Soaring to new heights with Flight!

This is our third flight unit.  My boys do better with shorter studies that repeat.  Some kids like to take 1/2 a year or the whole year and really dig in.  My boys like to dig, but also need time to process.  We have found that if we spread a unit out, we can pick up where we left off, continue to dig deeper every time, and they retain a lot more.  This disjointed approach would drive some kiddos crazy, but it works very well for my boys.  This time, we were really going to bump it up, and both boys were looking forward to this study, and it didn't disappoint.  As a matter of fact, as I sit here typing this blog, the boys are STILL on their computer looking up and playing airplane games and chatting facts, and it's been weeks since we've "officially" ended our flight unit.

I'll list our resources, but if you have the opportunity, please try and get to an airport or museum, or even contact your local airfield and see what they will do to introduce your child to flight.  We've found that the folks in the aviation field are some of the nicest around.  On to our unit!

We're very, very lucky to live near two awesome flight museums.  We started our flight study with a visit to one of them.  This one focus' on restoring old war planes.  It was really cool to walk into the hanger and see so many vintage planes.  There were fact cards near each one explaining what, when, and where, and how the planes were used over their lifetime.

Andrew loves bi-planes, and was thrilled to see this one up close!

Lucas enjoyed reading about each plane and liked the ones that were works-in-progress and could see the insides.

 The museum is located next to a very small airport.  The boys REALLY wanted to walk over and take a look, and possibly do a little plane spotting.  Honestly, I hesitated to do this.  I didn't know if we would be allowed to just walk into this small airport.  I didn't know if today's security restrictions would allow us, if we would make people mad, if they would kick us out, if we'd be breaking laws.  We were meeting friends afterwards and I didn't know how "behind" this would make us.  I almost said no, it was right there on my lips.  I'm soooooo glad I put all those fears behind me, and said "yes, let's go explore".  Little did I know at the time how awesome this little side trip would turn out. 

When we walked into the terminal, there was no one around.  Just some seats and a door leading out to the runway.  There was a little office to the side, so I peeked in and wanted to make sure we were okay to sit and watch the private planes land.  The lady at the desk gave us the okay, and even gave us directions on how to get up to the private viewing deck on top of the building!  Sweet!  We were up there for a bit when the same lady who was at the desk walked up to the view deck escorted by an airport worker.  She said that the airport was very slow that day, and cleared it with the air traffic control tower for us to go up to the tower and take a tour!  WHAT?!?!?!  So cool!!  First, though, they were going to drive us around the terminal on the golf cart so we could get a close up view of some of the planes and helicopters.  Awesome! 

The control tower was so cool!  We met the air traffic controller, he explained his job to us, then he showed the boys how to track planes on the satellite.  He gave them binoculars and they tracked the planes on the gps, then they figured out which direction they were entering the airspace in, and they tracked the planes using the binoculars until it landed.  So cool!  I think I said "thank you" about a gazillion times.  It was just such an awesome experience!  Here are some pictures.  I didn't take a lot, I was too busy enjoying the moment, but I'm glad I got a few.

The terminal

The Air Traffic Control Tower

Getting a tour, but also getting a chance to watch the ATC in action as he took calls!

My favorite picture ever!  After tracking a plane via satellite, the boys followed it's flight path, and watched it all the way to the airport. 

  
Over the next couple of weeks, we focused on how air pressure allows a plane to fly.  We did air pressure experiments galore, we learned about the Bernoulli Principle in a fun, hands-on way, we read a lot of picture book biographies about historical figures in flight, we charted them on a timeline, read a lot about different types of flying machines from past to present, watched a lot of videos about flight, played with our newly purchased flight simulator, and we had a blast digging deeper into a topic my boys really enjoy. 

One of my favorite activities was (after reading about the Wright Brothers) measuring out the distance of the Wright Brothers first flight down our street.  We then timed ourselves jogging down, and realized we could have outrun the first flight!  That was fun!  We then tried to fly our gliders the distance, but that was much harder.  I won't list all the activities we did, but I will post my Pinterest board site with my ideas, which can be found here.  Most of what we did can be found there, plus a lot more that we didn't get a chance to do.  Another resource we utilized heavily this time was our Steve Spangler Science Kit.  We joined his kit-of-the-month club over the summer and I've been stockpiling the kits to correspond with our studies. His All About Air kit was awesome!  I'm not a scientist, so I'll take all the help I can get!  These kits are a great starting point.  Here are some pictures of our experiments and learning at home.  I must admit, I didn't do a good job at capturing pictures this time, and didn't capture most of our home learning.

