The Early 19th Century

This year we are continuing our American History Time Travelers' study from Homeschool in the Woods.  It is divided into 7 units.  We covered 3 last year (along with a Presidential Election study), and this year we are planning to cover the remaining 4!  We began with The Early 19th Century in the summer actually.  One of the girls' summer projects was reading Little House in the Big Woods.  Lyndsey used Pockets of Time for story comprehension and Lauren created lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share for each chapter to explain the details of the chapter.  Lauren even built a log cabin with popsicle sticks!

I found them many times re-inacting the scenes from the book or just enjoying the simpler life!

For our study, we read many living history books to go along with each lesson from the Time Travelers' series.  The girls completed lapbook pieces for each lesson and many other things to include in their "treasure notebook for the year.

:::Additional Books:::

American Slave, American Hero: York of the Lewis & Clark Expedition

The Lewis & Clark Expedition ( A TRUE Book)

A Picture Book of Sacagawea

A Picture Book of Lewis & Clark

Francis Scott Key and "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Francis Scott Key's Star-Spangled Banner (Step into Reading)

The War of 1812

The Josefina Story Quilt

By the Great Horn Spoon

The Trail of Tears (Step into Reading)

What was the Gold Rush?

If you Traveled West in a Covered Wagon

America The Beautiful

Apples to Oregon

A Picture Book of Davy Crockett

The California Gold Rush (A TRUE Book)

The Amazing impossible Erie Canal

The Long Way Westward

Trouble for Lucy

Wagon Wheels

:::Additional Activities:::

We spent a little extra time on the Lewis & Clark Expedition.  It was an adventure in faith for these men to go and explore an unknown land.  There were so many different levels to present this Corp of Discovery Expedition!

Corn Husk Dolls

A Praire Wagon

Wheat Weaving

Lauren built a White House with nano blocks!

:::Early 19th Century Lapbook:::

 

The Barbary Pirates, Inventions of the Early 19th Century, The Famous Duel, Everything You can take in a Covered Wagon, The Erie Canal, The White House, An Indian Story Bag, The War of 1812, Presidents 1-12, and Maps to Show the Growth of the United States.  These lapbooks are a lot of work, but a good reminder of the topics we study!

With each lesson, we added the appropriate timeline figures to our Early 19th Century Timeline on the wall.

This was an amazing, fun unit!  I cannot believe that we are enjoying history this much!

We finished our unit with a movie night.  We watched Seven Alone.  It is a true story from 1842 about a family traveling from Missouri to Oregon.  It is an OLD movie so the filming was not great, but the story was perfect!  Everyone enjoyed it and cried when the kids made it to Oregon!

Fall Tennis Tournaments

Tyler and Corynne have been traveling the USTA tournaments since school started.  They have kept us busy!

Pell City 

September 7th

 Tyler - 18s Singles Champion & Doubles Champion

Maggie & Corynne - 16s Doubles Champions

 Wynlakes Country Club

September 28th

Tyler - 18s Singles Champion

Montgomery Country Club

October 12th

Tyler- 18s Singles Champion 

Pioneer Days

The girls and I went to the Pioneer Days in Troy today.  I am loving how I am finding field trips that match up to what we are studying in history.  We are studying the Early 19th Century, and this ties everything up with a living history lesson!

Everyone had a friend on this field trip.  We watched a cowboy show and toured a school house and general store.

We saw the military camps and learned how the woman kept the house and prepared the food.

It was a wonderful day of learning.  It was definitely worth the drive!

State-by-State: Nevada - Texas - California

Over the last few weeks we have visited a few states in our state-by-state geography study.  We started in California while we were studying the Gold Rush of 1849 in our American History course.

G is for the Golden State,

named for the gold they mine,

and some say for the rolling hills

that turn brown in summertime.

from G is for Golden: A California Alphabet

We had so much fun in California!  We read many books about the Gold Rush and the pioneers move westward.  Then the girls created their scrapbook pages and lapbook.

Our next stop was in Nevada.

H is for Hoover Dam,

stell, strong, and might.

Gives us water and power

every day and night.

from S is for Silver:  A Nevada Alphabet

The girls read about the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, the Black Opal, and more in our books.  Then they completed their scrapbook pages and lap book.

Next we flew over to Texas for a Texas-sized adventure.  We read about Big Tex, Dr. Pepper, San Antonio and the Alamo with our history study, the yellow rose and the "Rose Capital of the World".  It was a fun state to study because we know many people who live in the big state of TEXAS!!!!

