A Net in Time

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Amanda Bennett Unit Studies

April 13 – What we did today

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Today we did some work on the Mother’s day unit study done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.. We did a copywork sheet on Genesis 3:20. We had the fun of discovering the Go Fish Guys.

We did days one and two. If you want to know more Click here to view more details.

We learned the history of Mom’s day, the lad drew some pictures, did some copywork, saw what the flower of mother’s day was (the carnation), and took in some geography as well. He had a great deal of fun making me a mom’s day card. 🙂 The lad’s response to day one and two of this study “I liked drawing the card for you mommy but I didn’t like the rest of it.”

Then we had lunch and headed off to the library.

We got out a whole bunch of new books and had fun playing trains. We added a twist to the train play today…we took pieces of the toddler puzzles (animal shapes) and had them in the train area. The pigs had a zoo and the angry birds broke down the walls and well…the animals all got out. The pigs rebuilt the zoo and to compensate themselves for having to rebuild started over-charging the animals for their food so the animals all went out and got jobs. It was a fun story that taught concepts as well. 🙂

Out to the park for a walk afterwards. We had a good time walking around the pond. We saw a goose on eggs and two muskrats eating grass and watched them dive into the pond through a hole in the ground. Then we saw a white thing in the water. It made us VERY curious so we tried to get it onto the shore… as we moved it we saw that it was an egg! We tried hard to bring it in but the soil at the side of the pond has a edge to it so we lost it under that edge. 🙁 Made us both disappointed. The lad said “NEXT TIME MOMMY. Let me do it!” So we spent some more time trying to locate more eggs…goose, duck, bird …anything eggs, but no such luck, but a good time had tramping around the pond looking hard for them and scaring up ducks and geese as we went.

Then home to make supper and to relax. A good day overall. 🙂

Israel, Day Two

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This video is a bit long, but I like it better as an overview of Bethlehem than the one provided to us. 🙂

Did you know that salt isn’t always white? (yeah, I didn’t know that either, neither did the boy child). Here’s more info on salt.

We learned about the dugong (sea cow or siren of the sea), about Bethlehem, the dead sea. We had fun doing an experiment with salt (that’s my favourite part mommy), and did some drawing. A good study time this afternoon.

This study is part of Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. called Expedition Israel. This is part of the Expedition Series, this is where you can find all the titles in that series.

This morning we had gone to bible study/story hour.

Review: expedition Israel

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Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. has given us a new study called Expedition Israels. This is part of the Expedition Series, this is where you can find all the titles in that series.

You know, I expected my lad to enjoy this study as much as he did Expedition Ireland, but it wasn’t as much of a hit. not sure why…other than the Canaan Dog on the first day…hmm… Perhaps that’s what caused him to not want to go further with it, or maybe it was just that we had a crazy busy week and he needed downtime (playtime more than he needed book/computer work). I suspect the latter more than the former. So bear that in mind as I do this review. 🙂

We completed one day.. Day One. We got Day Two done!

This is how the days are laid out for Study
Day 1: Where on Earth Is Israel?
Day 2: Some of the Special Places in Israel
Day 3: A Bit of History
Day 4: Cool Things to Know About Israel
Day 5: Fun and Games in Israel

I have to admit, we did have some good learning go on with Day One.
We read books, had fun finding Israel on a map and we even looked up different ways to get there from where we live… by boat and by plane. AND even going by plane/boat and driving by vehicle. So it was quite interesting. I have plans to do at least one, perhaps two more days this upcoming week. To my son’s chagrin the animal of the day was a dog.. “I DON”T LIKE DOGS MOMMY!” But we did have fun learning if we could pick up said dog… we decided it would be easy for mommy, but not so easy (but still doable) for a five year old as long it was a smaller one and didn’t move.

Just so what do you get with a DownloadN’Go study published by Amanda Bennett Unit Studies? You get a pack with everything well laid out for you. You get child friendly graphics, Vocabulary, lapbook activities, note booking activities, tons of videos to watch and actually SEE what you are talking/learning about, a variety of different types of activities so you aren’t doing the same thing over and over again. They are quite interesting to do.

These lesson cover all sorts of subject areas: history, geography, science, math, english, arts, religion and more. They are well done studies and I enjoy doing them.

Here’s a pic so you can see:
Once again, Expedition Israel is well worth your time to check out. This lesson contains the following: a geographic feature of the day, animal of the day, food of the day, a daily hero of Israel, Biblical events, and a Hebrew word of the day. We are planning this coming week to have the grandparents up for an Israeli meal. Should be fun to do that. 🙂

I do need to mention that I was given a copy of this study so that I could give you my honest review of it. To visit more reviews on Expedition Israel, please follow the thumbnails below.

Israel and having fun tracing shapes

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Today for breakfast we read through two books we got out on Israel.

A is for Abraham by Richard Michelson.

