Wooden Valley Homeschool Academy

We found this book and got excited to find that Grandma travels the world similarly to "How to Make Apple Pie and See the World" we did in this post So after reading, it we changed out the map labels to go with this book. There was a handy chart in the back of the book that I photo copied for our map labels: We re-read the book and found the locations on our map and added the labels. The monarch butterfly sticker was added to Mexico when we watched Flight of the Butterflies ( which we watched again when studying Canada  The Statue of Liberty slider was added when we studied USA  *any amazon links are my affiliate links, if you buy anything after visiting my links I might get a very small commission, this does not cost you any extra

As a start of our Build Your Library Trip around the World, we started with USA We signed up for a postcard exchange to send and receive postcards from every state in USA  Made USA puzzle stick-up board.   We put the puzzle together on top of paper in a glass-less frame, and then we traced each state piece as we took them puzzle apart. Then I covered it with sticky-side-up clear contact paper. As we have received postcards from different states, we read about them and stick the coordinating puzzle piece up on the frame.  We read about the USA children in Children Just Like Me- Montana, Ohio, New Jersey, South Carolina and in  old Children Just Like Me  Alaska Chapter Books We Read:   Sign of the Beaver   Sign of the Beaver  The Birchbark House   The Birchbark House  Craft: "tanned hides" crumpled and wrinkled Manila envelopes up until they got soft and fabric-y. Sewed Native American Barbie doll dress.   Little House in the Big Woods  Sc

To start our trip around the world, we decided to first learn about our home state Oregon. This was perfect timing with the Oregon State Fair being in town. Called that a "field trip"! We also joined a postcard exchange, where we send postcards to other home-school families in 50 states (and in theory, get a postcard back from someone in each of the 50 states. First, we read: B is for Beaver and Goodnight Oregon  And we chose a fun fact about Oregon to write on the postcards that we send out. We found Oregon on our USA map, and found our town on the Oregon map, and found other places on the map that we had gone to recently with our camping trips and vacations. Marionberries were created here 61 years ago!

In addition to reading How to Make Apple Pie and See the World to kick off our Build Your Library Around the World Curriculum ,  We did some map and world activities.  Things we did: Drew a map to the park.   Drew maps of our house. Colored the World: Read the forest fire maps at ranger station at state fair.   Did Teach My Toddler Continents puzzle   Read   A House is a House for Me.   Me on a Map Family of Earth   The Around the World Lunch   There's a World in My House Around The World in 80 Days  And we reviewed some whole-earth pages from various atlases we have. 

As an introduction to our trip around the world with Build Your Library : we read  While we read it, the kids snacked on apples from our tree. We also found each location/ingredient on the world map in our giant atlas. Then Ellie drew each ingredient and labeled them so we could pin them to our wall map.  Science tie-in:   A few days later, we read the book again and did an apple taste test of each of every kind of apples the grocery store had:  Math tie in:  Ellie made charts for rating the taste of each apple on a scale from 1-10  American folk tale tie-in:  While snacking on each of our favorite apples, we watched the Johnny Appleseed chapter from Disney's American Legends Science and Math: A few days later, we examined apples, (found the magic star!) and made an apple pie!  For fun, we used this water bottle egg separating trick   While waiting for it to bake, we did some Parts of an Apple works

I love pairing books with activities and food. When I taught preschool I loved serving blueberries when reading Blueberries for Sal or Strawberries when reading The Little Mouse the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. So it was perfect when we read Ten Apples Up On Top with Apples in our lunch! We only successfully balanced 1 apple each, which was ok since we only had 3 apples to try with.

Book report for Aumsville PARC reading day camp.  Each week, we try to go to the summer day camp. One thing they do to encourage reading is give prizes if kids bring back a short book report.  We read: Shrek by William Steig   Ellie decided that the part she liked was the dream of the children with flowers in the meadow, which was actually a nightmare to the ogre.  She said the worst part was when Shrek's parents kicked him out. She does not recommend this book.

The Oregon Trail   In the car on the way to the library, when discussing various specialty license plates available in Oregon, Ellie's curiosity was sparked by the Oregon Trail plates. So in homeschooler fashion, we checked out some books about the Oregon Trail including: Daily Life in a Covered Wagon  and  Buffalo Gals And I remembered I had   Bound for Oregon  at home already.  Quote from Scholastic Book website: "Nine-year-old Mary Ellen Todd, filled with the pioneer spirit, treks cross country in 1852 with her family in search of a better life. The Todds survive Indians and swoll en rivers, but what will happen when mother has a new baby and winter arrives?" So we looked at some pages of Daily Life and read a bit about the example family. Then we started reading Bound for Oregon.   This helped to get some pictures in our minds of what exactly the wagons looked like and we even referred back to the Daily Life