Another Project!

Another fun project we are working on this year is a study of the 50 states. The girls each have a notebook with pages to include information that they learn about each state, and we are taking a state per week in order of their dates of statehood. This week, of course, we have been learning a little more about Delaware. On Tuesday, each girl sent an email to the Delaware tourism office requesting information about the state, and today that information came! We had a blast spreading out their full-size road maps on the living room floor and tracing major highways and railroads in different colors. We looked that the map legend and located different symbols on the map. We highlighted certain cities that we are familiar with (two of their siblings were born in Wilmington) and then noted the canal connecting the Delaware and Chesapeake Rivers. It was also fun to look through the travel booklet and see pictures from across the state. When we were finished looking at all of our information, the girls filed everything away in the (alphabetically arranged) state folder we labeled for Delaware. I think we might be getting excited about this project (who wouldn't be excited about the prospect of mail each week?!)!

A New Year!

School has officially begun this week, and we are enjoying it so far!  I just wanted to make note of some special projects we are doing this fall:

• All About Me booklets - It has been fun to go back and look at the booklets made in previous years and see their handwriting, likes and dislikes, statistics, etc!  This year I added a page for "When I grow up, I want to be...", and it was especially fun listening to my 4-year-old tell me all of the things that, in his mind, are special grown-up things (washing dishes, being asked to return library books, driving all sorts of vehicles, etc.) 
• Oral History Project - We are going to slowly work our way through our entire family, interviewing them via email with questions about their families and growing up and special memories that they have.  Just this week we have begun with my 89 year old grandmother, and it has been really neat to read her responses to the girls' emails and to share these stories together!  I'm looking forward to compiling an entire family "history" with the girls this year!  
• Weekly Projects - We told the girls that they get a chance to "teach" us every Friday and can even ask us questions to see if we were paying attention!  They have to pick out a book at the library on Monday (not sure if I will assign different parameters here each week), read it and pick out three things they learned that they want to teach us.  Then they have to draw a picture and prepare a short presentation.  They seem excited so far and have done well with it this week.  I'm looking forward to Friday! 
• Blogging as Creative Writing - Both girls have balked a bit at creative writing, mostly not knowing what to write about and not really being motivated to write in the journals I had them use last year.  So, this year we are doing a different writing exercise each day.  I did wonder if having an actual audience might help with motivation to write, so we came up with the idea to start a blog for each of them.  They will write a weekly post to share with their family and maybe some friends.  I figure they will learn typing, internet, scanning and uploading skills in addition to creative writing!  And, more importantly, they are excited about it so far!  

I'll port more later on what we have finally decided to use for our curriculum this year.