A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Unit Study

Passport UK SCOUT – review

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Today we worked on our review for Passport UK – we did the Scout version which is for children in K-6. This study is produced by unit studies by amanda bennett.

We chose to do Scotland today as we’ve studied some of the other countries in this series before. The other days include: An Overview of the United Kingdom, and then individual days England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

when I told the lad we were going to learn about puffins I got a huge YEAH!!!!

We did some copywork of Psalm 147:8. We used this site to generate a copywork sheet.

He covers the heavens with clouds, provides rain for the earth, and makes the grass grow in mountain pastures. (new living translation)

We learned about puffins, the loch ness monster, geographic points of interest and much much more. It was a very interesting study, just not as hands on as six year old prefer.

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the videos. There is such an abundance of links that it is fascinating to see all these different things.

Each day is jammed packed with scripture, maps, interesting points of interest, very important people, culture, science, a creature feature, and family fun projects. I really wish I could have copy and pasted from the study to my word program. It makes things easier for being able to minimize paper printing and to be able to formulate writing and drawing papers for my lad.

I have to admit, I’ve never done one of the passport studies before. I was expecting something along the lines of the DownloadN’Go Studies as that’s what I’ve come to expect from Amanda Bennett unit studies. And I was initially disappointed to not have the similarity, but as I got into it we saw that it was quite indepth and varied, and it spawned conversation and interest. I do wish it was a bit more user friendly. I was expecting graphics and things to cut and paste and circle and more of a unit study approach, so I was disappointed by that. I did like the lapbooking materials that can be found at the end of the e-book. My lad enjoyed putting together the small booklet on the puffin. 🙂 BUT he NEVER likes colouring in maps. he just doesn’t so we normally just look for it on the large map and then just outline it. 🙂 We then add points of interest to it.

I was impressed with the amount of information provided. You can take a peak inside of it by going here. 🙂

It’s a good study, just wasn’t quite what I was expecting. 🙂 I would encourage you to go out and get one. Seriously… it contains a good deal of solid information that is varied enough to promote conversation between teacher and student. It has a few lapbooking elements in it which makes it a bit more hands on for a younger child.

It was overall an excellent study. 🙂 we had some fun figuring out how much 17.5 oz is (the weight of a puffin). 14 hot wheels, three bananas, and so on. good study.

Having done Scotland today we decided to do a scottish meal for supper. We’ll have scottish oatcakes, fish, and I choosing to doing something not particularly scottish because I have a six year old somewhat skeptical lad.. PEAS! (he’ll eat those for sure). 🙂

Guess what! I got this message from Amanda Bennett Unit Studies!

We are happy to offer ALL your readers a gift – a unique code just from your blog, for 50% off this study for 7 days after we activate the code. We really want to reward ALL your readers, and not just one lucky winner.

The code is this: GetUK12. So here or go directly here and give them the code and you’ll get 50% off just for reading my review! Pretty cool eh? 🙂 At least that’s what I think!

disclaimer: i got a copy of this study for my free and honest evaluation of it. it did not influence my opinion of the study in any way. 🙂

Chocolate Continued…..

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Chocolate Challenge

Today we continued our study of the DownloadNGo unit study/lapbook on CHOCOLATE! The lad’s reaction when I told him what we were going to study was “YEAH!!” This study is done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

The outline of this study is as follows.
Day 1: Chocolate – What Is It?
Day 2: The Story of Chocolate
Day 3: The Types of Chocolate
Day 4: The Science of Chocolate
Day 5: Let’s Have a Chocolate Party!

Today we took large chunks from days 3-5. We can’t get it all done today since we need to get Chocolate for our chocolate party. But we’ve got good plans.

We learned about the process for making chocolate, we had fun visiting our neighbours and calling family to fill in our Chocolate graph, found countries on our globe and world map, and learned a bit about fractions and using a ruler.

The chocolate car above inspired a “WOW!!! Mommy! I want to sit in it!”

a good study

Carnations and more

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Over the past two weeks we took some time to study Mother’s Day. This Mother’s day unit study was done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.. Here is day one/two and day three/four.

