Hispanic Culture with Picture Books

I LOVE children's picture books. When my boys were younger it was the way I taught them using books based unit studies from Five in a Row and Homeschool Share. My boys are now teens, and picture books have fallen by the wayside for us. However, I teach Spanish to homeschoolers and public school kids in the afternoon and use a plethora of picture books to teach them. Homeschool Share has a blog, and they are featuring my post on teaching Hispanic culture with picture books. Not only do I share a list of picture books {all in English}, but there are also unit studies {free from Homeschool Share} to go with the books. 

To read the complete post, click here.

Spanish Lapbook

 

 I have several resources/posts on my blog in regards to teaching Spanish to kids and high school students. As many of you know, I am certified to teach Spanish at the high school level, but for the past decade or so I have been giving private and small group lessons in my home to students.  Here is a smattering of other posts that I have done to aid in the teaching of Spanish:

Learning Numbers 1-20 (Elementary Level)

Teaching Spanish Literature (High School Level)

Using Board Games to teach Spanish

Learning Spanish with Children's Books

Learning Spanish with Children's Books {Part 2}

Resources for Teaching Spanish

But there is another resource that you might be interested in created by myself and another homeschool mom, Kelly.  It is a Spanish lapbook available through Homeschool Share and it is completely free! It includes a lot of the basics like numbers, clothes, colors, weather, etc.  There are vocabulary lists and lesson ideas to go along with the actual lapbook pieces.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Looking Back: Our Favorite Homeschool Curricula

We are by no means done with our homeschooling journey, but with my oldest we are getting to the end as he will be a junior in the fall.  Here is a look at some of the curricula that we have enjoyed and learned the most from...

Our homeschooling journey started with Five in a Row when the boys were in early elementary.  Of all the products that we have used this has been my favorite.  My fondest memories come from FIAR.  There were so many neat activities and precious learning experiences that we had. Basically, Five in a Row is a literature-based curriculum.  For one week you read the same picture book, like The Duchess Bakes a Cake
or How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and pull a lesson from five different subjects based on the book.  Each week there are lessons in language arts, social studies, science, art, and applied math.  My boys gained so much knowledge about the world through these lessons.  The lessons are gentle, yet deep and are memories in the making!  Starting at 3rd or 4th grade we moved from FIAR to other programs for history (Biblioplan) and science (Apologia).  See below for information...

Another similar resource (that is FREE!) are the lessons and lapbooks at Homeschool Share. There are unit studies at Homeschool Share that are similar to Five in a Row.  There are also numerous lapbooks.  We used several units and lapbooks from here and loved all of them!

For math we used Math-U-See and Teaching Textbooks. We used Math-U-See in the younger years.  I loved the hands-on approach and the way of teaching place value.  This year my oldest will use their Stewardship program which deals with personal finance.  Honestly, though, for the high school years I prefer Teaching Textbooks.  This program can mainly be done on the computer. The beauty of it is that every single problem, yes, every single one is done step by step for the student.  So as your child is working through his or her lesson and misses a problem he/she can go back a review the problem. Teaching Textbooks also grades their work.  Since I am very weak in math I felt like this was the way to go when we got to higher levels.

Apologia has awesome programs for both elementary and high school levels. The elementary levels are engaging and fun.  There is also a notebook that you can buy to help review the concepts they have learned. The notebooks include crosswords and notebooking pages with mini-books. My youngest son did every single one of the elementary books and loved them!  The high school levels are rigorous and challenging.  I love that creationism is explored along with why evolution doesn't work based on what we know of the world.

Biblioplan is what we used at the elementary level for history. Biblioplan is a four year program which you can cycle through a couple of times if you homeschool all the way through. It incorporates "spines" (history texts) like Story of the World, Usborne history books, etc. and literature to read as you go through the centuries.  We didn't use the other aspects of the program except for doing maps. I love that we could use literature to cover history!

We used Notgrass for high school history (world and American).  I liked that there were review questions and quizzes and tests to keep my son focused on the material. Literature is also incorporated into the program (although we did literature separately). There is also a book with original documents and speeches that your student can read. Notgrass comes from a Christian perspective which I appreciated.

