Weekly Wrap Up: 4th of July Unit!

This week was pretty fun! We got to leave our curriculum behind and study our country's birthday. And we lived it up! Shhh dont tell the kids they were learning history, geography, and culture.

First, we started off with a couple books:



We received this book, If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution from another homeschool family and it was a great way to start out our 4th of July study. We didnt read the whole book, just the first few questions: Why did we go to war?, What was the Declaration of Independence?, and What did the King of England think of the Declaration of Independence?. This started our conversation about our freedom and the people that helped to fight for that freedom.



And then, we read Paul Revere's Ride-a great yard sale find :). This story is a classic, and is very well written, but I have to say it seemed to be hard to understand if you didnt already know the story. Charger fell asleep while we read it lol.



So then we watched Liberty's Kids' episode 'The First 4th of July.' Mustang LOVED it. The series is on Netflix and she has been begging me to watch all the episodes. Great way to spend a hot summer day-watching (and learning) history!!



We found the USA and England on our globe-Mini Cooper thought standing on the world was more fun.

We got hit with a crazy straight line storm-called a bow echo (I learned a lot this week). And thankfully, other then some crop damage, and a small cherry tree, or only loss was the internet for a couple of days (people in our area had damage to their homes, so we were very thankful). While we were without internet, I made a 4th of July printable pack that I put out on Tuesday. You can read about it here and here. It can be downloaded (FREE) here. We used my pack in addition to some great printables from 2 Teaching Mommies this week.

All of the adorable graphics in my pack came either from copyright free sources or from the package I purchased from Just So Scrappy.

Sensorial:




Poking toothpicks into floral foam. I got this idea from Counting Coconuts. She used real foam, a MUCH better idea. I have floral foam dust all over the classroom. It was a HUGE hit, either way! *this could be considered a pre-writing activity*



Clipping paper clips to the matching paper color.



The first to want to try this was Mini Cooper. I explained to her that she wasnt going to be able to do this tray, but she showed me that it can be more then a clipping activity-silly mommy. She went about simply laying the clips on the paper. She got every single one!



Mustang gave it a try as well, but Charger wouldnt touch it. It's interesting to see who wants to try what activities. One advantage to having 3 students, usually at least ONE person will try an activity so it's not a complete waste of time :).

Writing:


Charger had a lot of fun connecting the fireworks with this great printable from the 2 Teaching Mommies' pack. He also enjoyed covering the entire page with black marker afterwards. Hmph. LOL.






Another big hit-I found these patriotic cookie cutters at Walmart. I put them in a bin with white paper and colored pencils. The kids traced the cutters and colored in the pictures. Please excuse the black marker all over Charger's fingers...he worked on the fireworks matching page again this day, too.

Language:


Mustang worked on this 4th of July 3 part card set from my printable pack.



And then clipped the beginning sounds, also from my printable pack.



We played a rousing game of match the lowercase and uppercase letter stars. Mini Cooper was the winner, and she really impressed me when she was able to match the W's on her page without help! You can find 4 game boards and 24 letter stars in my printable pack.



Mini Cooper matched patriotic kids (my printable pack). This is a great pre-reading go together activity. Great for Tot School!



F is for Fireworks Magnet page from 2 Teaching Mommies. Obviously, this one was for Mini Cooper, but Mustang had a great time with it. Mini Cooper seems to be in the exploratory stage, Mustang in the mastery stage. I'm still not sure which stage Charger is at.

Math:


Charger counting a clipping cards from the 2 Teaching Mommies' pack. He really liked this one!



And after doing 'work' for awhile, the kids always seem to turn to our box of blocks. They build for a long time! I love watching them work together, and seeing the things they make. Charger built this tower and let Mini Cooper play with it.

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Mustang came up with this pattern on her own.




They also love to put our peg people from the Godly Play boxes in the train and give them rides (see the Tower of Babel guy riding with Eve?).

We are linked up at (or will be):






And at Montessori Mondays on One Hook Wonder.

Have an awesome 4th of July weekend!! God Bless you!!