The look of concentration!  Experimenting with the Bernoulli Principle.

This experiment was from our Spangler Science kit!

We wrapped up our flight unit with two more awesome field trips.  The first, was to another museum.  This one has a lot of old airplane memorabilia, and the museum itself isn't as interesting (to the boys, I really like it) as the first museum we visited.  HOWEVER, the museum backs up to our city's airport.  Not the big airport, but a commercial and private airport just the same, and the boys absolutely love going and plane spotting.  We went in the afternoon, and had the perfect weather conditions for the planes to land and take off from the runway near us!  Score!  We were the only visitors to the museum, so we had many of the volunteers come outside and chat with us while watching the planes.  The boys loved trying to identify the planes that were landing (they were pretty spot on), and asked really great questions. 

After a while, another gentleman volunteer, who was extremely knowledgeable, came out and started chatting with the boys.  He was thrilled with their questions and started explaining some really neat things about the runway numbers (They are set to a compass rose and are really degrees.  So if you're taking off on runway 9, it's really 90 degrees or East!  Cool!) and even drew out a compass rose to explain things visually to the boys.  They enthusiastically chatted about, and identified planes for over 2 hours.  They stayed until closing time.  When I started gathering the boys up, he mentioned that he was actually the museum president!!!  He invited us to come back the next day (free of charge) to celebrate international flights beginning at the airport next door.  Ummm...yes!!


We came back the next morning and were able to see the first international flights arrive and depart.  The museum was having a party that night and were making preparations.  We were invited to join them in their private hanger while they were getting ready.  This included a walk ON THE RUNWAY (the legal walking part, of course) with airplanes taking off and lading right over our heads.  We also got to see the museum's private planes and climb around inside of them.  It was so much fun!

The entrance to the old airport turned museum

On the runway as close as you can get to a commercial plane landing!  The pictures don't show how close we were!!

Inside the museum's private hanger

Checking out their private plane collection

We got to go inside this plane, it was awesome!

We couldn't get inside of this one, but they opened the doors and let the boys look at the controls up close

Our last field trip was to the air show.  Whew!!!  So much fun and excitement was packed into those two weeks.  I was blown away by the kindness of the museum and aviation community.  They really went out of their way to connect with the boys.  I'll end this post with a few pictures from the air show.

A Unit Study of Pure Imagination (and chocolate!)

As promised, I am compiling all of my chocolate unit study resources in one place just in case anyone wants to take their own chocolate journey.  Before I begin listing everything, I would like to first clarify how I go about organizing our unit studies.  First, I look for ideas on the Internet and bookmark, pin (Pinterest), write down, etc. any ideas that I like.  Basically I do a virtual brainstorm and wrap my head around what's out there, what I want to cover, what I need to create, find, order, etc.  Then, I hit the library and get every book in the world on our topic.  Every.  Book.  After that, I look through everything and pick and choose the basics of our unit study.  I add in some extras to create the ambiance, then the boys and I explore.  Beyond the basics of what I have planned (the bare bones of the topic), I allow them to shape the unit study.  For example, they really got into the Mayan culture and how they prepared the first chocolate drink.  So, we spent a good deal of time studying the Mayan customs, lands, and cultures, and tried our best to replicate the traditional drink.  They didn't get as interested in how chocolate spread through England, so we covered the material, but didn't spend a long time on it.  They really enjoyed delving into the ecology of the cacao tree, but not as much the technical process of making the chocolate (to my surprise).  So, while we covered all the material, there was a natural flow to where we took the study even deeper based on their interests.

Anyway, on to the sweet stuff!

To cover Geography, Science, and History (among other subjects, but these are the main ones), we used these resources:

We started our unit study with this fun QR Web Quest.  I had intended to complete 2 pages a day, but the boys were so excited, we ended up completing the entire quest in 3 days.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chocolate-Web-Quest-34935

Our adventure continued with Amanda Bennett's Chocolate Challenge!  There was a little overlap between the two, but while the QR Quest took the boys to web pages, Amanda Bennett's study uses a lot more videos.  The boys liked both.  We didn't do the included lapbook because they are not lapbook kids.  Instead, I printed out the map pages, and a few of the others that weren't repetitive, found some pages from notebookingpages.com, and the boys made notebooks.  That works better for them.  Then, we just worked through the material all together on the computer while lounging on the floor.  We didn't watch every single video, I thought it got a little redundant, and we had already studied a lot of rain forest information, but we like her unit studies and will use them again as a resource. 

