Adventures in US History: Week 1

This was our first week of Adventures in U.S. History with my 7 year-old boy (E), 4 year-old boy (middle C), and 2 year old girl (EM). We had a blast!

Before school started, I made a few trips to the library for books, discussed my plans and borrowed additional books from my dearest friend, and the boys helped me build the base of a cardboard boat. We were all counting down the days for school to start because we could not wait to dive into so many new, exciting books.

Every morning, we started our day with morning time. Our morning time is pretty simple and lasts 20-30 minutes. We play two worship songs, take prayer requests, read a story from the Beginner’s Bible, read a poem, read a nursery rhyme, discuss the calendar, check the weather, and select one additional reading/activity from a rotating list. I adore this sweet time because all three of my kids are together and usually fully engaged.

The Bible theme this year is the many wonderful names of Jesus and to set up the theme, the children studied their names this week. On Monday, we discussed how names have meanings. Throughout the rest of the week, we discussed the meanings of their names, practiced writing their names, and made name bracelets. We also assembled first week of school picture frames from our Adventures in U.S. History craft bundle. These tied into the name theme very well, because they came with foam stickers to spell out their names.

For language arts, we are using the recommended Language Lessons For Today, Grade 2. The first few lessons really focused on a picture study, oral narration, and copywork. They were so short and sweet that my four year-old wanted to help out. We are using All About Spelling for spelling instead of the recommended Spelling by Sound and Structure. We only had four lessons left to go in level 1, so we finished that up this week and cannot wait to dive into the next book. I added Wordly Wise 2 to our language arts studies because we love the program so much. This is the first book without a set of colorful flash cards, so E decided he wanted to make his own cards for each lesson.

History was by far my favorite subject this week. We were studying the Vikings! My boys love the VeggieTales episode, Lyle the Friendly Viking, but from that they had a very limited view of who these great men of the North really were.

On Monday, we painted our own shields, colored a Viking ship sail, and finished making our Viking longboat. (Viking boat tutorial and free back-to-school printables here). It was the perfect spot for our back-to-school pictures before our back to school ice cream trip. Since we couldn’t go in to an ice cream store, we picked up Chick-fil-a ice dreams and cookies and made cookie monster sundaes to celebrate a new school year.

Our Viking studies were also enhanced with the Viking activity pack from my TPT store. We played a few Viking games (Merils and Hnefatafl), crafted a longboat from cardstock, and practiced writing our names using Viking Runes. The packet also included designing your own shield and a coloring sheet, which we skipped because we painted our own shield. We did read those pages to learn a bit more about shields.

Also, in history this week, we set up our timeline, colored and discussed the United States and world Maps, and practiced saying the Pledge of Allegiance. On Monday, we ate the recommended patriotic berries and yogurt snack from the MFW guide and my children requested it a few more times throughout the week.

We are using the recommended Singapore Math. This week, we finished the last few lessons of level 1B and we will start level 2A on Monday. I only used the MFW guide for level 1 but I purchased the Home Instructor Guide for the next level and cannot wait to see which guide I prefer using.

We started the I Can Do All Things art curriculum last semester. While we plan to follow the MFW recommended art lessons later in the year, I did not want to repeat the lessons we have already done. I had originally purchased Baby Lambs Book of Art from How Great Thou Art! (the company behind I Can Do All Things) for middle C. I pulled out several pages that were more appropriate for elementary school and we are using them to learn Color Theory and basic drawing skills over the first few weeks. This week we discussed the difference between warm and cool colors. Little Brother and Sister worked on their "school" coloring books.

Science was pretty basic this week, as it was simply introducing the concept of what science is and the scientific method. We did the simple experiment to see if salt helps eggs float and we wrote down our findings in our science notebook (a simple composition book, where we have been recording science observations).

We used Friday to tie up loose ends for all of our subjects. We also did a creative writing assignment and did our Nature Study. For creative writing, I gave the writing prompt “A Journey to Sea” and I wrote out E’s story as he dictated it to me. He then copied the story into his creative writing journal and illustrated it.

For our Nature Study, I decided to take the kids to our local state park and walk the “Storybook Trail.” It is a half mile ADA trail right at the main entrance to the park, perfect for my 2 year-old that tires easily. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has donated signs along the trail, each a page from Miss Maple’s Seeds, so that the kids can walk from sign to sign and read the book over the course of the trail. We went out with our nature backpack ready to explore. We spotted some beautiful butterflies, a gorgeous spider waiting on its web for its next meal, and at least one mother deer and fawn. I challenged the boys to pick a tree to identify and they selected a sweetgum. We all pulled out our nature notebooks and did a quick sketch of the tree and later looked it up to read more about it. All-in-all, Nature Study was a great ending to our first homeschool week.