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Review: Home School In The Woods

4/30/2013

 
Mom, PLEASE, I want to make more coins. 
Mom.. please, can we make more???

This was the refrain I heard when using the Great Empires Activity Study by Home School in the Woods.   We have been doing this study as part of Schoolhouse Review Crew.   We worked on the Vikings and China.
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Facts

Vendor: Home School in the Woods.
Product: The Great Empires.
Pricing: Download $18.95, CD $19.95
Age Range: Elementary
The Great Empires Study includes studying such places as Ancient Civilizations such as Egypt, Greece and Rome as well as China.   It takes a look at the various empires of the Arab-Muslim world, the Mongolians, Vikings, Spanish, French, English, German, Japanese and Russian.  They finish by looking that the United States of America.
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There was no way we would be able to get through all these empires in our short review period so we chose to focus on those that had an impact upon Canada in some way.  The Vikings discovered Canada, and the Chinese folks worked building the railroad.   This gave us the hook in that intrigued my lad.

Text, videos, activity, menus.  This sums up the way the study was set up.  A timeline is also provided so you can fill in the figures as you study them.  The download link had PDF files which included texts, projects and printable activity pages.    The projects lists included recipes, games, maps,  hands-on projects,  crafts and list of reference literature for further in-depth studies.
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Viking coins
We made Viking coins and Viking flat bread.  Both were a huge hit.
Learning how the Vikings influenced the world around them the lad found absolutely fascinating.  Since the people were afraid of the Vikings they learned better ways to defend themselves.  The lad was so intrigued by that idea that he wove it into his play for several days after that.   The Vikings inspired a boat trip on a rainy day.
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We also looked at China.. and I have to admit, this study disappointed me in that it seemed to take a vary cursory look at China, only briefly mentioned two of the major time periods.  I understand this is due to needed brevity but I felt teased, I know there are more time periods, but NOTHING was mentioned about most of them.
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Map work and the Great Wall of China.  I didn't know before that the Great Wall of China was built in sections.  I also hadn't understood that the Mongol attack was a big part of why the Wall was built.   The lad learned this and of course had totally fly with it. :)
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Defend the wall! Protect the pigs!!! The birds are coming!!! Protect the pigs!!!!
If you exchange the pigs for the Chinese people and the birds for the Mongols.. it all makes perfectly logical sense.  :)   He understood it quite well.  :)  He had so much fun acting out the sequence of events. 

We also made a surprising discovery.   Our recipes for this part of the study called for Egg Drop Soup and Spring Rolls.   My very fussy, extremely cautious of new foods, lad LIKES Egg Drop Soup!!!!   I learned that hey... Spring rolls are fairly good (especially with plum sauce), but the lad very much disagreed with me.  He gobbled up the egg drop soup and all was right in his world. :)

My overall opinion

I found it to be an okay introductory study.  I wanted more.    This is me.   I find it frustrating when I know there is more information available but when I'm not given enough information to research it myself I'm just annoyed.  I felt like that particularly with the China Study.

My son found that it was enough information.  I parsed out the information to him.  I watched videos with him in between reading the textual facts.  Some of the facts were simply too dry to just read to him in one sitting.   We used videos to make the learning become more real.

I will continue to use this study but I can see myself supplementing it.  Using things like the Great Wall 3-D puzzle to show difficult it was to make the wall, and how they had to defend it.   I would anticipate doing more of that sort of thing.  BUT that's me and how I do things.  This study would stand alone quite nicely as it does teach the basic facts to elementary age children.  I just want more....

And you may also wish to have more... more opinions that is of what others thought of this study, and the other review items from Home School in the Woods.  If so you can either click this link or click the image below to find more crew reviews to be read.   Everyone has their own experiences to share so go, have fun and read more of them.  :)
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Disclaimer

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Cooking for China Study

4/18/2013

 
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We made two dishes tonight from the Great Empires study done by Home School in the Woods.   The above was egg drop soup.   I don't know that I'll ever make it again, even though wonder upon wonders the lad LOVED IT.   This boy DOES NOT do soup.  But he liked this soup.   I needed to add some maggi to make it palatable for me...and just a touch for him.  But he liked it.  But I found it quite fussy to make.

The second I liked.   Spring rolls.  I didn't much like them plain, and I needed to learn just how long to cook them.  Plum sauce made a good addition for me, hubby used a sweet chili sauce, and the lad disliked them INTENSELY.  I made him eat one and then let him happily eat the egg drop soup.

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Pictorial of putting the spring rolls together

China, learning of it is part of our History as well

4/18/2013

 
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Today Homeschool in the Woods had us studying Ancient China.

