Settle Down.

I promise I plan to post about all the other great things we have been doing this semester other than American History, but I am so happy with how our unit studies for social studies that they are worth at least a few more posts. But a few updates…

I will say we have had less luck with the science Intellego units than the history ones, but that might just be based on our learning style. As we speak I am transitioning us from the long-lasting chemistry unit we started at the beginning of the year onto more dynamic, shorter science units. AJ swears he “loves” the chemistry unit, but it has gotten pretty repetitious and less engaging as time has gone on, so I’ve made the executive decision to shelf it and move onto to something else. AJ continues to be passionate about chemistry, but I want to feed that with a different approach than the structured study we attempted this semester.

Mathwise, things are rolling along. We have two great math programs running concurrently: Math-U-See and Life of Fred. We are almost done with Math U See Beta level, and have Math-U-See Gamma level on the way. Matt does all of this with AJ, and I for one have been pretty stunned at the results. The foundation it provides for him to do all kinds of math in other contexts is stellar, and he is easily adding and subtracting multi digit numbers into the thousands. Multiplication is the next frontier.

I utilize Life of Fred when I work with AJ on math. I’ve spoken of it before, and it’s all the rage in the gifted homeschooling community. I like it because it is an ongoing story, following Dr. Fred Gauss, a 5 year old math professor. AJ finds it hilarious. He wants to do multiple chapters of Fred everyday. I have to literally prevent him from doing more when we are short on time. We have worked through Apples, Butterflies, Cats, Dogs, and now are on Edgewood. AJ uses the math skills he has learned from Math U See, and is also learning early algebra, geometry, etc. I am not a fan of math, and I love Fred.

Elsewhere on the educational front, AJ has been taking all kinds of great classes. He has continued with Museum Mondays at the Cincinnati Museum, which are fantastic. We missed last week since he was down with a fever, and he was crushed. The topic of last week’s class was Forensic Science, so I consoled him by promising that would be our next new science topic. We’ve done others on caves, bridges, and have one on money coming up next week. Matt has taken AJ to two months of Zoo Troop classes down at the Cincinnati Zoo, and we have also been to some really great weekend classes at our local library on Lego Robotics and  MRI imaging (the kid loves all things medical). Finally, AJ continues with weekly swim lessons, having graduated from Level 3 swim and now onto Level 4.

So yes, there are things other than American history happening around here, so much so that I barely have time to update the blog. But I have big plans to catch up over Thanksgiving break 🙂

My love for Intellego history units has grown over the semester. As I said, the science units seem to be created a bit differently than the social studies units, likely because of the nature of the material. I am a sucker for things that create a dynamic story and engaging narrative, and these history units have fit the bill. Since we have studied most of these topics already at some point, it’s interesting to start all over from the beginning and see what details and parts of the stories we missed the first time around.

After exploring the explorers, we moved onto Early European Settlements. We focused on five: St. Augustine, Jamestown, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay colony, and New Netherland/New York. We talked about why people wanted to come settle in the new world, and what role religion and religious freedom played in those decisions. AJ appreciated the irony that people came for religious freedom but then weren’t as excited to give religious freedoms to others.

We started with St. Augustine, arguably the first permanent settlement in the new world, though Roanoke might take that title. We learned about Roanoke as well, with all the mystery of the lost colony. We spent a good amount of time thinking about what might have happened to those colonists at Roanoke. The lack of answer was quite off-putting to AJ.

There was a great fort created at St. Augustine called Castillo de San Marcos. We explored diagrams of the fort and AJ made a watercolor interpretation of it 🙂

Then we moved onto Jamestown, exploring several online interactive timelines and videos of life in the settlement. We also happened upon this educational kit at the library, which contained great pictures and replicas of maps, artifacts, and other treasures from Jamestown settlement.

At this point in history, the subject of slavery becomes a key issue. We talked about the reasons and dynamics of slavery, and the different kinds of slavery that existed (indentured servants, slaves on plantations, etc).

We then began the study of Plymouth, Pilgrims, and the Mayflower. AJ was not impressed that many of the ideas out there on the Pilgrims were fictional. No big buckles on big hats, no  turkey at the first Thanksgiving, no actual November Thanksgiving. Such a let down.

AJ watched some Colonial House (PBS) to get a taste of what life was like in the colonies. The Intellego unit also gave us some colonial style recipes to try, but none of them appealed to the student, so we skipped making them 🙂

We went on to study Massachusetts Bay Colony, and then the crazy Salem Witch Trials. We had some books on that from the library as well. The whole story was so bizarre. And led to an interesting discussion about the validity of witchcraft, and why people would have wanted to create the stories about the Salem Witches.

After all was said and done, AJ created a big chart comparing life and conditions in all the different settlements.

This wrapped up our very first American History unit, and set the stage for the next phase of the story of America…the Revolutionary War.