over the previous year during the goal setting process. Today I’d like to encourage you to take a look at your goals for this year and ask yourself two questions:

- Why? 

and

-What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?

Last year, my private goal  – the one I accomplished – was centered around my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my kids. I needed to strengthen my family relationships.

If I didn’t, my family would suffer. My marriage would crumble, and that was unacceptable to me.

My kids, specificially Z, J, and K are getting older, they aren’t little kids anymore. And I needed to strengthen our relationship as we move into the older tween and teen years. I was unwilling to risk “losing” my children because they had moved on, but our relationship hadn’t.

That was my why. That is why my other three big goals did not get accomplished, because the “why” I had for them was not as large and as important to me as this one goal’s “why”.

So, when you look at your goals for this year, for this month, or even this day, ask your self “Why” and “What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?”

Write down in positive terms how your life will be different when you accomplish your goal. Hold it in your mind. Re-read it periodically.  Filter your decisions through it.

Whatever you focus on, grows. So focus on the positive,  focus on what you can accomplish, and do it.

I believe in you.

…Shannon

In my attempt to bring us back to learning together as a family more, I’ve been creatively trying to balance K & J’s need to learn middle school and high school geology with introducing the topic to Little E and Z. 

Now obviously mixing first and third grade with sixth and ninth grades, means some very different levels of detail presented.  Because I need the high school level for K, I’m using Connect the Thoughts Geology as our base geology curriculum,  and then incorporating the younger kids into the hands-on activities, and adding in some notebooking and lapbooking techniques to help with illustrations and retention all around.

While we got to play with Clay this month to help understand plate tectonics, the best experiments came from smashing rocks

Z - smashing rocks for science

Of course there was a point to smashing rocks: to understand what clues and marks geologists would use to identify rocks that may have at one time been one.

K & Jazzy comparing rock halves for a geology experiment

But it was a fun experiment, and we discoved  an ant colony living inside Z’s rock, so that was a bonus biology lesson

Z & Little E got so into smashing rocks they decided to be geologists for the day and set out to invesigate all they could about the rocks and the rock fragments we had that day. And they asked me to take a few pictures to share with you:

Z & Little's Collection of Rock Fragments (that's Z's hand showing you a fragment)

And of course  Little E had to get into one for you too (but she forgot to smile for some reason

Little E shows off the bigger rocks in their rock collection

I can’t be the only parent who has done it. You know, compared my child to another.

When K was 3, she decided she’d learn to tie her own shoes, so she spent a month stealing every shoe lace she could find out of shoes and tying them to whatever she could find – chairs, door knobs, you name it.

Greg wasn’t thrilled that every time he went to put his shoes on, he had to hunt down the shoe laces. But in a month, she know how to tie her shoes, and it was over.

And when K was 6, playing on a soccer team, I remember being increduous that the coach’s little girl had to have her daddy tie her shoes for her. Afterall, K had being doing it for years.

And then, came my other three children. None of them learned to tie shoes before they were 6. In fact J was 8 or 9 when he learned. And Z, at almost 9, is just now learning.

Does that make K better than them? No.

It’s so easy to compare what our children can do or can’t do, and forget that all children are given gifts and abilities, and development rates are different.

I look at Z, who is amazingly talented in some areas, and struggles so deeply in others and know there is no way to compare who he is and where he is at with  other children.  It wouldn’t be fair – nor an accurate measurement of who he is.

And the same with all four of them, including Little E, who at 6 was reading better than any of the other children were at that age.

Each and every child is different. And it’s natural I think that we want to think that our child is special, because they are.

But it’s dangerous to start comparing them to each other and to others.

God has given us all, including our children, our own unique talents and gifts. Thank goodness. Because this would be a very boring world if we were all the same.

More food for thought.

…Shannon

This month I changed up our homeschool schedule again, and returned us to a full schoolwork schedule. And shifted our schooling from each person working on their own thing to back to more family or group learning activities.

While there are specific subjects that the kids have to work on individually, because they are at different levels, i.e., math and langauge arts, I wanted to bring some of the fun, collaborative projects back into our schooling.

This spring we are specifically working on World Geography, Geology, and Ancient History. Now, obviously K, as a high school student, has to do much more writing than the others, they all are getting into the group projects.

Here’s a few pictures from our month so far:

First up is our World Geography Project – Paper Mache Globes.  I’ll post more on this later as they get finished, but the kids had a great time with these.

Z and Little E were in charge of making the paper mache

 K, J, and I hung balloons from the ceiling above the art table, so that we could work on creating the globe-like shape. It would have been better if we had found round balloons, but we made use of what we had. And it gave us an opportunity to discuss further with Z and E what shape the Earth really is.

Get Ready - Get Set- Go.... beginning our paper mache globe project

Little E tests out the paper mache globe forms to see if they are ready yet

We’ll show you more when we are completely done with the project, but working on these globes have been a highlight of our geography study this  month, and just plain ole fun.

Next Up Tomorrow: Geology pics…Smashing Rocks for Science