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

If you are studying biology this year like we are, here’s a great way to reinforce those biology facts – with biology songs. 

Songs for Teaching has a whole page of biology songs to help reinforce those biology facts.

If you click on a song link, it’ll take you to a page that gives you the option to listen to the biology song and gives you the song lyrics written out.

There is also an option to buy the download or CD, so if you are having younger kids access the site, you may want to instruct them as to which button to click to listen to the songs.

The science songs page also include numerous biology-related songs, including life sciences, botany, and human physiology (anatomy).

As my daughter is on a mission to do a full year’s worth of high school biology in 2 months, we’re always on the look out for activities that reinforce her learning outside of the biology text book. You can bet, this site is going to be on her to-d0 list for next week!

Many thanks to Karri Fieglin for sharing this resource!

Step 3 in my 6 Steps to Ensure Your Homeschool Can Survive A Financial Crisis is to look at Free, Nearly Free, or low-cost curriculum choices to see if you can use an alterative if your homeschool budget is significantly reduced or evaporates althogether.

Here are three free homeschool curriculums worth looking at. If you like lesson plans or schedules to help guide your path, all three of these offer free lesson plans – either daily, weekly. And each have active communities of homeschoolers who are using the curriculums.

 

1. Ambleside Online

Using a combination of free public domain materials and resources you’ll need to purchase or borrow, Ambleside Online provides a full curriculum for k-12 in Charlotte Mason style.  Striving to create a free curriculum that Charlotte Mason herself would use, the volunteers at Ambleside Online have put together a full, robust homeschool curriculum.
 
The homeschoolers who use Ambleside Online are very generous with their knowledge and in helping bring more and more free resources online to implement a Charlotte Mason style homeschool. You’ll find a wealth of knowledge here, if you are interested in literature-based or Charlotte Mason-style curriculum.

If you are not familiar with Charlotte Mason and her teachings, I recommend reading Ambleside Online’s Introduction to Charlotte Mason and either Charlotte Mason’s original writings (available free on Ambleside Online) or a copy of A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola.

Note: Ambleside Online is primarily a Christain homeschool curriculum, but because it is literature- and nature study- based, it is also easy for the secular homeschooler to adapt.

 

2. An Old Fashioned Education

An Old Fashioned Education is a free homeschool curriculum based on classic public domain literature and text books. The entire curriculum was developed by Miss Maggie, the founder of Hillbilly Housewife (one of my favorite frugal cooking sites), for her boys, after she discovered Ambleside Online wasn’t structured enough for her family.

Even if you don’t use the full curriculum, Miss Maggie has pre-screened, categorized, and links an amazing amount of free literature and public domain textbooks, making the site a wonderful reference on where to find free books for your homeschool.

The 3RHomeschooling yahoo group provides excellent support for those using An Old Fashioned Education, as well as other literature-based curriculum. Again, the members are as generous in their knowledge as Miss Maggie was in putting together this curriculum and ensuring it remains free.

Note: An Old Fashioned Education is a Christain homeschool curriculum, that uses books with a strong moral focus. However the secular homeschooler will also find the site useful in finding free homeschool curriculum and classic literature in public domain.

 

3. Simply Charlotte Mason

SimplyCharlotteMason.com is another free homeschool curriculum for those looking for a Charlotte Mason-inspired homeschool. Like Ambleside Online, this curriculum uses both free public domain litature and more contemporary resources that you will need to purchase or borrow. There is a free Curriculum Guide for Grades 1-12, and suggested resources for each subject by grade.

There’s a Community Forum for this site, where you can get support and questions answered. Also the two families who designed this curriculum give workshops.

This site is more commerical than Ambleside Online and An Old Fashioned Education. The site owners sell items on the site and their Charlotte Mason (“living book”) book finder does link to Amazon. But the curriculum and many of the resources are free or are available free from public domain sites. One special freebie unique to this site is the Book of Centuries - a free, downloadable pdf file that allows you to put together a history timeline notebook.

