Planets Unit

Isaac gets these obsessions. Lately it has been anything to do with our atmosphere, space, and the planets. This obsession just grew after our visit to NASA this summer. So we did a small study of the planets and our solar system.  Our lessons focused around the following books and a lapbook that we made.

Isaac loves these books. I bought them through one of Leah's Scholastic orders long before he was even born. They have great pictures and simple reading, so they'll be great when he is an early reader. You do have to weed out some the evolutionary numbers in there (billions of years ago blah blah blah).

This is the front of the lapbook. I found most of the printouts at homeschoolshare.com.

Here is what it looks like when you open it up. I have a few more inserts that we stick in the lapbook that I'll share on down the blog.

This is an accordion fold-out of the planets "Distance from the Sun." I let Isaac use crayons to draw in the planets under each name. It shows them in order from the sun.

The next activity is a pocket that asks "Is it a solid planet or a gas planet?" Isaac learned this just from listening to me read him the books. He was fascinated with the gas planets. I think he knows what I mean when I say "gas."

So here are the cards inside that you sort "solid or gas."

Here we studied a few famous astronauts like Alan Shepherd, John Glenn, Neil Armstron, Buzz Aldrin, and Sally Ride (on back). We got on YouTube and watched the lunar landing which Isaac thought was soooo cool. We went on to watch several shuttle launches and landings. Lets just say I was finished before Isaac was through!

In the center are matchbox tabs of each planet. After we read about each planet, I asked Isaac to tell me an interesting fact or his favorite thing about that planet. I wrote it down for him. Then there is a fold out on the right that asks "How many moons?" I was so glad I found this because Isaac was obsessed with Jupiter's number of moons. Inside it, there are more matchbooks with the planets names and number of moons written underneath. (more on this later)

Cover of space book that we slip inside the lapbook. That is the sun in the center and the planets around it. ;) For the following pages, Isaac dictated to me what he wanted to say.

That is Isaac in zero gravity. ;) He said it makes him feel "happy."

Another part of the lapbook that we slip inside. The planets that he can put in order from largest to smallest and visa versa or in order while we sing a special planet song. (below)

Finally, we had letter tiles cut up and placed in a bag inside the lapbook so that he could spell his planets. Of course he doesn't do that himself. He copies, but still good practice with letters.

I shared with Isaac my Solar System book that I made in 2nd grade. Yes, I still have it! He was so tickled!

The sun!

Jupiter! His fave! When we read my report on Jupiter, Isaac was like, "That is wrong! There are 63 moons, not 16!" Turns out, I made this book in like 89-90. After reading our newer Jupiter book, we realized that the probe, Galileo, hadn't been sent out yet. That probe discovered all those moons! Isaac thought that was cool.

Back when Pluto was a planet. :(

Over all, we had a great time! I really wanted to make a model or do some fun crafts, but we never got around to it. Maybe later. ;) We did make a model in a sense with our bodies. I took our globe and told Isaac he was the sun and then showed him how the earth rotates while it goes around the sun. Then he wanted to be Jupiter, Pluto, and so forth...It was really great because it showed me he really understood the way the planets orbit. When he imitated Mercury, he made his circles really close to the "sun" and Neptune far away. I know he's my son and all, but I was impressed that he "got it" just from reading and looking at pictures. Just goes to show the joy of homeschooling. How much they can learn when they are really, really into something. 

Reflections and Learning

I have my days when I think I can't do it. You only see on here what I want you to see. There are times I think, am I teaching them anything? Do they even remember that Bible lesson yesterday on obedience and respect? This morning while getting ready for Storytime at the library...I lost it. I had a temper tantrum more less, and I didn't teach my boys a thing, but I successfully reinforced their bad behavior of losing control by getting angry myself. It is like a viscious cycle. Isaac's difficult behavior gets me on fire. I lose it, I reinforce his behavior. So today I sat down with the boys after I calmed down. I apologized, but I also explained to them how their disobedient behavior makes me feel and what I expect of them. I told Isaac that together we needed to work on the behavior that we need to change. So we shook hands on it. I know I'll try to do better. i was ashamed.

With that being said. All honesty out. It is hard to juggle it all, and I don't pretend to know it all. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing, but what always takes me back to my decision to homeschool is knowing and feeling that I am doing the best that I can to raise my children in the Lord. So what if my child can/can't regurgitate all the information that the state requires him to know? I want to give my child the tools to be able to think for himself, and by thinking for himself, he can learn and accomplish anything in this world. Most importantly, when I feel like we haven't accomplished anything academically, when I feel like a failure, I want him to at least be able to reason his way through the Scriptures and know Truth, and THAT to me is educated. Because what else in this world really matters?

So here is what we've been doing lately...www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com. LOVE IT! This lady makes available free printouts. Yes free! Tons of great stuff for PreK age. She is amazing. Go check out her site.

Missing Numbers sheet...you fill in the empty spaces with the appropriate number tile. This was really too easy for Isaac. I'm going to make some new ones with bigger numbers. But he still really enjoyed it anyway. And bonus is always that Eli will be right behind him on anything I make!

Learning to recognize his number words. I'll eventually cut these tiles into individually letters for him to spell the word, then we'll use black & white tiles so that he doesn't rely on the color as a clue.

Isaac really liked this number puzzle. I think I'll print some more. You put the numbers in order at the bottom, and it makes a picture. Easy again, so maybe I'll make my own with 3-digit numbers.

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I thought Isaac would like this one more, but he prefers to make his own pattern.

Yesterday morning, Isaac and Eli had a ball playing with these blocks. When it was time to pick them up, Isaac wanted to sort (go figure the Nerd) anyway, so I said, "Lets pick up all the red pieces," and blue pieces, orange pieces and so forth. We also sorted by shapes, too.

So since he was really into this, I thought...great opportunity to introduce graphs to him. I made the graph while he counted and sorted. Then we discussed the graph together. He had to decide by looking at the graph how many blocks we had of each color, which color did we have the most of, least of, which colors had the same amounts, etc.

When it came to the brown blocks, we realized we had alot of them. I introduced counting by 2's to him to show him that it would help us count faster. He kinda got the idea and tried to count with me as we drug two by two into our pile. Just a simple introduction for future learning. Maybe when we look at a number line to count by 2's, he'll remember doing this.

I successfully made our Large Decimal Street picture for our MathUSee blocks. We laminated it with contact paper so that I can write and erase the numbers we make on the picture. The Math U See Primer introduces 100s, 10, and 1s place which he had been having fun with.