The Ojibwe People traditionally view their art as being an intrinsic part of their everyday objects, thus they try to make objects that are used everyday as beautiful as possible. In the making of these beautiful things they believe they are showing respect to the Great Spirit. The Ojibwe people draw their inspiration from everything naturally occurring and attempt to……
Tag: Homeschooling
Native American Unit Week 1- The Birchbark House: Neebin (Summer)
The Birchbark House is book one of a four series set of books about a young, Ojibwe girl called Omakayas: This first book is separated into four sections – the four seasons of the year. Each chapter we read we find much to talk about and learn about. In addition there are many parts of the……
The First Native Americans: Presenting the Information
This term we will not be having a major presentation at the end of the term. Christmas is one of our busiest times of the year so instead of attempting to fit a big presentation around lots of concerts, charity fairs and the like we have decided to have a series of mini presentations instead. ……
The First Native American People: Appreciating the Tribal Differences
We continued to use the same books as before: The children also had access to their laptops and therefore the internet for research purposes. We used the map we had made previously, building on the knowledge we had gathered the day before: The main reason for us doing such a large map was for the children……
The First Native American People: Mapping the Area
I had already decided to carry out an overview study of the settlement and migration of the Native Americans. I wanted to get rid of the idea that the first peoples to populate America all lived in tepees and wore feathers. It was to be a one week study, so I wanted it to be……
How to Make Native American Dress Up
We are incapable of doing any kind of study without at least attempting to create some dress up. I did keep it simple though and ordered five cheap t-shirts for just over £1 each. I chose brown and a large size for all. The older children could wear them as tops whilst the younger girls……
Native American Unit Study
Remember the Little House on the Prairie summer we had last year? The one where we made our own little house, painting, decorating and making furniture, whilst learning all sorts of skills along the way? I had been pondering a Native American unit in the same vein, but it seemed such a vast topic, I……
Reflections on our Term
To all intents and purposes this has been an incredibly successful term. We have by some miracle covered both history and science in equal measures using different forms of project based learning for each. For history the children used the more regular type of project based learning whereby they chose an area of interest to……
Angelicscalliwags Homeschool: Morning Meeting
I have no intention of resurrecting our home school series, but I did want to add an extra post on our morning meeting. Our school, whilst fundamentally remaining the same as ever before has taken on a move towards independence and project based learning. The morning meeting however has stood the test of time. This meeting,……
Precious Memories
This week we have been inching ourselves back into full-time school with Maths, morning meetings, and A5’s reading, writing and arithmetic. It has been really good to be back working again. Even though we only had 2 weeks off it was enough to refuel my tank and regain my enthusiasm for home school as well as allow……
Microbes: Ebola Virus Study
When I chose to study Ebola as an example of a virus, it was in January, before the out break in Africa. It was a difficult decision to go ahead with the study, when the children were being exposed on a daily basis, through newspapers and radio reports, to the ravaging affects Ebola was having……
Project Based Homeschooling: Mona Lisa Picture Study
Great Resources to Have on Hand Becoming Leonardo L decided to journal as she did her research and called her journal ‘Becoming Leonardo’. Her goal was to really to try to get into his head and try to understand what it was that made him tick. This was her own idea and her own journal,……
Project Based Homeschooling: Gutenberg’s Printing Press
Great Resources to have on hand Making a Wooden Model of the Printing Press We had already done a bit of work on the printing press and Gary and T had put together the model of Da Vinci’s design, which was very similar to Gutenberg’s: Making your own rag paper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XoTGFC-0NAÈ T ripped up……
Project Based Homeschooling: Making A Chaucer Newspaper
Great Resources to Have on Hand The Content of the Newspaper Many of these activities we did together, but C11 loves anything literary and asked if her project could focus on Chaucer rather than Da Vinci. Of course I said yes, and together we decided that her main project could be creating a newspaper containing……
Fibonacci, Da Vinci and the Golden Ratio
In my last Fibonacci post I wrote about how Fibonacci set himself a question and then went about answering it. The resulting sequence has been intrinsically linked to the golden ratio ever since. I am very grateful for Denise’s input in the comments section of that particular post because I was still confused. How on earth did……