http://www.unitstudy.com/ChocolateChallenge.html

To cover Reading and Writing (the boys also follow a basic, grade-level appropriate Language Arts curriculum to fill in any gaps we may miss in our unit studies), we used these resources:

We read Charlie and Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, and also the biography Who Was Roald Dahl? by True Kelley.  We utilized several different approaches to reading the story, based on our mood of the day.  Sometimes, we'd buddy read (each person reads a page or paragraph), I'd read aloud, or the boys read to themselves.  We also had our "book basket" time, which is 20 minutes of reading from a huge basket of books I selected from the library.  Anything I could make relate, in any way, I threw it in the basket.  The boys and I love book basket time.

While reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we completed this packet from Teachers Pay Teachers.  We played bingo, worked on vocabulary words, and completed the dodecahedron.  We did not fill out the chapter by chapter writing pages.  Between the notebooking pages in the Chocolate Challenge, their regular language arts work, their daily handwriting practice, and the dodecahedron pages, that was plenty of writing for my boys.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory-Dodecahedron-Puzzle-Novel-Study-Bingo-1258919

For math (again, we follow a grade-level math program in addition (get it...addition) to what we do within our unit studies) I found a couple of books that we played around with:

That's A Possibility! by Bruce Goldstone, which led to several days of figuring out probabilities.  That was the hidden jewel in the book basket that REALLY engaged Lucas.  We had fun trying to figure out the probability of each golden ticket winner in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and many other things in our lives.

The other book was More M & M's Math by Barbara Barbieri McGrath.  This book was a little simplistic for my boys, but it was fun to read through, and we had a good time.

We also did a lot of hands-on fun in this unit.  There are a lot of chocolate/candy inspired ideas drifting around the 'net.  We couldn't have fit all of them in, that's for sure!  Here were some of things we did to add a little extra fun to the study:

I ordered raw cacao beans off Amazon, and we compared the raw beans to 3 different types of "modern" chocolate (90% cacao, 65% cacao milk chocolate, and white chocolate).  We also roasted the cacao beans in our cast iron pan, attempted to grind them in our mortar and pestle (but switched to our magic bullet), and added water to recreate the "drink of the gods".  We did the same process, but added sugar, cinnamon, and milk to recreate the first hot chocolate, and again to recreate the first chocolate bars.

We baked brownies from a store bought mix after finishing the historical readings about how chocolate spread and became commercial. 

We looked up ancient and modern art with cacao as the subject, then tried our hand at our own art featuring the cacao bean.  Let me tell you, none of us are artists, but that was a fun, fun project.

We did an experiment to see which chocolate melted the fastest in the microwave, and looked at the coco butter content to see if there was any correlation between the two, or other factors in why the melting time was different (Sorry, no print out or link to this one. I was just winging it because the boys like to microwave and melt stuff).

I purchased a "create your own candy bar" kit and we designed, labeled, and created our own signature bars a la Willy Wonka.  That was fun!  We even "filmed" our own commercials.  

We made and played with chocolate scented play-doh.  Still a hit in our house.

Finally, to end the unit, we are planning on visiting a real life chocolate factory here in town  How cool is that!!  We haven't taken our big field trip just yet, we have been trying to finish up our unit, but it's coming up soon!

Whew!  I'm sure I forgot a few things here and there, but that's the bulk of our studies.  I hope you guys have as much fun as we did doing this chocolate unit study.  Please comment if you decide to give it a go, and let me know how it turns out!!!  I'd love to hear about your experience!  :)

Let's chat schedules!

I have had some questions about how we schedule our day.  First of all, if you ask 100 homeschool families this question, you will probably get 100 different answers.  That's one of the benefits of homeschool!  You can schedule your school around your life.  For those that unschool, their school day will look like every other day without formal school, since...it is for the most part.  For families following a more traditional school format, their schedules might resemble a more traditional school schedule.  Most people fall somewhere in between.  My boys, like many other kids on the autism spectrum, do much, much, much better when there is order, routine, and a schedule in their daily lives.  They can go for a bit without it, but after a while, they start suffering.  When we have a schedule in place, it helps every facet of their lives, not just academics.  They are better able to organize their thoughts, control their emotions, and handle life better when I have our schedule locked up nice and tight.  If we don't have one, they ask for it.  Here is our schedule for this school year:

 It took 3 years of fine tuning to get the perfect schedule for us...for right now at least.  We can always change and adjust as needed.  This is what we used at the end of last year, just adjusted to fit our needs this year.  I'll go over some of the things we do that might not be self-explanatory, and provide links so you can get a feel for our days.  On Monday's this year, the boys attend an outside science class, and on Friday's we have our fine arts co-op.  