F is for Friendship---

we extend our hand to you.

this is our state motto---

please accept our friendship too.

from L is for Lone Star:  A Texas Alphabet

"Texas" comes from an indian word, "tejas."  this means friends.  Texas is "big" and welcomes everyone to the state with a "big" heart!  The girls worked on their scrapbook pages and lapbook throughout the week.

We finally made it to the kitchen to cook and decided to combine all these states for one yummy meal!  For sunny California, we made California Lemon Crunch from Eat Your Way Through the USA.  California grows more lemons and broccoli than any other state.  

Nevada farmers grow lots of onions.  It is one of their main crops along with alfalfa, garlic, and potatoes.  We decided to make onion rings.  They were yummy, but a lot of work and mess! Lauren kept the onion rings going for us in the Fry Daddy.

For Texas, we chose Chicken Fried Steak.  Texas raises more beef cattle than any other state.  Chicken Fried Steak is one of Papa's favorite meals.  He even used to order it at Mexican restaurants!  Lyndsey helped batter the steaks before we fried them!  This was actually a first for mommy also.  I really have never fried chicken or steak before.  The steaks did turn out very yummy!

It all comes together for a delicious feast!  These pictures were hard to take around the disaster that the kitchen became during this cooking class!!!

Two girls were quite proud of their work tonight!  I am glad dad made it home to enjoy all their efforts!

La & Ly Fall Vball

When I did't let the girls sign-up for dance this year, I promised them that they would get to do other sports.  I am not so sure that was a good promise to make, but the fall is the easiest time for me to fit one more thing into the schedule!  Well, that would be 2 girls on different teams with a couple of practice times and games--not exactly ONE more thing on the calendar!!!

They decided to try volleyball.  Lyndsey has never played and it has been almost 2 years since Lauren last played.  I decided to sign them up at the CCJ because it is closer to our house than the YMCA team.  I also had this wild dream that they might have practice at the same time as Corynne's school games which are at the CCJ.  I know--it was a WILD dream!  It never happened, but the schedule seemed doable most days!

Lyndsey was one of the youngest on her team, but she played each game with determination!  She finally got her serve over on the next to last game.  I was so proud of her that I popped out of my chair when that ball went over the net!!  Then, she did it 3 more times that rotation!!!!  She also nailed a few serves the last game!  She worked so hard on her serve, and I am so happy that she got a little reward (team point) before the season was over!  Her team won their division for the fall season, and they got the awesome lime green CHAMPION shirts!

Lauren, at the age of 10, was also the youngest on her team.  There team struggled in the beginning to pull everything together.  They won a few games (no match wins), and they practiced good sportsmanship!!!  Lauren worked on serving consistently, and she did a great job returning the ball when it came her way.  She was disappointed that her team did not do better.  Most of that disappointment probably came from Lyndsey's team success :( 

Geography Fair

Last year we attended the Homeschool Geography Fair.  I was a bit overwhelmed and did not want to do anything without "seeing it done" first.  The girls and I went to scope out "how-to-participate"!  This year we jumped in with both feet!  The girls chose Australia to report on this year.  It was one of their favorite "continent studies" that we did last year, so I was not surprised.  We started on our board at the beginning of the school year.  We actually took most of the stuff with us to an out-of-town tennis tournament and worked on it at the hotel.  It was a great use of a lot of dead time that we normally have at Tyler's tournaments.  It gave the girls something productive to do while Tyler played his matches.  I think it turned out awesome!

Lauren also built the Sydney Opera House using the Architecture Lego Kit.  This was her VERY first lego project, and she loved it!  We really have not had legos in our house.  Tyler was never a lego fan, and maybe that was my fault because they seemed over-whelming to me!!!

No geography fair project is complete without a sample food item.  We prepared mini wrapped Australian sausage rolls from a food.com recipe.  The girls did a great job making them, and they were a success at the fair.  They were gone fast!!! 

 At the geography fair, the girls took turns standing by their Australia board and answering questions.  If they were not at their display, they traveled around sampling food and collecting passport stamps while trying to answer the mystery questions for each country.  At the end of the evening, they gathered together to see if they answered the questions correctly!

Coosa River Science School with Dad

 We had a great day at the very impressive 4-H center near Sylacauga at Coosa River Science School.  Lauren spent the day flirting (I mean learning) with the company and assistance of boys in the rugged outdoors.  Lyndsey was her typical ball of energy and thankfully didn't catch fire in either the fire-starting station or the bonfire.  All was good except when they were assigned to the same team in shelter building and Lauren unsuccessfully tried to take control (and that Dad didn't pack enough snacks and we had to "borrow" from friends).  Overall, we had a good hands-on outdoor learning experience.