V is for Valleys Galore!

              The word ‘valleys’ brings to mind images of Julie Andrews spinning around in the valleys and mountains outside her Swedish convent. So picturesque, so serene. And truly, under the right circumstances, the valleys are majestic and glorious.

Here in the Kern River Valley, we basically live in a giant bowl. Mountains surround us on every side, as well as hills and mesas running throughout the area, turning a short distance into a 15-minute drive.

Everywhere you look, there are mountains and valleys. Sometimes they are wonderful, when you’re hiking or taking photos, or just admiring the colorful foliage. Other times, they can be horrible, like when you’re driving over treacherous mountains tops or trying to get a signal on your phone or satellite.

I suppose it must be the same for everyone living in mountain communities, a love/hate relationship with the scenery and wild animals and woodland creatures living alongside your children and pets. 

I know I don’t want to leave. I like it here. Except for the lack of convenience, which has long since become a normal part of every day life, this setting is perfect for our family.

What do you love about where you live? Do you wish you were somewhere else or are you happy where you're at?

Wolves Unit in Homeschool

      

 I’ve only had my blog back up and going for a couple months now, and I haven’t been the best about posting. Fortunately it is because I’ve been busy doing stuff.

I haven’t really been posting anything about school because I am constantly so busy planning, printing, copying, prepping, teaching, organizing and grading that I get lost in the rush to get it done and don’t take the time to step back and go “hey, look what we did in homeschool!”

So, I would like to do that now, and show off the unit study we did on wolves. We did a lapbook full of activities that covered all areas of homeschooling, plus art projects and a literature and language arts unit on White Fang.

I got the printable pdf file for the lapbook from homeschoolshare.com, you don’t have to sign up or pay any fees. They have so many different lapbookunits and printable pdf files, it has been one of my favorite websites this year! 

We use a regular manila folder, folded in onto itself so that the cover opens down the middle. I always tell the boys to cut everything out and arrange it so it will fit before they glue it down. Sometimes we don’t check first and things get crammed in where they’ll fit, but that’s part of the creative process.

For language arts, we did White Fang. I picked up two copies of a kid-friendly abridged version at Goodwill for $.49 each. This version is much easier for my 6^th grade readers to absorb than the original full-length novel.

Then I found a printable White Fang activity book that I downloaded for free. It’s 24 pages long, with two activity pages per page. When it was completed, we cut them in half and stapled them into a 48-page booklet.

The boys colored and cut out these printable wolf pup masks. They went up onto our art wall. They gave their wolves their own personalities and back-stories.

red wolves

There were other little things I found, like a red wolves worksheet that I downloaded for free at education.com, grey wolves fast facts and a wolf dot to dot coloring page.

gray wolf facts

We read various books about the wolves, some National Geographics, some early reader books. The lapbook printable from homeschoolshare.com also comes with information and instructions, which were very helpful.

It was a really fun unit, and the boys really enjoyed it. I'm going to hang on to this unit for when Lovebug gets older, so I can do another study on wolves with her!