Homeschool record keeping is my least favorite thing about homeschooling. I’m just not great with repetitive day-t0-day processes, so I tend to gravitate towards the easiest homeschool record keeping techniques that work for me, and still satisify any potential homeschool requirements we might run into.
Here’s one tip on how K keeps her own daily homeschool log and what I do that makes record keeping easier for her.
Enjoy!
…Shannon
P.S. Do you have any quick and easy tips for for homeschool record keeping? Please share!
On February 21st, the ChristChurch area of New Zealand was hit with an earthquake that rated 6.3 on the Ritchter scale, which causes all kinds of devestation.
My readers in New Zealand have been part of my prayers and thoughts since Tuesday. Having been through an earthquake nearly that powerful (I was in Southern California for the 1990 5.7 earthquake), I know it can be a scary thing, especially for kids.
CurrClick, who also serves a large number of homeschoolers from New Zealand, has put together two options to help out the Red Cross in New Zealand.
Note: The CurrClick donation opportunity has expired. To further help out in New Zealand, visit the New Zealand Red Cross site for updates and more information on how you can help out.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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
And the hard part is waiting for them to dry, but not waiting too long.
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
Okay, this is a little silly, but for whatever reason the fact that there is a special Robinson Crusoe Day makes me smile.
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