Note: Simply Charlotte Mason is also a free Christain homeschool curriculum, but like the other two, it can be adapted by the secular homeschooler by eliminating certain resources.

 

Next week, I’ll share more free homeschool resources, as this series on ensuring your homeschool can endure a financial crisis continues.  In the meantime, if you have experience using one of these curriculums or know of another free, full homeschool curriculum besides these three, please share in the comments below.

Thanks!

…Shannon

P.S. In case you are curious, I’ve tested out An Old Fashioned Education, and use it as an additional resource when looking for free living books for our homeschool.

Q: You mentioned that you are using the McGuffey Readers. Can you tell me more about how you are using them?

A: Before I can really answer this well, let me start with how I came to using them and why. 

We started with the McGuffey Readers – the second reader actually – at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year and are now about 3/4 the way through the second reader.  I had heard of them before but at that time wasn’t interested in using any type of reader, much less one that was over a 100 years old.

But each child is different and my investigation into using public domain materials, stemming from my research into the Robinson Curriculum and then subsequently into the Accelerated Achievement (aka A-squared) and Old Fashioned Education curriculums, was enough for me to give it a try with my 9 year old.

Right now I’m only using the McGuffey Readers with my 9 year old, though my 11 year old has asked to do readings from the 2nd reader and I’m considering having her do some reading from the 3rd  reader next year or over the summer.  

I started teaching my son to read later than most, having learned a hard lesson with my oldest.  We waited until he was asking to learn to read, until he showed that he was ready.  When he was 7 ½, we started with the “at” family and the first couple Bob Books. When he proved that he was indeed ready developmentally to learn to read, we progressed with Reading Reflex.

He went from nothing to a strong 2nd grade reading level in less than a year. And now at 9 ½, two years after he started learning to read, he is reading 4th and 5th grade reading level books with no problem at all.

BUT…since most of his personal reading and assigned reading is to his self, I wanted to know for certain that he was understanding what he was reading and not just skipping over words he didn’t know or filling in his own versions.  So, this past year, part of his reading has been to read aloud to me from the McGuffey Reader.

So, to answer the real question, how am I using the McGuffey Readers…
 
As with anything I use, I decided to just start with it and see how it works out, knowing that I could always scrap it if it wasn’t going to work. But it really surprised me.  My son likes the stories – they appeal to him and his sense of justice and right and wrong. 

Each story is only a page or two long, with new vocabulary listed at the beginning of the story. We don’t use the vocabulary section. Instead, as we run across words that he doesn’t know (like “foe”) or have changed over time (like “gay”), I ask him what he thinks they mean or clarify the meaning for him.  This actually has been a bonus, as we’ve been able to talk about different words and how they might fall in or out of fashion over the years and how language may change.

We keep the reading light. Sometimes he’ll want to re-read a story he has read before, and that’s okay as long as he reads a new story as well. Sometimes, he’ll struggle with the pacing of a story or poem, so we’ll read it once and then maybe I’ll read it to give him an idea of how the pacing should sound, but then we’ll put it away and read it again on another day.

Primarily, when he’s reading, I’m listening for:

Is he really reading the words on the page?
I try to catch when he guesses at a word, or fills a word  in based on what he thinks it is going to say. I’m also listening for when he changes words with another word with a like meaning (he has the tendency to do this when he is reading ahead silently.) (

Is he reading quickly just to get through it, or reading for the benefit of others?
I’m not tolerating reading just to read it fast and get it done.  He needs to read for the benefit of sharing the story with others, so they can enjoy while they are listening to him read it.  So we work on pacing and inflection.

We talk about using punctuation as clues for “taking a breath”, reading with inflection, enunciating, and projecting his voice. 

Are there articulation issues we need to deal with?
My son (actually both of them) needed speech therapy. And so I’m also listening for articulation errors, where he might be getting lazy and that affects the ability for the listener (me) to understand the words he is saying.  Recently, it became evident that he needed to work on the “th” sound again; and we identified it through these reading aloud sessions.

