I haven’t posted much about our homeschooling adventures for a while. I probably should clarify that “schooling” for us is extremely loose at this point. It’s pretty much picking a book/topic and having as much fun with it as we can. ;)

The past few weeks we’ve been using Virginia Lee Burton’s classic book The Little House as the springboard for our learning fun. This book was a Caldecott winner in 1943 – I had never read it before and stumbled upon it in our local library. This has been so much FUN! This book covers an amazing array of topics [and great vocabulary!]; almost every page turn opens something new to learn about. Ie: this post will be long. ;)

The book opens with a description of the little house being “strong and well built.” So, we started off by making a gingerbread house together. I must say, as I did this I remembered why it worked much better to make a gingerbread house when my husband is home… this was not as relaxing and idyllic as it was supposed to be in my mind. And whether or not it is “strong and well built” is questionable.

Nevertheless, we had a great time. The next day, I pulled out our paints and let AG paint it pink like the house in the book – she thought this was hilarious that we were paining cookies. :)

A few pages into the book, Burton describes how the little house stays the same even as she watches day after day go by. She describes how the moon grows “from a thin new moon to a full moon, then back again to a thin old moon; and when there was no moon she watched the stars.” We hadn’t really talked much about the moon’s phases, so this was a great starting point. I found this online moon phases calendar, which was very helpful to look at with her.

We have been learning Psalm 19:1 – “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” We covered a sturdy piece of cardboard from an old box with silver wrapping paper, and I wrote her verse on it and then let her put some star stickers on it. Then we took black circles and glued various “moon phase” shapes cut from white paper onto them, and hung them with yarn to make a mobile. This is fun to have in her room because the paper is very reflective and she can see it at night.

I was so proud of her when we were making this. First when I was explaining that we were going to learn about the moon, I asked her what day God made the moon. Without missing a beat she said, “day 4!” [I asked her how she remembered and she said, "because of our creation book!"] :) As we worked we were discussing that the light doesn’t make light on its own – it just reflects the sun’s light. I asked (without expecting much), “how are we kind of like the moon?” She just kept on working and said matter-of-factly, “because God’s light shines through us.” Awesome!!!!!!! Oh, moments like that make bad days fade away, don’t they? I think that must have been fresh in her mind from when we carved our pumpkin and talked about God’s light shining in us.

Burton then spends four pages talking about the seasons – she shows the little house and the surrounding hills and how they change from season to season. We made our own versions of her illustrations with construction paper, crayons and markers, a house stamp, and some tree stamps I happened to have.

After a while, the city near the little house begins to grow and consume the countryside where she was built. The first thing that happens is that steam shovels, trucks, and steamrollers come and build a road in front of the little house.

We learned more about roads are made in Building a Road by Henry Pluckrose. Then we went in the kitchen and made our own “road” – almond brittle covered in chocolate. :) Some almonds were whole, some were sliced – they were our “big stones and little stones.” We talked about steamrollers as we spread the brittle out thin with spatulas, and the chocolate on top was our “tar.”

Most delicious road ever.

Today, we wrapped up our The Little House unit with a brief activity to talk about shadows. As the little house is swallowed up by the city and has skyscrapers built on each side of her, Burton mentions that she only saw the sun at noon. In order to explain this, we built a house out of duplo blocks, put it between two chairs covered with blankets, and moved a flashlight in an arch from one side to the other to be the sun rising and setting. AG could see that the light only shone on the sun when it was straight up in the air – at noon.

If you have older kids, I found a great book at the library that is far beyond AG at this point, but it has some fabulous learning activities regarding skyscrapers. Skyscrapers by Carol Johmann is full of interesting facts and history about Skyscrapers and city planning, and then gives step-by-step instructions for kids to design and build their own structures! Such a neat book!

One thing I did grab out of this book to talk about with AG is the fact that newer skyscrapers are “stepped back” as they go up, rather than rising straight up from the street all the way to the top. The design of skyscrapers changed because people living in the city were complaining that they hardly ever saw the sun (because of what we already illustrated with the little house.) To talk about how this works, we moved the chairs around so the seats were facing the little house rather than the backs, and then did the flashlight experiment again. Sure enough, the house was in the light much longer that way! I don’t know if that really made sense to AG, but her nerdy mom thought it was interesting. :)

There really was a lot more in The Little House that would have been fun to explore. I was hoping that we could work in a trip to a “big city” and ride a subway and see an elevated train, as Burton talks about those things… maybe another time. She also talks about the house being moved back to the country – perhaps some day we’ll see a house being moved and we’ll check this book out once again. :)

But, that’s all for now… must move on to Thanksgiving!