This is the first year I've attached times to the schedule.  Andrew's response was "Finally, I've been asking for times for years now!"  So yes, the times are important in our family.  And we stick to them, because, once it's in place, it's what we do.  The boys like their routines.  Plus, after working all morning, my boys are done after lunch, so they do not mind getting started early.  We do a bit after lunch, as you can see, but for the most part, once they are finished, the day is theirs.  They both have varied interests, and I really want to give them time to explore those interests on their own.

Anyway, back to our schedule.  We start the day with chores.  We all do chores.  The boys don't get an allowance, but we do pay them weekly for mowing the lawn.  For us, that goes above and beyond helping out around the house.  Once they finish their chores for the day, they put a sticker on an index card (the stickers correspond with our unit study, because I'm a little nutty like that).  When the card has 8 stickers on it, we do something simple yet fun, like a car wash, a snow cone, froyo, etc.  Our chore list is pretty simple.  The boys just do the chores listed for the day.  I found this cute chore notepad at Mardel, and change it up sometimes just to keep things rotated.  Oh, and keeping it real. My handwriting stinks, and I didn't realize I'd be posting this form, so I didn't even try to make it neat.  I didn't feel like re-writing it, so y'all get to see my messy chore form.

This year, we are focusing on making learning easier for the boys.  We are doing some brain integration and writing activities from Dianne Craft.  I attended her seminars during a homeschool conference, and was intrigued.  We're giving it a year, hopefully we will see results, and writing won't be such a struggle for the boys.  You can read about her work here.  This is really the only part of the day the boys don't like too much.  It's boring, and repetitive.  I think it's important for their future, so we are adapting the mindset of "get r done" and move on.

Activity sticks have been the hit of the year so far (after the unit studies, of course).  I found out about them through a blog I saw on Facebook.  You can read the blog post about activity sticks, but the short overview is,  I take Popsicle sticks and write quick activities on one end (run to the fence gate 3 times, jump rope for 3 songs, play h-o-r-s-e, play soccer for 15 minutes, take a scooter ride around the neighborhood, etc) and stick them in a cup writing side down.  When it's time for their break, the boys grab one (Lucas picks at the first break, Andrew at the second) and we do the activity.  They put the "used" stick in a different cup.  After we have completed all the sticks in one, we'll start grabbing from the other.  When we finish the activity, they are a lot more focused and ready to go back to work.  It's made school fun, and gets us moving at least 30 minutes before lunch!

Unit studies take up the bulk of the day, and encompass many different subjects.  Everything from literature, writing, reading, history, science, geography, art appreciation, home ec, and more are wrapped up in our unit of study.  We have some really fun unit studies planned this year.  Those will be the focus of my future blogs, so I won't get too much into it now.  It's also the most fun part of our day!!  

When it says Free Read 20, that's simply reading from the book basket for 20 minutes.  What's a book basket?  It's a basket full of books that relate to our unit study.  Some are easy readers, some are chapter books, non-fiction, fiction, poetry, living math, anything I can find that somehow (even if it's a stretch) tie in with our unit studies goes in the basket.  The boys love the book basket.  They have me pick out the books from the library every week, so the books that go in the basket are a surprise.  They check out books for themselves, but they leave the area when I start getting basket books.  It's a fun way to pull in many topics, and it gives the boys a chance to make connections over many different genres and subjects to what we're studying.

For PE this year, we are going to take a fitness class that offers homeschool fitness for the kids, and a parents class at the same time.  It's from 3:00-4:00, which is perfect timing.  It gives the boys some free play time after school work, but doesn't go too long into the afternoon, so they also have plenty of free time when they get home.  The boys and I are both REALLY excited about starting.  We are just waiting on Andrew's leg to heal.

The band practice is there as a reminder for Andrew to practice his trombone.  At this point, I'm still helping him, so we usually do it right after book basket time.  Once he gets where's he a little more independent with it, he'll be able to track his own time.

That's it!  That's our day!  If you see anything on the schedule that I haven't explained, or you would like more information about, please let me know.  Also, please comment and share your schedule!  I love to see what works in other homeschooling families.  :)

A Scrumdiddlyumptious Day!