Does he understand/comprehend what he is reading?
There’s no use in reading if he doesn’t understand what he is reading. And so, periodically, especially on the poetry or sentences he struggles with, I’ll ask him what it means. And then I’ll share what I think it means. Again, this is really low key, not coming across as a test, but as a discussion of the literature and the use of words.

Could I use other readers? Probably. But the McGuffey Readers are free for download from Project Gutenberg. Or in my case, the version I’m using (1879 edition) came with my copy of the Robinson Curriculum.  We just print it out and 3 hole punch it and keep it in a binder. No big deal.  

I really like the values projected in the edition of the McGuffey readers we’re using. The stories in the 2nd reader relate to interactions between children and their parents, their friends, birds, and the natural world.  And do so in a way that promotes courage, bravery, honesty, and caring for others. There’s two stories that are my 9 year old’s favorites that I think talk to this point well:

Henry, the Bootblack
This is a  brief story about an impoverished boy, who wanted to help his mother and little sister. One day he was rewarded with his honesty with $1, which he used to buy the equipment he needed to shine boots. The story tells how he captured customer with his politeness, and how he helped his family by working during the day shining boots and went to school at night.

In course of the story we have been able to talk about how much $1 would have been at the time, what a bootblack boy was, and how even though he was helping his family, he still went to school.  The story talks about the choice the boy made, to be honest and how he was rewarded for that honesty. Values I want enforced.

The Kingbird
This is a quick little story about the Kingbird and why it is named the Kingbird. It tells of how it uses cunning and quickness to protect the nest from much larger birds.  Not only is this a science lesson, and talks about birds, which my son loves, but it also appeals to his desire to protect those he cares about and talks to the warrior within him.

At this point I’m planning to continue with the McGuffey Readers, for my 9 year old and for the others when they are ready – at least as long as I find value in using them.

If you are considering them, know that, like with all books, there are differences between editions. And I suggest reading a little about those differences to see if matters to you.  Again I’m using the 1879 version that comes with the Robinson Curriculum, but others are available.  Free versions are available online through Project Gutenberg and other public domain repositories.

If you don’t want to print out your own versions, you can also buy them used or new, they often come as a boxed set but can be purchased individually as well. Again, watch for what version it might be (if that matters to you).  Amazon.com carries a couple different sets.  HSTreasures carries the 1879 version as does Mcguffeyreaders.com and a few other sources online.

Also use the McGuffey Readers? Please share your experiences!

Looking for a fun way to teach your children about UV light? Especially during the spring and summer months when they need to be wearing sunglasses and sunscreen, or in my kids cases, swim shirts as well.

In her comment earlier this week, Laurel reminded me of solar beads (aka UV Beads or Energy Beads). These are a great tool for teaching your kids about UV light and have some fun as well.

At first appearances, solar beads look like just little white plastic beads, like you would use for a kid’s beading project. But these are special in that when they are exposed to UV light they turn colors and then turn white again once out of the UV light.

We were first introduced to these last year and the kids loved them. The olders each made their own bracelets and had great fun showing them off to others. It was a novelty to see how much the beads would change color (if at all) under different types of light.

Personally I love Laurel’s idea of using the beads as a reminder to the kids to put on sunscreen. But in addition to that, the beads can be used in various experiments on how effective sunglasses and/or different levels of SPF sunscreen are in blocking out UV light, as well as how we are exposed to UV light under different light and weather conditions.

You can buy solar beads from a variety of sources online, just search for “solar beads”, “UV beads”, or “Energy Beads”. Amazon.com has several sets of a variety of quantities. And, Laurel recommended Steve Spangler Science, and I have to say a few minutes on that website and I am hooked.

Not only do they sell different quantities of solar beads, but also have written instructions for experiments with solar beads and and an explanation on how the solar beads work (look at the bottom of the solar bead experiment page). The site also contains lots of free science experiment videos, including this one on solar beads. Lots of fun to watch and get ideas from.

Enjoy!