Solar System - Beyond Our Imaginations

Well, it's been awhile since I've been able to get back here! We studied animals after the plants and then went on to the solar system, which was a month long unit study. It truly is astounding how incredible the universe is! Have you ever really thought about it? I love studying along with the girls because it ignites my own passion to learn! We began by learning about the stars, the sun being the closest one to us. Then we went on to planets, the Milky Way system, the moon and so on. Just the little bit we touched upon left me totally in awe of God's creation. We did something different at the end of this unit, something I've been wanting to do for so long. It's called a lapbook.

I first heard of lap/notebooking a year ago when I decided that the workbook approach to learning was just not up to par. The curriculum that I was using was very "workbook" oriented. Then someone told me about lap/notebooking. After some research, I decided I loved this hands-on approach and knew the kids would, too. Then, in order to keep things structured, we went with a new curriculum that would allow me to incorporate this type of learning. However, as things go, we rarely had time (or so I thought) to actually do it. So, I determined that with this last unit, we were going to take what we learned and apply it to a lapbook and here it is! Grace now wants to end every unit with a lapbook! Emily, I think, has her reservations. It's a little more hands-on work than she would like. Emily learns a lot just from reading and listening. Or being outside! Grace is my crafty one. I knew she would be hooked! By the way, in case you were wondering -- yes, we did include Pluto as a planet. When I told the girls that scientists were now no longer considering Pluto a planet, they rebelled! "That's not fair! Pluto's so cute!!" So, we included Pluto and deal with that when they're older and more mature :)

So, we completed our year and are looking forward to a nice break. We do our official promotion tomorrow. Grace is promoting to 3rd grade and Emily to 1st. I'll post again for the promotion and then we'll send you more updates on the family page of what we do this summer!