And it ends right here in the family room! :-)
We were discussing Christopher Columbus's arrival on San Salvador in 1492, and I wanted the kids to have a mental image of exactly how long ago that was. So we used our golden bead chain to make a loooooong timeline. We counted the decades backwards from 2012. As it happens, Columbus was exploring Cuba and Hispañola right at the top of our basement stairs!
Then we talked about the world as Columbus knew it. People had been discussing the travels and discoveries of Marco Polo for a couple hundred years, so we marked his return to Venice in 1295.
My kids love history, so I'm always on the lookout for interesting ways to teach it. Over spring break, I read
Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools by Linda S. Levstik and Keith C. Barton. It's written with classroom teachers in mind, of course, but most of the ideas are completely adaptable to homeschooling.
Before spring break, I hadn't planned to revisit Columbus (we had already read about him back in October and in previous years) but I really wanted to try an activity described Doing History. (Besides, it never hurts to return to a topic and discuss it in more detail!)
We read four books about Columbus. (I chose these four solely because they were available at the library on short notice!) We made a chart with four questions:
Why did Columbus make his voyage? What did people think the Earth was like at the time? What happened to the native people? and
What did Columbus accomplish? We filled in the details as we read together.
This one was written for little kids, as a basic introduction to Columbus, so of course it wasn't very detailed.
This one had a great map comparing how people imagined the Earth in 1492 to how it really is.
We all loved the illustrations in
this one.
And
this one was too long and detailed to read in one sitting, but I'm sure we'll refer to it again, possibly next Columbus Day! Of all the books we read, it's the most appropriate for studying Columbus in depth. It taught us a lot about the native people of the islands and it also has great photographs and illustrations. (We're also planning to read
You Wouldn't Want to Sail with Christopher Columbus! when it comes back to the library.)
I used the story of Columbus to illustrate how history is always interpreted by someone, and how different points of view will result in very different stories. (The Taino people, for example, might have related Columbus's arrival very differently...)
We talked about how history can be controversial (just like anything that involves human beings.) We also talked about the many myths about Columbus (that he was the first "white man" in North America, that everyone thought the Earth was flat and he set out to prove them wrong, etc.)
Finally, we summed up what Columbus actually accomplished on his voyages (which is quite different from what he hoped to accomplish!)
Now that we have learned a bit more about Columbus, I want to follow up with a couple of
good books about
other explorers and then go into more depth on the founding of our nation. These are all topics that we have touched on before, but I'm hoping to use some of the ideas and techniques I learned in
Doing History to bring our fascinating history to life!
I put together this cool magnetism workbox, packed full of experiments and interesting information about magnets!
As my kids get older, I'm hoping to give them more independent activities like this. I think it's important for them to take more responsibility for their own learning.
I'm also hoping to have lots of independent activities ready so the big kids can stay on track once we're homeschooling with a toddler. (Still a ways off, but it doesn't hurt to prepare!)
Unpacking the cool stuff in the box...
...and doing the first experiment. I included several experiments from Janice Van Cleave's books (I own this one and this one.)
The kids had already correctly predicted what the magnet would and wouldn't attract. But it was fun to try it anyway.
As they moved through the activities, they checked them off the list. I didn't find a single source for the experiments and worksheets: I cobbled together this list from Janice Van Cleave's books, Evan-Moor's Teacher Filebox, The Mailbox's Science in a Box, and a couple of websites.
I used a few magnets that we already had (including the kids' Buckyballs) and ordered a couple of kits from Amazon. We had a set of buzz magnets (I think I got them at the supermarket) and a couple of magnets from Dude's Magic Penny set that he got for Christmas a couple of years ago. (In retrospect, I would not include the Rare Earth magnets that I ordered because they are so unbelievably strong, they tended to be hard to work with! However, this Dowling magnet set proved to be a good choice for our experiments.)
This was one of our favorite experiments. It's from a Janice Van Cleave book.
Make sure you tape it securely!
It didn't work exactly the way it should have because we used a magnet from the Magic Penny set and it's capped with plastic on each end.
Still pretty cool, though! It's been "hanging out" on our mantle for several days now...
Here are the magnets from the Dowling set. We sprinkled the iron filings on a plastic report cover and observed the magnetic field.
Then the kids wanted to make a ring of Buckyballs and see how the iron filings would behave.
And here is what happens if some of the iron filings "escape" from the plastic and stick to a magnet! Good luck getting them off!
All in all, my kids were very "attracted" to this workbox! (Sorry! Couldn't help it!)
