We’re really simplifying this year. You can see our Game Plan here. Also check out our U.S. Capitals State Tour.
Here are activities I found when we did Cycle 3 last time. In additional to the books listed, I also suggest checking out the books associated with this week’s Geography here.
___________________________
Sorry for the delay. It seems our community may be behind the rest of the country. We won’t have our week 10 intro until the week after Thanksgiving. Life’s been pretty crazy around here between non-profit stuff, business stuff, and adoption paperwork. If you’re ever waiting on me, feel free to shoot me a message because sometimes I’ve planned but haven’t posted and I’ll do my best to get it up for you.
Also, a side note, there are so many more activities than these and other ways to handle the week’s material. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list just what I’ve decided works best for our family.
History: Henry Polk
While we’ll talk about Polk, the Gadsden Purchase, and Manifest Destiny briefly (keyword briefly), we’ll focus more on how those things resulted in Westward Expansion. We’ll get to hang out in pioneer world even more after our brief intro during our Lewis and Clark expedition. We’ve been listening to the Little House series 
Intro: Lots of Mexican War video clips
- Timelines are great for visual learners especially. This one is interactive so we’ll probably throw it up on PC2TV and explore it. Since the kids are memorizing so much history in timeline format, this is a great review and shows how much context they are really gaining.
- Check out Oregon Trail Activities from Week 6.
- If you have older kids, a discussion about the selfishness of Manifest Destiny may be appropriate. These Native American activities may be useful in helping younger kids relate to Native Americans and have compassion for how Europeans pushed them almost to extinction out of their own country. (Okay, off my soapbox now).
Science: Respiratory System
Intro: KidsHealth.org video on lungs
- Soda bottle lung model
- Vocab matching (pages 13 and 18)
- Assessment or worksheet depending on how you want to use it (+)
- Mucus experiment (Lesson One, Appendix B)
As with any week I post, a good part of our week is represented in the books (and sometimes videos) represented in the Amazon widget. I’m pretty excited about some of this week’s books and the video. We actually don’t buy these, they are all available at our library (if not our local branch, we have them transferred from another). If you do buy them, we’d love you to use the widget because it helps support this blog and our non-profit.
As always, we love hearing how these activities are working out in your family!