Panama Canal

 Additional Resources:
YouTube - I like this one. However, it can only be seen on YouTube.  It is short and to the point.
Geography About
Canal Museum
PBS

Book of Marvels - Fort Jefferson

This was the coolest chapter!

Civil War just ended.  Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth.  Dr. Mudd sent to prison at Fort Jefferson because he 'set' Mr. Booths broken leg!  What?

The U.S. Government felt that Dr. Mudd was a conspirator to the crime of killing our President Lincoln.  He was sentenced to life in prison and sent to For Jefferson which at the time had the most evil reputation of any prison in the country.  Dr. Mudd's wife worked for four years to get him pardoned - pardoned for a crime he did not commit.

Fort Jefferson

30 foot moat to the portal

Inside the walls is a ground as large as 20 football fields!

Over 50 million bricks used to build the structure.

Largest mass of unreinforced masonry ever raised by Americans.  All brick and stone. Not held together by any steel or concrete.  

Additional Resources:

Boothiebarn

 

Book of Marvels - Yosemite

Our second stop is Yosemite to see the Highest Waterfall named Bridal Veil.

Please preview the YouTube, what is fine for my family may not be for yours.

Book of Marvels - The Golden Gate Bridge

We are using Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels for part of our Geography this year.  As we move along the book I thought I would document some You Tube or pictures that we view along with each chapter.  It just might help someone else.  Just remember, review the YouTube before hand.  What is fine for my family may not be with yours.

Our first stop is the Golden Gate Bridge in CA.

State Capitols Song

Flat Travelers - Our First Adventure!

We joined a very active facebook group called the Homeschool Swapping Adventures.  Each month our flat friends travel to a new state (or country if you choose to do so) for a new adventure.

To start this new fun adventure the boys needed to create their flat traveler.

Ryan chose to have a football player named Adrian Peterson #28 of the Vikings and Jacob decided to do a snowmobiler.  I decided to print out a picture of our dog, Kramer, so she could tag along with the flat travelers and 'watch' them for us.  We also decided to laminate the travelers so they can last for all 50 states!

We also created a journal page for the family that we visit to fill out.

Once we choose to travel overseas to other countries we will send our passport with our flat travelers.

Our first trip will be to the state of Washington.  Our travelers and our family are excited to hear about all of the fun adventures our Washington family has in store for our travelers.  We just need to brain storm what fun things to do with their traveler when they get here...

Geography

The past few weeks the boys and I have been doing some morning school but not too school-ish. We are not doing a huge list of subjects, it is more for us to spend time together and get a feel for the various subjects we will be doing this school year {Okay, so I get a feel for the subjects!}.

A few weeks ago we focused on a geography lesson from A Child’s Geography. The style is very similar to The Story of the World series that we use for History. The publisher of A Child's Geography offers a free sample of the lesson right here.

For the activity the boys made a Paper Mache globe. The boys went outside and dipped newspaper strips into a mixture. The craft took much longer than I anticipated due to the humidity. It took a few days for each layer of strips to dry. So we only did 2 layers of newspaper. { I forgot to take the camera out for this messy project.}

Here is a picture of the globes – drying.

The boys enjoyed painting the ‘world’. We still have the globes laying around the house, I guess we need to find a home for them. Maybe they could be Christmas presents for the Grandparents!

Games are for learning....

We played the Scrambled States of America today. I love this game for many reasons. The first one is obvious - learning the states and capitals. Second is the location of the states. Third, forth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth is measuring, counting, directions, syllables, letters, colors and vowels. That sure is a lot of stuff out of such a small box! The best part is both of my kids love to play it. I really should take it out more - I even learn from it :-)