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

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

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

Music education is a requirement at our house. Greg and I just had one year’s worth of musical instruction each and can barely pick out a few songs. But it is one of our regrets. We wish we had stayed with it longer. And so, we have required each of our kids to pick and learn a musical instrument, and stay with it for 2 years worth of lessons.

K played the violin for almost 3 years, and has translated that to now playing at the keyboard just for fun (and she’s much better than I!). Z and Little E each chose the guitar and are awaiting their turn for lessons, but for now enjoy making up songs on their own. (Can you guess what color Little E’s guitar is?…yep, pink!)

But J has had to wait the longest for his instrument. A few years ago, he decided on drums. Now he has a good ear, and can pick out some pretty stuff on the piano and on the guitar, but drums is what he wanted.

Well, drum sets, and drum lessons aren’t cheap. (Neither is a violin, but we rented that.) We told J that he would get his drums, but he had to wait until we could afford to pay cash or them.  And he waited, and waited, and waited… for 2 long years he has waited.

Well, this Christmas, guess what was under the tree for him?  (well, actually it was next to the tree, because those boxes were big and heavy!)

My boy has his drum set now and he’s LOVING it! 

J jamming with a friend on his new drum set

He gets to play freestyle whenever he wants, as long as he gets his chores and schoolwork done. and he “has” to end his school day with 30 minutes of drum lessons and practice. His favorite part of the school day.

It was a lesson in Patience for J. But now he’s got his wish, and I’m getting a huge lesson in drumming, and am loving hearing my boy explore his musical side. Don’t you love it when you can make something happen for your kids?

While there’s a lot of travel activity books out there that we could have purchased for the kids to work on during our fall road trip, I asked K to create custom activity books for the kids.

Why?

Because I wanted to reinforce specific skills and not bring a whole library with us.  And because I wanted a solid set of activities that fit their abilities and interests.

So last week, K set out into cyberspace, as part of her schoolwork (think technology and research skills), to hunt down worksheets, coloring pages, and other activities that would appeal to each of her siblings and herself. And put them together into custom trvel activity books.

She used 3 prong folders, color coded to each child, and filled them with similar activities, but customized for each child’s interests and abilities.  Here’s quick video she did (also part of her schoolwork), sharing with you the fruit of her labor.

But just in case you can’t watch the video, here’s a few pictures of the activity books she created:

She put maps of the United States on the outside and one on the inside so that they can color the states we drive through, as we drive through them. And so it is easier for the kids to visually where we are in our journey.

Inside, there’s age appropriate mazes. You should see the mazes she found for her and J. They are very cool and very complex. I’d like to give them a try.

And then at my request there’s a little math work in here. Can’t let that go too long. So she add math facts worksheets and Sudoku pages in each book, just enough to have one per day.

And then of course she added some dot-to-dot and coloring pages, keeping them customized to each person’s interests. So Z’s book has a lot of military items, while Little E has more than a few princesses! J’s has knights and medieval theme, while K found some mandalas for her to color.

And when she was done, we hid the activity books in my desk, so that the others didn’t know about them and couldn’t flip through them until it was time to pack up the trip activity backpacks.

Once the kids packed up their activity backpacks, K and I revealed their surprise. Lots of ooos and ahhhs as they flipped through, looking at all the things she had picked out for them to do on the road trip. Z even started tracing out one maze before we got them packed away.

So now the kids have plenty of variety to keep them company on the trip, something new to discover in their own backpacks, and K got more than a few schoolwork hours in putting together the travel activity books for everyone.

And she discovered that she really likes doing this type of work – bonus!