For writing we used Institute for Excellence in Writing. I loved this program because it teaches good outlining skills and how to dress up your writing.  This is basically the only writing program that we used.  The only problem?  After using it for several years with both boys we got kind of bored with the system.  However, even with that, this is the BEST program out there that I have seen for writing simply because it teaches how to make your writing interesting.

We used Progeny Press and Teaching the Classics from Center for Lit. for teaching literature.  Teaching the Classics is a manual for the parent that teaches how to discuss literature with your student.  Invaluable!!!  I love the list of questions that can be used for any book at the end of the manual.  We used Progeny Press for some of the books that we read.  These are literature guides that come from a Christian perspective. I loved using these when we came to books that have hard topics in them like To Kill a Mockingbird.

So what have you used in your homeschool?

Lego Unit Study....

Check this out from Ami of the Homeschool Share boards! 

What's in Store for February...

Here is what we are doing in school during February...

For history we are moving on to Ancient Rome.  Here are some of the books we are using...

For science we will be working on sirenians (manatees, dugongs, and the extinct Steller sea cow), single family orders (animals that don't fit into any other category) such as...

...elephants, flying lemurs, pangolins, hyrax, and aardvarks.

We are also going to be starting a lapbook for grammar...

School in January

Here are our plans for January

For history: We are starting on Ancient Greece. We use Biblioplan as a guide for all our history studies. Here are some of the books we will be using...

For science we are continuing our study of zoology.  In January we are going to study insectivores and toothless mammals. We are mostly using lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share to create our zoology lapbook.  In case you aren't familiar with either of these categories take a  look at the pictures below.

Insectivores

moles

shrews

hedgehogs

Toothless Mammals

sloth

anteater

armadillo

More on the Argentina Unit

We are currently working on a unit about Argentina through the book Chúcaro.  Here are some pictures of the boys working on a notebooking page about llamas.  They used Draw Write Now Volume 8 in order to draw a picture of a llama for their pages.  We also focused a bit on Paraguay and Brazil, two countries that border Argentina and are a part of the story of Chúcaro.

Here is the llama page from Draw Write Now that we used...

The boys working on Brazil and Paraguay pages provided in the Chúcaro unit.

Here's a look at my lesson plans (or at least part of them) for the unit.  The page is a part of Study Starters if you buy their system. The unit has turned out to be about three weeks worth of lesson plans, but that is at a swift pace.  You could definitely take more time on it!

Update on Chúcaro-Argentina Unit

We have been working on our unit on Argentina based on the book, Chúcaro.  We have been using Study Starters as notebooking pages for our study.  I am loving these pages!  Here are a few of the things we have done...

Country Info Pages

The regions of Argentina

The Grasslands of Argentina and other areas of the world

The Ombú tree of the Pampas of Argentina

Learning about Argentina-Ushuaia

In December, the boys and I are embarking on a study of Argentina through the unit on Chúcaro, a book about some gauchos (Argentine cowboys).  I have been to Argentina three times, twice by myself and once with Tim.  When I went with Tim, we traveled to Misiones Province which is in northern Argentina and very tropical.  We also went south...to the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia (pronounced "oo-shoe-eye-ah"). Ushuaia is a remarkable place...kind of the end of the earth. We felt comfortable there as it has a similar feel to Alaska (also kind of "the end of the earth"). We went in the winter time (summer here in the States) and were able to enjoy snow down in Tierra del Fuego (Tierra del Fuego means "fire land" and is the province where Ushuaia is located).  Not that we need more opportunities to enjoy snow! LOL!

The city and surrounding area has about 64,000 people which was more to our liking than the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, with its millions of people. Here is a picture of the city of Ushuaia...it is so picturesque.

Well, while the boys are learning more about the country of Argentina, I thought I would do the same. Recently, I bought a book for Tim called Rounding the Horn by Dallas Murphy. He recently finished the book, and now I am reading it.  While some of it is technical and scientific I am enjoying learning more about the tip of South America and Cape Horn.

So far, I have only read three chapters, but I am enjoying learning more about the area, the geography and history of the area.

Stay tuned in the month of December for more posts about Argentina.  You will be able to find all my posts about our Argentina unit under the "labels" category on the left-hand sidebar.  That way, if you are ever interested in doing a unit on Argentina you can go through my posts for extra information and activities.

Ushuaia-fin del mundo (End of the World)