We watched this series, parts 1-5
We also watched
We read from the text provided and drew a couple of the maps in.  Not all eight as that was too "AH!!" to the lad to do all of them, but doing two was quite manageable.  :)
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Then we set off to build our own great wall of China.  Did you know that the wall was built primarily to keep out the mongul hoards and then later used to keep out other enemies?

we used this kit which I picked up cheap at the London New and Used Curriculum sale.
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It was a bit of a struggle to put together and I understand why the previous owners gave up on it.  We simply did the best we could and it turned out well enough for a lad to play with it for a good spell.   Some pics below spell out the tale for you.  :)   DEFEND the PIG FORTRESS!   Protect the pigs!   Stupid BIRDS leave us alone WE HAVE A WALL!!!!!!
How does this connect to Canada?
It's important to know the history of the people who have helped create this land.  The Chinese have been part of Canada ever since the railways have been put in.  We haven't always treated them well, but they are part of our history.  Now we learn some of their history as well.

Scaredy Cat and Outdoor Learning

4/17/2013

 
Our day started out with working in the gardens, planning out our course for the day and then having breakfast.  Reading the paper was cause for good discussion over why people do bad things (the boston marathon bombing).  The lad finds (as do I) such badness disturbing and it's good to talk about why people do bad things (they want their own thing more than they want God).

Language Arts

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Today we started a new review for Joyce Herzog, called the Scaredy Cat reading system.   I have to admit, I find this system a bit ' intimidating".  The lessons are long, it has a different approach than what I am used to, but I think we'll make it work.  I firmly suspect each lesson will take us a good week to go through.  When the lad saw me leafing through lesson one he got scared that I was going to make him do it all in one shot so I needed to reassure him.

In the above picture he's working on alphabetizing some words and then I had him read them out loud.   He was a bit confounded that not every letter in the alphabet was to be found, so needed to be reminded to just skip those letters.     He LOVED playing the word game though.  This surprised as I was positive in my head (I wasn't foolish enough to show that hesitation) that he'd not be at all interested in doing them.  But his competitive nature kicked in and he loved it.   Loved trying to figure out how to say a word.  We each played an angry bird as our character and had the angry birds learn how to say the words presented.  :)   Just fun that.

History

We did some more work on Home School in the Woods.   We spray painted our coins today.  The lad would like to make more coins so I'll see if I can squeeze that into our day tomorrow.  :) 
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one of the lad's coins
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one of my coins.

Math

We did a math lesson through tutorsoft.  Still working on multiplication, we are mostly just doing ground work and not doing actual multiplication at this point.  He continues to memorize his basic addition facts yet.   The lad still quirks his eyes and scrunches his face up as he listens so I just need to give him more time to absorb the facts a bit yet.   Soon we'll start memorizing the multiplication tables as well.

Nature Study

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The lad has continued his learning into the ways and patterns of toads.  This little fellow was rediscovered today and much to-do made over him.  A house was built.
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A prison area was developed that the lad was certain that toad couldn't get out of, but toad proved to be a very good climber.  :)
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We decided based on patterning on toad that he is probably a bigger version of the toads we found at the Pinery last year and released into our backyard.   He would have course grown larger but we know he isn't one-eye or "big toad" that kept the lad well amused last summer.
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Fishing was the name of the game in the afternoon.  We met an older fellow who let the lad take a good look at the black crappie that he caught, and told us stories about snapping turtles and how they took his catch off the holding line.   Told the lad to leave snapping turtles well enough alone (the lad was well enough impressed) and if he really wanted to catch a fish, to come back the last week of April and catch a trout or two.   That way he wouldn't need to pay to be part of the derby on the weekend.  :)

Vikings were the theme of the day today

4/10/2013

 
Can't really say we did much else (beyond our regular reading that is).  Oh hold on... we also did some work with nouns and adjectives and watched two videos on Canada.

First thing we did was review what we learned about the Vikings.  Longboats, travel to Canada, change in Britain, influence of Christianity and so forth.   The lad did a fair good job of remembering.

Then we looked at our activity pages for the "great empires" course that we are taking.   They had us doing two things today.. making Viking coins and Barley Flatbread.  

We didn't have the paint so we headed off the the store to find it.   One store had some but 'it didn't look gold enough" so we went to a different store where it was gold and silver enough AND (bonus for mom) it was cheaper too.  :)   Two cans of paint down we headed home where we had quite the discussion on just how we would do this.  Mom, was the comment, I want to do some coins for the pigs too.   Well...that's okay.   But we have to make the Viking coins first.

