Wooden Valley Homeschool Academy

I was inspired by a chapter in Children of the Noisy Village and it being chick season (and seeing chicks at the farm supply store) to do a egg/chick unit study. We got some books from the library: A Chick Grows Up by Pam Zollman and  Hatching Chicks in Room 6 by Caroline Arnold coloring the chick life cycle pictures. Checking out the membrane looking for the chalazae We printed some free coloring pages , label egg parts   label chicken parts and life cycle pages from the google, and watched Magic School Bus Cracks a Yolk .  (also on Netflix ) We of course had to crack open some eggs to examine (and cook them for dinner). Since the air pocket is on the big end, we were careful to crack in the middle to be able to examine the air pocket. This is a great video about how chicks breathe on YouTube Ellie also got out her microscope and remembered she had a foul feather slide in one of her sets and examined it. *any amazon li...

I decided for the sake of my own thought process, to split South America into sections. We started in the Amazon Rain Forest. (we later moved to the Andes mountains) The BYL curriculum has a lot of the stories we read when we focused on Central America listed for literature, so I wanted to find something else for the Amazon. Here is what we did: We LOVED Journey to the River Sea  Which is a great story of an English orphan girl sent to live with a relatives in Menaus on the Amazon River. I found  this free discussion guide  to go along with the book. Read: Magic Tree House Afternoon on the Amazon Which was a great quick introduction to the layers of the rain forest and a few animals, but the storyline was meh. Somewhere I learned that Pink River Dolphins are a think and only live in the Amazon, so we got some books from the library Journey of the Pink Dolphins Pink River Dolphins (Jungle Babies of the Amazon) (this was a great simple book th...

I wanted to study more of Central America  before moving from Mexico to South America in Build Your Library.  I got the audiobook: Island Treasures   which is mostly set in Cuba and one of the early chapters talks about old an young coconuts, so we picked up one of each at the grocery store.  After googling videos on how to open each kind, we got them open and taste tested the water, young slime  I mean meat, and the old meat: Some other books we used: Tales Our Abuelitas Told Martina Martinez and Perez the Mouse: Cuba/Puerto Rico  Martina the Beautiful Cockroach Juan Bobo  Puerto Rica (and all over) For a great chapter book that includes many different Central America countries and family history, we loved  Salsa Stories The Jolly Mon With this book we also listed to this Jimmy Buffet song and some Bob Marley Music  More Books:  Dear Deer! Said the Turtle - Ca...

So we planned North America out so that we could be studying Mexico during Dia De Los Muertos  Some of the books we used:   Elena's Serenade This is a book about a girl who is told she cannot become a glass blower, so we also found some videos of glass blowing in Mexico on YouTube.  Grandmothers Song The Tooth Fairy Meets El Raton Perez Nino's Mask  Tortillitas para Mamá and Other Nursery Rhymes (Bilingual Edition in Spanish and English) Uncle Monarch and The Day of the Dead This pairs nicely with the Flight of the Butterfly documentary we watched when we learned about Canada: We also made a day of the dead altar craft from a book we got from the library and watched  Book of Life    while we ate some take-out Mexican food.  For another craft, we found paper flowers plans in a multicultural craft book I had: Basically we just raided the tissue paper gift wrap stash and cut blo...

So I LOVE organizing, I love sorting and filing and color coding and planning. But I am not so great at the implementing of the systems that I create or envision. I HAVE however found this workbox system to help a lot! I bought this organizer rack: This was easy to assemble and seems plenty sturdy enough for our purposes. I did insert the drawers in rainbow order because you gotta love Roy G. Biv! I love that it has 10 drawers for Ellie (7) and 5 bigger drawers for Penny (4) I can put a number puzzle in Penny's math drawer and assignments for Ellie in her matching color drawer. Penny's bins are larger to fit games and more toy-like activities. Red is Math Orange is writing and reading. I have her pick a few books she can read (mostly) on her own each Sunday. Green is science Blue is social studies/geography/history Purple is poetry and art. Since we have 2 of each color, I thought of having her put her finished work in the second drawer of each color, s...

Last olympics I was thinking how it would have beeen cool to turn it into a homeschool lesson. This book has taken the work out of all that for us!!  Winter Games Activity Book 

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