Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Activity, Change, Progress

Science Based

Ocean Currents Minibook

| 2 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

It has been tempting to jump ship (hee hee, corny pun) in our ocean unit study and study about all the cool marine life.  But I felt like we needed to stay focused just a bit more on the actual geography and science behind how the water moves.

So today I have the ocean currents minibook ready.  I wanted Tiny to take time in today’s lesson to think and pause about the wonders below.

It is important to me that Tiny understands that ocean currents are like giant “rivers” of water and they probably could make any mighty river we can physically see as miniature by comparison.  You know this is the part of the unit study where I want to build his awe for creation.

Ocean Currents Minibook

I think this part of studying oceanography has to be one of the fascinating parts to understanding the vastness of the ocean.

Bottom line: We are soaking up our study of the ocean and loving it!  On the next post on our Ocean Lapbook, I will show you the layout of the minibooks.  I normally like to get three or so minibooks made before I show you the layout and oh yes, I have the cover page coming too.

Download the next minibook Ocean Currents Here.

Hugs and love ya,

2012Tinasignature Ocean Unit Study Ocean Layers

Did you grab my other posts in our Ocean Unit Study?

 

 

Ocean Unit Study: Vocabulary Words –Wave Pocket

| 9 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Yikes, we did it! Our house is finally listed for sale.   I thought I would share a few pictures of it because I have been talking about it for months as we have been getting it ready to sell.

You know I like things not so cluttered, but I still had to move out a good amount of stuff for pictures.  Plus you know I have been sharing pictures with you as my furniture sells.  So I have to constantly rearrange furniture so we can have a place to sit and do school,etc.

I love our saltwater pool with waterfalls.  It is a tranquil place outside.

This is part of my front living room area.

I cleared off my kitchen stuff  for the picture, but my kitchen is basically open to the rest of the house.  Though I don’t know this picture might make it look small, but it is a bit bigger.

I love my office and this is my “sanctuary” and place where I blog to you from.  I had to close one shutter because the light was too blinding for the picture, but I LOVE light and I normally have both shutters wide open.

Those are just a few pictures.  As soon as I take some more, I will share them with you.

In between getting ready for that and 1001 things you need to do to get ready for a big move, we have been trying to scoot along on our Ocean Unit Study.

I have been determined to school as long as we can because I know we will have one longggggggg interruption and I think I have come to peace with that notion.

Why are we our own worst enemies when it comes to meting out grace for ourselves?

Ocean Vocabulary Words Collage

Today, I have vocabulary words ready for our Ocean Unit Study along with a wave pocket.

Remember I try to aim a lot of my lapbooks for about middle school age if I can.  It’s so easy to find printables and projects on this subject for the younger grades, but tough to find hands-on things as our kids hit the middle grades to high school.  I am determined to keep it both fun and hands-on all the way to high school.

Ocean Unit Study: Vocabulary Words

So I do use cursive font and try to steer away from babyish looking clip art where possible to keep lapbooking likable for the older kids too.

Tiny also decided to do some coloring on this lapbook for a cover page.  I will share that in an upcoming post too.

Download Vocabulary Words and Pocket here.

Hugs and love ya,

If you missed them, grab these other posts in my Ocean Unit Study – Ocean Lapbook

Ocean Unit Study Language Arts: Message in a Bottle

| 12 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I am pulling out all the stops today or is that corks? Ha ha corny I know.  But I have set aside a few things for Tiny in doing our ocean unit study for language arts and one of them is preparing a message in a bottle.

Ocean Unit Study Message In a Bottle Language Arts
Ocean Unit Study Message in a Bottle 1

Too, I want to be sure I use up some of the “treasures” I keep in what I call my “Mary Poppins Bag”.  They are usually games, fun hands-on items, books or some other manipulative that I buy or collect, keep in my “reserve” or stash and don’t let the boys know about.  Then I bring them out to add a twist to our day, ramp up a lesson plan or to use with a unit study.

In this case, I wanted to give Tiny a writing assignment outside of the box and well inside the bottle and I can’t think of anything more fun than writing a message in a bottle.  So we used this message in a bottle kit I had purchased.

Ocean Unit Study Message in a Bottle 2

I probably could have found a bottle around here, made some cool map and writing page, but I had this nifty little purchase already in my house.  Keeping hands-on activities easy for me him, why not use up what I have already.

Since my house is emptying out nicely, craft items are getting harder to find too.  But I knew that and I planned ahead a bit by stocking up my “Mary Poppins Bag”.

Ocean Unit Study Message in a bottle 3

Actually this kit had a cool ocean current map so he can predict where his bottle may go.  He made some predictions from where we will be dropping it off.  It also came with a box or container so he can store his bottle in the container until we get ready to fly out of here.

Since we will be flying out of Florida when we move, we can drop it in the ocean there. That’s the plan anyway.

I can tell you this morning he is not having any trouble composing his first draft.  Ideas are overflowing.  Give kids a purpose to write, include a few hands-on items and they’ll be inspired to communicate.

Hugs and love ya,

Also See: Oceans Unit Study

What is the Ocean Minibook

| 9 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I keep on pushing through with our home school schedule and created the minibook: What is the Ocean next.  What is the Ocean Hoping to squeeze in the Ocean Unit Study that we prepared together in our 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together before I have to completely stop homeschooling and prepare for the move might be too big of a goal, but nothing ever came from not planning.

