One Child Policy Homeschool

March 5, 2009 - Panning for Gold Activity -- a Great End to American Story 1

We're officially finished with our Winter Promise American Story 1 curriculum! It was a great journey from PreColumbian times up to Westward Expansion. The Wild West and the Gold Rush really captured Sprite's attention, and we decided to do our panning for gold a bit early.

dry

This activity kit is actually part of the American Story 2 curriculum; obviously there is some overlap in the historical periods. But why wait? Dad, being from California, had some experience panning for gold, so he instructed Sprite in the basics.

panning for fools gold

Here's the fools gold.

fools gold

And here are silver, gold, and hematite chips. Panning for gold is quite a bit harder than it seems, especially when the reward is so very tiny. For a fun living book set during the Gold Rush I recommend By the Great Horn Spoon. The plot is full of twists and turns, and it ends with a great feel-good family message.

the gold

The new Winter Promise catalog is available for PDF download (or you can request a print copy), so if you're in the market for a literature based curriculum, give it a look over. I chronicled our study and all the extras we added here at WP AS1 Extras.

And it's that time of year when curricula providers issue their new catalogs, so if you want more "wish books", this link with Catalogs for Homeschoolers is still up to date. If your favorite catalog is not listed there, please suggest it, and I'll add it.

I told you that
the Wild West and the Gold Rush really captured Sprite's attention. This is how she was dressed one day this week!


 WILD WEST BANDANA

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March 30, 2008 - My Thoughts on Winter Promise

Since we began using and blogging Winter Promise, I've gotten a lot of questions via comments and email about this fairly new curriculum. I decided to go ahead and compile my thoughts onto a lens: Winter Promise versus Sonlight. I share my own observations about how these two excellent curricula are both different and similar. I'm not an "expert" curricula reviewer, but I'm a mom who has used both, so I felt it may help others for me to post my opinions. And (teeheehee) I can forward people to that webpage rather than retyping my answers over and over.

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March 7, 2008 - What to do With Crafts?

Yes, we do a lot of crafts! And you may be wondering how we handle all these projects in our small apartment. We have no closets, no attic, and very little space altogether.



So what can we do with 3-D projects like this? Well, to be honest, they get thrown away! But not before documenting them with photos. Then the photos are uploaded to Flickr where they can be kept safe forever. And we also blog them for a record. And as if that were not enough, I sometimes print out photos and add them to our notebook.

For example the WP notebook page for the Pueblo Indians was mostly text, with just a plain graphic. Not much for Sprite to do. And not at all engaging. So I printed out the photos of her 3-D project and let her select the most important paragraphs from the notebooking page. She designed this layout and came up with a much more engaging notebook page.



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March 5, 2008 - Winter Promise Crafts

Another Winter Promise entry. I've got several blog entries that I need to get published, so I'm posting a few from my drafts folder.


You know that Sprite is a super-crafty child! All the crafts included in our American Story curriculum are a wonderful fit for her! Not all children like crafts or benefit from them. But they work for us.









I love dioramas. They are so fun! And so realistic.


The leather medicine pouch was a discounted craft I found at Hobby Lobby. It fit in with our American Indian study perfectly!


A dear seamstress made this Indian costume for Sprite when we were in America. She is loving it! Here she is, posing before our USA map, a necessity for this curriculum!


Gold "coins" (beads) in her medicine pouch.

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March 5, 2008 - Lapbooking and Notebooking Combination

Some of the crafts in Winter Promise American Story 1  can be easily adapted into notebooking pages. This Zuni Pot is a great example. It was originally a pot page and a minibook. We put them together for a much more interesting lapbook styled notebook page.





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