In this book we learned about the Sh’ma that Jewish children learn. We decided that learning it would not be a bad thing. So I made a copywork sheet of it for the lad to copy and we’ll be learning it over the next week.

We also read “Count your way through Israel” by Jim Haskins.


the lad asked lots of questions with this book and did some counting.
he was quite intrigued by the fact that the people of Israel have made the desert productive
AND they brought the leopard/jaguar back!

The basis of our study will be the DownloadNGo unit study created by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. It is called Expedition Israel.

While I prepared the study my son had fun tracing out shapes from some templates that I recently picked up from the dollar store. Just another way to increase his awareness of different ways that people can be artists. 🙂 Fun and learning.

we enjoyed this site when studying Israel.

We had fun trying to see if we could lift up a Canaan dog. The result : yes…but it would be really really hard if you are a five year old boy weighing in a 52 lbs (and only a small dog at that). 🙂

We read a couple more books during lunch about Israel.

Israel by Kristin Thoennes


This was a very informative book.
Lots of pictures and text that fit well with it.

Cooking the Israeli Way


This book just intrigues us as to what to make for our Israeli dinner next week.
Though when shown a picture of a felafal the lad went “ew”. 🙂
So perhaps we won’t make that. 🙂

After lunch it was time to clean house, play the keyboard (working on learning ‘rejoice rejoice’), and play computer games. Today it was doing a memory game, a cat discovery game and building a pizza. When that was done we went for a walk on this lovely sunny day.

Up in the air…with the greatest of ease..I saw a Kite

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Kite Capers was our main unit study of the past two weeks, day one and Days 2 and 4. Kite Capers has been developed by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. Kite Capers captured my son’s imagination. To learn more about Kite Capers click here to view more details. It is an excellent study.


One of the fun moments I have as a homeschooling mom is seeing how my son puts to use the information that he learns. Part of the history aspect of kite capers was learning what one of the first uses of kites was. A man name Han Hsing (or something like that..just going from memory here) was attacking a city and he wanted to know how far to dig a tunnel. So we drew pictures of him flying his kite over the city. We acted out the digging of the tunnel and just had a blast learning about this part of kite history. Then he went to my mom and dad’s for a couple of days. When we got there the VERY FIRST thing he did was set up a city and then had an enemy attack that city using a kite.

“How big a tunnel does he have to dig buddy?” I asked
The very excited response was “10 miles mommy! He has to dig 10 miles!”

I LOVE seeing him excited. I LOVE knowing what he remembers.

It’s winter where we live so flying a kite isn’t on our immediate agenda but we stopped at a store to see what treat/toy the lad could buy with his rabbit money and we spotted a couple kits (packed together, inexpensive) and I heard “MOMMY!!! Diamond kites!” So well…of COURSE we had to get them. So now Daddy has a big kite to fly (from last year) and I have a delta and the lad has a diamond kite. I think we’ll have fun this year. 🙂

Each DownloadN’Go unit is a complete unit study designed for grades K-4, not saying you can’t revamp a bit if you have older children. There are 5 days of lessons – which can be done as separate days, or combined two into one, or extending a day as you take small rabbit trails. In Kite Capers you will find the following plan of action:

Day 1: What Is a Kite?
Day 2: The History of Kites
Day 3: Kite People and Places
Day 4: Science Secrets of Kites
Day 5: Goodies and Gadgets of Kites

We didn’t do the entire study, after all…it’s March Break up this way and little boys need to play and get to know their grandparents. 🙂

I particularly enjoyed going through the section on Wind. Learning what my boy knew, helping him to expand his knowledge and use new words. It always interesting to learn just what your child knows. 🙂

If you want to know more Click here to visit Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. You can read more blog reviews by going here.

As part of the the Download N Go review team, I have been provided with a copy of this unit to use, review, and post about on my blog.

Kites Again :)

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worked on Day Two and Day Four of Kite Capers from DNG. Made a sheet to go with it from here. The actual page is made is here.
 Published by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

cool to learn fact

Andre Cassagne designed a series of ring kites to celebrate the Olympics. He is the best known kitemaker in France and the original inventor of the Etch-a-Sketch.

The lad drew and coloured and learned some geography and science and history. It was a good lesson for him today…even though both of us a dog-tired and highly distractable as a result.

Kites

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the twisting box kit was just fascinating.


the lad thought this was rather cool to see. “it looks like a dragon mommy!”


justin likes the cat one

Can you tell what the theme was for this afternoons study?

yes indeed, we undertook the study of Kites. We did Day One from Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett on Kites. Click here to view more details

We had fun. We got a bit hung up watching various videos with kites in them. Just kept following the links from one to the next. There are some quite neat kites out there. 🙂

We looked at Charlie Brown’s mistake with kites, What makes a kite, and talked about wind and how it makes a kite work. The lad surprised me with just how much he knew about wind and lift. (good for a mom to be surprised). 🙂

Looking forward to doing more of this study on Friday.