Hands On Learning

Hannah has really been enjoying school so far this year. We switched curriculum and have found it to be a great fit. She is using Oak Meadow and studying American History. I love how the curriculum focus on head and heart. It is hands on with an appropriate amount of writing and little to none fill in the blank. As you can imagine Hannah loves the hands on part.


One of her first projects was to make a boat. Wood, tools building with dad are all some of Hannah's favorite things to do. So the boat project was a total success. Above you can see the boat. She is painting the sails, which she later starched. Now she is planning a trip to the pond to sail her boat.


Moving on to Jamestown. She was asked to build a diorama of the fort. Between stormy days she went about collecting a whittling sticks for the walls surrounding the buildings. Then she built building out of Popsicle sticks complete with thatched roofs.

The finished fort after it survived a storm.

Science has included lot of fun hands on as well. We had a trip to the frog pond while learning about ecosystems. We caught a few frogs, counted lots of tadpoles and were glad to see the pond thriving with little signs of pollution.

There has been measuring and converting us standard to metric system.

I think the constructing the wetland model and seeing how wetlands filter water has been the most fun. Hannah even added "pesticides" to the water to see how/if the wetland would filter them out before the water reached the pond.

Not sure what's up next, but I know Hannah will have tons of fun building and creating as she learns. It is a great journey to be on with her. Sometime I think I learn more than the kids. How did I miss all of this in school?