I have to admit…I was feeling somewhat reticent about studying Mother’s Day but chose to do so because I’m often surprised at what details are pulled out of studies that I never expected. This study, though not a favourite of either me or my son, was no different than studies I’ve undertaken in the past. To my surprise, I actually learned something, and at times was able to take an unappreciated study and turn elements of it into something my son appreciated. 🙂

For instance I learned why on Mother’s Day a carnation is given to each lady in our church. The carnation is actually the flower of Mother’s day. Bet YOU didn’t know that either.

My son had fun learning abit about different countries and seeing where they are on the map. He particularly seemed to enjoy figuring out what different countries looked like (aka Italy looks like a boot) and then looking for them. Scotland had us fooled for a while since it wasn’t colour-coded or labelled very well on our world map.

We had fun finding countries, we found it interesting that it’s not hosted on the same day all over the world, we found it boring that it’s basically done the same where-ever you go.

Each day has a theme.
Day 1: What Is Mother’s Day? Day 2: The History of Mother’s Day Day 3: Celebrating Mother’s Day Day 4: Preparing for Mother’s Day Day 5: Goodies for Mother’s Day
My son had fun drawing cards for me and for his gramma. I liked that I was able to forego looking up some words in the dictionary and through questions help my lad figure out what words meant.I had a firm appreciation for how scripture was brought into play with this lesson. Helping my son sehttp://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gife how God used women in the lives of the men he did great works through was interesting.All in all, this study was well-done and I would encourage anyone interested in learning more of why this Mother’s Day holiday was started to check it out.I received a copy of this lapbook/unit study in exchange for my fair and honest review.

more reviews can be found here.

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

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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.

Snow Day

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We were supposed to go to Gymnastics this morning. But since we had two feet of snow today with continuing squalls. Gymnastics was cancelled.

We played in the snow this morning instead. 🙂 Digging, sliding, and just having fun.
Then we made cookies. They were good. 🙂

These are the cookies that we made (we cut the recipe in half)

Oneta Lyon’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups softened butter
2 2/3 cup brown sugar
2 2/3 cup white sugar
4 large eggs
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
24 ox chocolate chips
2 cup flour
4 cup flour
nuts are optional

Cream butter and sugars. Beat eggs, add salt, b.soda and vanilla.
combine the above ingredients and slowly add remaining ingredients. Mixture will be fairly stiff.
Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased and floured cookie sheet. NOTE I couldn’t drop them. I just rolled small balls and put them on the cookie sheet – secondary note: parchment paper is LOVELY to use as are those silicone cookie sheets.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Do not overbake. NOTE: I found 14 minutes to be perfect, it gave me a mostly hard, but slightly chewy cookie.

Store in an airtight container with one slice of bread on top. This will keep the cookies fresh. Makes 8-9 dozen.

Munched on cookies rather than have lunch.

And then I got to work putting together a trains unit study. Not so much on trains, but using trains instead to teach basic kindergarten concepts. came from Currclick Trains mini lapbook.

we learned the sign for Train, and train gone. 🙂

and tiggers are wonderful things….

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Or in the eyes of one Five year old lad…NOT! Tiggers are NOT wonderful things. Tiggers get frowns thrown at them. 🙂

Today we did day five of the terrific tigers unit study. You can buy it from download N go right here. 🙂 OR from the Old Schoolhouse.

We had some fun doing the study today.

We learned about people stripes (finger prints) and we learned about pug marks. And that people have footprints (not pugmarks) and they like tigers, our footprints are different. We put our feet in water and stood on a piece of paper. We learned how they are the same, and how they are different. Just like every tiger’s stripes are different, so are every person’s finger prints different.

VERY fascinating. We managed two different ways of getting our finger prints. One was by using a fingerprint from one of the child ID places, and the other by taking pencil, rubbing it on some paper, rubbing our finger over the pencil marks and then taking a piece of tape to preserve the pencil rubbing off our fingers. The lad thought this was very cool.

We had a brief look at the Indochinese tiger today. and completely skipped the “tiggers” part of the study. That was just not a good thing. and Silly Odin… putting his head under the water! Doesn’t he know that tigers don’t like getting their heads wet!

A good study today, though a bit of a challenge at times to keep a lad’s focus on continuing the study…MUCH too intriguing to get finger and foot prints. 🙂