We’ve officially completed our first homeschool unit. It was a blast! Jemma tells everyone “I go to homeschool and at homeschool we learned about SEALS! And next, we’re learning about LOVE!” She is eager to learn and that makes things really easy on me.
I wanted to recap what we did over the last few weeks. I’m sure in the months and years to come I’ll laugh at the simplicity of our first unit study. Then again, seals and the ocean will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the very beginning of our many lessons together.
Now, why the ocean? Well, I scooped up a Groupon for the Seattle Aquarium in December. So, with a pending family field trip I decided we would focus on ocean life before our adventure. Easy enough, huh?
Here’s a collaboration of my resources and our projects …
Once I decided on our ocean life theme, I hopped online and placed a number of holds on books at our local library. These were our favorites:
For activities, I printed off this seal coloring page and we put our own spin on this easy arctic animals walrus craft. We’ve been practicing scissor use and safety so our jellyfish were quite the hit too. The best part about crafts is that, thanks to my former scrapbooking life, I have tons and tons of paper tucked away. Our projects don’t turn out exactly like the example, but we’re using what we have and our creations have a pretty fun flair to them!
One of my favorite parts about homeschooling is how we can go beyond worksheets and do more hands-on activities. We made homemade goldfish crackers together because seals eat fish :) Except for we didn’t have a fish cookie cutter so we used our Noah’s ark set. And once they cooled we used them as counters on a fish worksheet.
Outside of our unit study activities we’ve been practicing tracing, writing the letter “J” and recognizing and verbally spelling her name. At night we read The Jesus Storybook Bible
and took special attention to read the story of Jonah a few times. Jemma’s Sunday school class focuses on a memory verse each month with signs/motions and for January we’ve been practicing Matthew 19:26, “With God, all things are possible.”
and took special attention to read the story of Jonah a few times. Jemma’s Sunday school class focuses on a memory verse each month with signs/motions and for January we’ve been practicing Matthew 19:26, “With God, all things are possible.”I also picked up a Brain Quest workbook at Costco. Jemma thought it looked awesome because of the panda on front :) It’s a little old for her, but there are definitely pages she can do herself after I read the directions. It’s something we can grow into for sure.
I mixed in a few educational and just for fun technology pieces with our ocean theme. First off, the Over in the Ocean Book App from Dawn Publications and of course, Finding Nemo :) The app is great! Max even enjoyed reading and counting along with us. And it sparked lots of questions. Always questions :)
My other two go-to apps are Write My Name and Endless Alphabet.
Best of all was our field trip to the Seattle Aquarium. The whole family went and mama got an amazing gyro at Pike’s Place afterwards.
Next up we’ll be prepping for Valentine’s Day with some love projects and then, a unit on safety! Can you guess what our field trip will be?
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can i just say, my favorite thing about this post was the slide in the background of the photo in the kitchen. that just made me smile.
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