We tried, oh but we tried to make them according to directions, but that just didn't work.  We needed more size in order to get the glue to work well.  it kept running together.  We expanded from 2 inches to 4 inches and that worked much better.    And we did what we always do.. we conducted an experiment.  What type of paper works best... cardboard?  Construction paper?   Cardstock?    What about clear glue versus white glue?   Does it matter if we paint it or drip it out of the bottle?      Pros and cons to each method we are learning thus far. 

Then we heard it... BOOM!

MOM!  What's the noise?

We turned around and wow!  Was it ever raining hard.  The pigs started squealing... we want to get wet we want to get wet!  

So the pigs hopped into their boat and out they went.
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The water pouring down the road was an additional invitation for the pigs to explore the life of a Viking.
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The pigs did get a little confused at one point though.  We've been learning about the First Nations people as well and last night had learned how the "Caribou Hunters" would build "pounds" to catch the caribou, and how another set of First nations folk would build dams and fish traps to catch the fish.   So our Vikings decided to do the same.
The lad would have happily stayed outside for another half hour but I got cold. My toes were wet so I went in and the lad accompanied me.

We got to making out Viking bread.

We made a half recipe as we weren't sure if we'd like it or how much it would make.     1.5 cups barley flour, 1/2 cup water.  Mix together.  Will be a stiff dough.   Take a 2 inch piece, flatten as thin as you can.   Cook over a greased griddle on medium-high heat for 30 seconds each side.  Is best eaten while fresh.  It works best greasing the griddle with butter we learned.

The lad's opinion.  MOM!  Can I have more Viking Bread???

Tough days

4/4/2013

 
Mom... I don't want to.
Mom... do I have to?
Mom.. can we play?

This today was the constant refrain.

And I have to admit....for a while I just plumb gave up.  Let's play Skylander bud... it's a new game, let's give a thorough going over...but then doing our "COOPERATIVE PLAY" he started the MOM... DON"T DO THAT stuff so I kinda said enough of this.  I don't need this attitude stuff even while playing a game.

SO... we picked up our Astronomy lapbook from AJTL, We looked at what they had for us to do and the lad said...but mom... didn't we have to look at the planets some more?  (Ah HA!!!  I said to myself...I sorta have his interest.... let's work with that).   So we hunted up the small planets that we had, and the dowelling that i bought and ....we made our planetary system.  Is it accurate?  NO...but will it do?  yes... and it did make for conversation about the planets.   We used the image here to helps us figure out which planets were which.
I have to admit to being a bit amazed today.  I often feel like I'm not a particularly good homeschooling parent as I'm not organized or well planned.   I'm just very relaxed (too relaxed at times I think).  BUT anyways, we do lots of reading and talking about subjects.    The lad frequently mentioned "mom, do you remember we read about the earth and how many would fit inside the sun".  "Mom, do you remember that...."  that was a frequent sentence starter.  Makes me think we are doing something right. :)

Okay what else did we do.

OH.. I started "great empires", that comes from Homeschool in the woods.   I went through the list of the histories we could look at and Vikings appealed to the lad since they came to Canada.

We read through the three pages of text and talked about it.  The lad needed to focus on things with the globe and trace out patterns of how the Vikings moved around.  We learned of Vikings becoming Christians and how they influenced change in the cultures surrounding them.   Quite fascinating.

And then the lad was DONE.  No more, I couldn't keep him focused on anything.  I want to play, I want to.... (do anything other than focus).  So off we went to clean the kitchen fridge out.  In the process the lad invented a milking cow.  :)  Made me laugh.  He took a balloon, attached it to a water filled bottle.  Made a small hole in the bottom and proceeded to milk it.  "Mom!  you have to practice this.  It's good to know how to milk a cow cause what if sometime we have no more milk in the stores?"   ... So i too needed to milk a cow (even though I have milked LOTS of cows in my childhood). :)

We got the fridge clean (the lad's responsibility was to get the door clean) and then set out to make a new treat.  Roasted Honey Cinnamon Chickpeas.  We found the recipe here.

First came skinning the peas.

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Adding cinnamon and oil to them.
Roasting then at 400 for 40 minutes.
Then putting some honey on them and roasting for another 7 minutes.
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And yes....they were yummy!  :)

NOTE: the lad did 90% of the work in getting these ready.  I helped with skinning the peas and getting things in and out of the oven.  The pretty much did the rest.  The link above has a video that he watched to learn what to do.
An EXCELLENT first (or fourth) recipe for a child to learn to do on his own.

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