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We really enjoyed our study of this book. At convention a couple weeks ago I had one mom say she didn’t enjoy it. I asked why and she said that they kept feeling like what else bad was going to happen to him. He does have a lot of bad things happen but I love the way he reacted to those things! We don’t hear the whining, complaining and cry of “unfair” that is so typical of our day, to me that was refreshing!
What I also loved about the book was that anytime he wanted to learn something he started a notebook. He didn’t wait for someone to teach him, he dug in himself and with lots of hard work accomplished what he set out to do! What homeschool mom can’t appreciate that!
We did this one as a read aloud with Daddy so that alone makes it a special one for us. We read in the evenings and often got ahead or behind but it was worth it to have Daddy reading to the kids.
For our study using the Total Language Plus study guide we chose to have the boys do reports on the life of Nathaniel Bowditch. There’s not a lot of information out there but they each did about two page reports including a picture of Mr. Bowditch (which they thought looked funny!) Here’s some links we used to help us research: http://www.salemweb.com/tales/bowditch.shtml http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/nathanielbowditch.html
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Bowditch.html
The other pen and paper assignment we chose to focus on was #9 on investments. My husband belongs to an investment club so this is an area he’s really into. He formed a club with the kids and they are doing actual investing in the market so this will be an ongoing project for them. Over the summer we also plan on reading, Whatever Happened to Penny Candy and using the study guide for that to further look into Economics. (see blog entry for more info.)
Part of the reason we chose to do Carry on Mr. Bowditch was that is was a recommended reader with our science this year. Because of that we chose our projects to focus on the astronomy questions 13-16. We were able to go to the Creation Museum this past fall and visit the planetarium, which I highly recommend. With our science curriculum we are going through all the planets (#16). I really love it when I can “cross” our curriculums and get more done with less time. I think it really connects things for the kids too!
The mapping #11 on this one will take a little research with an almanac. A good outline map of the world can be found here http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/world_phys.pdf . We found it interesting to look at New England because we’re familiar with many of the places mentioned. My husband is from Rhode Island and the Block Island (where Bowditch is blown to) ferry leaves from Galilee, Rhode Island where we buy lobster off the boats in the summer. Here’s one if you want to do the New England part, http://gonewengland.about.com/library/coloring/xnewenglandmap.htm .
If you care to try hardtack as suggested in project #5 look here for a recipe http://kenanderson.net/hardtack/recipes.html . We did that one with Rifles for Watie and thought once was enough! Hardtack is so yummy after all. (You know I'm kidding, right!?)
Well, I hope you will enjoy Carry On Mr. Bowditch as much as we did.
Gina | 
