It's one of those thing that you are told every homeschool family should have, so you try to be good and create one running up the side of your staircase until you realise it will take over the whole house!
After many years (and many different timelines) I finally came up with one that fits easily into our home and life but still gives us tons of space to write all our history facts on (the full length of our timeline is just over 5 meters, so plenty of space for those all important facts).
Welcome the timeline scroll
(this looks like a roll of wallpaper because it is!)
We started by attaching a stick to the edge of the paper roll with duct tape (to make rolling and unrolling our scroll more fun) then rolling out the wallpaper and drawing a line through the middle - marking off each 50 years with alternating dark and light lines and adding the dates.
Then when we study a specific time we open just the section we need to write down our facts, add photos etc.
When we are not using our timeline, it neatly rolls up and hides in the corner behind the bookcase. We use this on a daily basis and the girls just collect it and roll out what they need.
We all seem to be settling back into our routine nicely - we even managed to start on time 4 days last week : )
The girls looked at types of consumers - carnivores, omnivores and herbivores.
They loved the poems - 'eyes on the side, help them hide' and 'eyes in front, help them hunt' so decided to incorporate them into their notes.
We reviewed nouns,
then started a pronoun study.
(just spotted the spelling error on that one - oh well, seems more spelling work is needed)
We worked some more on multiplication and read Multiplication Menace which the girls loved.
But their favourite activity of the week was learning about the elements of art and creating a lift the flap poster.
We had a group activity all about toilets (yes - you heard me right) our last
group activity was on politics and as part of the activity they got to
vote for the next 3 months activities. It worked out OK - after much
hair pulling I came up with an activity on the history of U Bends and
got the kids to make their own out of straws.
There was also an activity on 'toilets of the world' where they took the name for toilet and placed it on the map.
The history of the tipping toilet with an attempt to make a working model.
Make an outhouse model.
A great read aloud pop up book
and an English lesson - synonyms : )
We studied Biomes last week and as part of the study the girls made up some actions to help them remember it.
Back to school with a vengeance here. We had our best 'not back to school' activity yet - raft building.
This was followed by our first week back after the summer break - we managed to work on multiplication (with Lego),
did domino math,
studied biomes
worked on the noun presentation with Tulip and Rose,
and learnt how to make a dress pattern.
Can't have summer without lots of balloons : )
We have done a number of science activities over the last few weeks using balloons. We first discussed the theory (annotated on a white board) then went ahead with the activity when we understood the science behind it.
Balloon car races and balloon rockets
Balloon helicopter
Balloon bounce (they had to keep an air filled water balloon in the air by blowing through straws)
Magic Balloon (two painted bottles, one white and one black, left in the sunlight - the air in the black bottle is heated and causes the balloon to expand.)
Balloon water pump
This one caused the most surprise - they decided that squeezing the bottle would cause the pump to work and it did but wasn't very exciting. However when we attached the balloon the water overshot our bowl!
They were so impressed with this experiment that they decided to design a larger pump with numerous spouts as a toy for water fights.
The kids exploring nature and every now and then they stumble on something amazing. This was Tulip's find yesterday
after researching it we think it's some kind of seed pod but they did think it was an alien to start with : )
