The more I read the book “Free Range Learning” and visit unschooling/interest led blogs the more I am drawn to this.† This past week we haven’t had a lot of ‘written down plans’ but we have learned so much.

I downloaded this free book on iBooks “100 Greatest Science Discoveries of All Time”† You can get it as a pdf or in iBooks.† I just randomly read it to Keilee.† It’s awesome.† We always explore in greater detail from the initial article.

Friday Collage via Mary at Homegrown Learners.

is made up of things we learned about instead of pictures of Kei ;)† Well except for the center one which shows HOW she learned all these amazing things.

Kei dictated this to me about each picture. † ††††††

1. † † † † † † Knights:† We read about the Code of Chivalry and watched several movies and documentaries about knights.† “In Search of History: The Knights Templar ” on Netflix instant was good and we also watched “King Arthur”.†

2.†††††††††††† We read about Nicholas Copernicus and how he first showed that the Sun was the center of the universe.† Until then they believed, because of Ptolemy that the Earth was the center.† We talked about this, looked up graphics and drew for an hour.

3.††††††††††† Andreas Vesalius: 1515 AD † He had the first accurate guide to human anatomy.† Before that doctors believed the teachings of Galen from 50 BC.† His published book was used in Human Anatomy for the next 300 years.

4.††††††††† “The Inch High Samuri”† We read this after reading about Samurai’s in SOTW.†

5.††††††††††† Me [Kei] on the iPad.

6.††††††††††† Galen’s drawings of the human body.† We loved learning about how people assumed the human body was for over 2000 years.†

7.†††††††††† “The Dragon Dance”† We have been reading about the Chinese New Year this week.† Lots of video watching from parts of the world.† I [Keilee] is the Year of the Dragon and we researched what each symbol represented and tried to find people we knew were born in that year to see how closely they matched.

8.†††††††††† Archimedes discovering buoyancy.† The King Hieron gave him an order to find out whether a goldsmith had cheated the king.† We loved reading this story about how he discovered buoyancy.† [*Yes he discovered it in the bathtub but I don’t think HE was bathing at the time ;)]

And MORE:†† Keilee wanted to learn about the difference in human and dog bones.† She told me that while the Femur is the longest bone in the human body, the tibia is the longest in a dog’s body. † We watched the musical, “Memphis”† and “Les Miserables” which led to discussion about the Paris Uprising.† It was a 25th Anniversary copy of the musical and it was wonderful.† She has been making Stop Animation movies like crazy.† Britney spent the night Wednesday and they made several.† She is making another one as I type.† Plus we had “Wizard of Oz” practice.† We also did 3 lessons in Teaching Textbooks and she read 4 chapters in “Midwife’s Apprentice”.† We do SO much more without television it isn’t funny!

Just to smile and see something breathtaking and beautiful, go here and check out this video….

Favorite Resource of the Week:† via Susan at Learning All The Time

This favorite resource is a GREAT one.† It is free DVD’s and teachers resources for “Teaching Tolerance”.† I found this a few months ago.† I have received all SIX of these and while I haven’t used all of them the ones I did use are awesome.

We watched “Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case That Made History” which led Keilee to do a report on Public Schools and bullying.† She also researched the “No Child Left Behind” bill and wrote about that.† All on her own, I did not ask her to do this.

The Kit entitled “One Survivor Remembers” would go along wonderfully with Theresa’s favorite resource this week; “Number the Stars”.†

Whew…what a week.† Was that a lot of yummy learning or what?† The best part of it is Keilee remembers things better when we ‘discuss’ it as opposed to me or her dry reading it.† This is what learning at home is all about.

Happy Weekend to my friends in blog land,

Homeschooling Rocks!

Karen

“Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other in both mind and body; to try the manners of different nations; to hear the chimes at midnight; to see sunrise in town and country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all day in the theatre to applaud ‘Hernani’.” -Robert Louis Stevenson