I have learned through many years of homeschooling that with big changes you need to mete out some grace to yourself too.

Talking about moving, which you may get so tired of me talking about, but look what sold and was gone today.

piano - Copypiano gone

This sale pulled at my heart strings a wee bit because all of my boys learned how to play on this piano.   Focusing on the fun and wonderful opportunity we will have of living overseas though, I think I might be able to get over this quickly.

My plan for now is to not slow down with any school since I know we will have a long stop when we move.

We will go ahead and start our Ocean Unit Study.  I have already started creating printables.  As usual I have tried to create some of this minibook with cursive writing so it is not babyish and because if your kids are like mine they can always use the practice reading all kinds of cursive fonts.

Also, this minibook is easy enough to find the answers to because it is just a matter of locating Oceans and Seas in their Atlas on online, whichever you prefer them to do.  I will eventually be creating a page with links too, but I have already collected several links when we prepared this unit study together and will be sharing them again together as I round them up.

So the title of this minibook comes right off one of the chapters from the book I told you we would use as a simple spine when we did our 10 day unit study series together, which is Discover the Oceans: The World’s Largest Ecosystem.

Download here What is the Ocean free minibook

Hugs and love ya,

2014Tinasignature

Fun Ocean Unit Study Resources

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

| Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I wanted to add in another easy hands-on project for our study about the French Revolution besides the Storming the Bastille board game I created.

Pain Au Chocolat from France

Because the French Revolution is a pretty deep topic, I wanted to focus some on the culture and aspects of the country.

When I think of France and it’s culture, I think of, besides wonderful aged wine, (which Tiny was up for a taste test on) the best bread and chocolate.

French Revolution Game - French Revolution Unit Study @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

So I came up with an easy hands-on idea for studying about France and that is to make chocolate sandwiches or pain au chocolat.  Tiny is for sure getting his home economics in on this semester.

I probably wouldn’t make a great ambassador for France because I didn’t bake my bread all from scratch with wholesome ingredients.  I used store bought wheat rolls because I had them in the house already for meatball subs that night.

After reading some about what kids in France snacked on, the idea of a chocolate sandwich for breakfast sounded too good to be true for Tiny that morning (or so he thought anyway).  He was pretty eager to get started with “school”.

Recipe Pain Au Chocolat from France

After gathering up the bread and mostly the chocolate and a bit of butter and milk, Tiny was ready.

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Tiny cut the bread on a diagonal so we would have 4 halves to share.

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

He buttered the bread so we could toast it in the oven after we put the chocolate spread on it.

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Then he added a tad of butter to the mixture. 

And actually we used half and half in our mixture because it was a bit creamier. But you can use milk too. 

Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Microwave the mixture until heated through  and melted.

No, I didn’t pull out the bowl on top of the boiling water pot for this.  Microwave is fine for us.

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Then spread the chocolate and we baked the sandwiches in the oven on 350 degrees until toasted.

French Revolution Unit Study – Pain Au Chocolat Easy Recipe

Tiny wasn’t sold when he tasted it.  I think he worked himself up to thinking about the word sandwich and couldn’t think of anything else when he bit into it.

Unlike his mom, he is not a big bread eater either, but I was hoping this would make him like it a bit better.

Me? It was actually pretty good for a sweet roll for breakfast. 

If we had used some other bread too besides wheat, it would have been even better. 

I was pleasantly surprised that with the butter and toasting it, we almost felt a bit like we were eating at the outside cafes in France. 

Flaky, crunchy and sweet, it was pretty good.  Some home made bread or wafers could make this even better. 

At least with wheat rolls, I felt like it was a bit healthy. {it sounds good anyway}

I found a couple recipes too that you can fuss over a bit more and that could be used when studying about France, it’s food and culture.

Here is a grilled chocolate sandwich with a bit of confectioners’ sugar dust.

grilled chocolate sandwich

{Source: Martha Stewart}

And then this one is from Dying For Chocolate blog. 

I love the crusty vanilla pound cake and the whip cream. Ewww la, la.

grilled chocolate sandwich 2

{Source: Dying for Chocolate}

However you serve it up, this definitely will send you and your kids’ blood sugar sky high in the morning, but a little bit doesn’t hurt.

French Revolution Lapbook Minibooks

Next, look at the minibooks which come in this free download.

  • Beethoven and the Revolution
  • The Guillotine – The French Terror
  • Timeline of Events Leading up the French Revolution
  • 3 Estates – French Society
  • Causes of the French Revolution layered book
  • Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI
  • What is the Directory, What is the Reign of Terror and What is the Sans Culottes

How to Get the Free Lapbook

This is a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get access to my subscribers library and this freebie.

However, not all my freebies are in the library (wink).

I like to keep up to date with what is valuable to you so I can give you more.

So, some freebies you must sign up again on the form below even if you are already a follower.

Sign up again like you’re resubscribing, but you’re not. You get the freebie instantly when you’re a confirmed follower.

It’s the only way I have of freely delivering them to you. Just follow the steps below if you’re not a follower.

► 1) Sign up on my list.
► 2) Go to your inbox and confirm your email from the automatic reply I sent you. 
 ►3) Last step. look for my reply AFTER you’ve confirmed your email.