We are always thankful that we found homeschooling.  It's the perfect fit for my kiddos and our family.  Even though we are always thankful, not every day is easy.  Many days are hard.  We also have days that are great, fun, and even awesome.  Then, you have days like Monday, where homeschool just plain ROCKS.  It was a knock-your-socks-off day that really set the tone for a fantastic year.  I know, you're thinking..."wait, they homeschool, why are they starting the same time as the public school/private school kids?"  And the answer is...my boys LOVE it.  They love the back to school excitement.  They love school supplies.  They love going outside and waiving "good bye" to their friends that ride the bus.  They just love the back to school feeling!  So, we do it up BIG to match their excitement.  We started with pictures:

My 6th and 4th graders!

Being silly!

After obligatory pictures, we headed out to our traditional back to school breakfast.  The very first year we homeschooled, I had a coupon to Denny's.  We never eat at Denny's, but, hey, a coupon.  So, the next year...Denny's!  This year, Denny's again.  It's an unexpected tradition, but we very rarely eat breakfast out, so it's a real treat for the boys, and something very different.  They think it's awesome that they are usually the only school aged kids in the restaurant.  Last year, I had a few dollars, so they got to try their hand at the claw machine.  This year, they got to do the same. Tradition, you know.  And WON!  After Denny's, we had our traditional back to school car wash (something else we did last year, that is now a "tradition"), and I discovered that anything we do on this day will be considered "tradition", so I need to keep that in mind. ;)  After all that, we headed home to start our school day.

Gettin' our grub on at Denny's

Claw machine experts!

Our new mascot--Tiger (the bear)!!

We are starting our year with a chocolate unit study.  I may have gone a bit overboard (who...me?!?), but there are just so many neat things you can do with chocolate.  I found chocolate essential oil, which I placed in our school-room diffuser before we left.  So when the boys walked in after breakfast, they walked into a chocolate scented room.  Mmmmm...I also found chocolate scented pencils and stickers.  Those were waiting for them at their seats.  We started the school day by going over our brand new schedule, and walking through what our day-to-day schooling was going to look like this year.  Andrew was thrilled that I put times on our schedule.  Last year, it was more of a routine, which bothered him a little.  He's much happier with times.  I'll go into our schedule more in another post.  After that, we dove right in to our chocolate study.  We read the first chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  The boys had to decide the genre (both really wanted it to be non-fiction, but knew better...fiction it is), and spent some time discussing the story elements.  Let me tell you, reading about Charlie walking past the chocolate factory while literally smelling chocolate in the air was too cool.  I'm so glad I ordered the oil.  We're going to be doing a fun writing project with the book, I'll post all the links and resources for our chocolate study soon.  After our reading time, we moved on to a QR treasure hunt.  I found this cute resource on Teachers Pay Teachers, which you can check out here.  We're doing 2 QR codes per day.  On our first day, we learned about the cacao bean, what it is, where it's grown, and how it's harvested.  After that, we learned it's early history, and how it traveled from the rain forest to high society.  We also learned a little about modern chocolate.  No study would be complete without samples!  I ordered raw cacao beans off Amazon (I love Amazon), and we spent some time exploring the inside of the beans.  The boys thought they were so cool.  Until they finally took a bite!  Bitter!!!  Andrew kind of liked it, however.  Lucas...not so much.  Then, we sampled some modern chocolates containing 90% cacao, 60% cacao, milk chocolate (34% cacao), and white chocolate.  Did you know that white chocolate is not really chocolate?  It doesn't contain any cacao!  It does contain coco butter, however, and was the boys favorite.  Mine was the 90% chocolate.  That wrapped up our short-but-sweet school day.  It was a fun overview of what's going to be a busy, but awesome year.  The boys are getting older and acquiring so many new skills.  We are changing things up to accommodate their desire to get out and try new things.  This year, we have joined a music co-op, where Andrew will be in the band-playing trombone- and choir, and Lucas will take a general music class.  Both boys are also taking an outside-the-house science class (zoology).  We ended our day with a visit to Menchie's and some froyo with our homeschool group.  It was so good to see our old homeschool friends, and meet some new people in the group as well.  When we arrived back home, there was a box waiting for the boys.  I had ordered them Bop-It's, and they arrived while we were gone.  The boys were overjoyed and I was amazed at the good timing!

Bop-It Smash Time!!

I hope everyone had a great first day back to school, and I look forward to sharing our adventures with you this year!  :)