Sep. 21, 2006 - We have been doing school... really! (+Book & movies reviews)

I just can not seem to find the time to post!

We're down to one computer, and with five kids doing a subject or two each on the computer, and my ebay stuff, I don't get very much time on it myself!

Anyway ~ we're studying Determination, now working a little on Bridge building.  I got a book at the library called "Building Bridges with Toothpicks."  That has the cooledt activities in it.  We watched the "Modern Marvels" on the Golden Gate Bridge and it was SO fascinating!  (I love Netflix!!)  All of the Modern Marvel dvd's that we've watched have been fantastic.  The kids usually watch them again later because they love them so much!:)

It also made us curious about some other aspects of American History, such as The Great Depression.  We're going to kind of segway into that next... well actually, we're going to start with Ellis Island.

I happened upon a book about Ellis Island once our last read aloud was done, so we started reading that.  I have some relatives who came through there, so we're finding that interesting to read this person's experience. 

Speaking of which, we read a book called Red Midnight by Ben Mikaelsen.  It was AMAZING.  The kids absolutely LOVED it beyond belief.  It is the story of a 12 year old boy and his 4 year old sister living in Guatemala.  The book starts in Guatemala during the times of unrest between the soldiers and the guerillas.  One or the others burns down their village, killing their entire family, but they manage to escape.  The story follows their escape out of Guatemala, and across the Gulf of Mexico on a cayuco to Florida.  It was an absolute thrill ride, the author did a wonderful job of making you feel that you were listening to this boy walk you through his adventure ever day.

Now I'm looking ahead for our next read aloud.  We may do Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, but I'm not sure yet.  I also need to find Kainan a reading book that will really catch him, and stretch him a little to improve his reading skills.  Both of the boys have taken a breather from their "harder" books to read An Ecological Mystery  (There are several titles, they're each reading a different one) by Jean Craighead George.  They are really interesting mystery stories that help teach science and ecological facts through the fictional story.  Jaedin loves them, Kainan, not so much, but then, he really doesn't seem to want to read much of anything other than Encyclopedia Brown!