Living Books and Next Study

I am really getting the hang of this whole unschoolish/child-led-unit study approach...A mixture of the styles that I have read about. The more I read and talk to veteran homeschoolers, the more I learn-obviously. And the more I hear the same stuff over and over, it becomes ingrained in me, and I decide to try it out, whatever it is. And today that is...living books.

I attended a seminar last Summer about living books. It talked all about books to read with different topics and finding books and how to "use" them properly. I believe Sam is getting old enough to start trying some living books, so we just picked out our first living book from our local library. It is called George's Secret Key To The Universe. It is by Stephen and Lucy Hawking. We are on Chapter Six our of Thirty something, just now really getting into the story. It is about 300 pages, with large print and some illustrations here and there. Samantha can NOT get enough of it! We just started it yesterday. We read several chapter on the couch and last night before bed. The only reason we stopped is because we had to leave the house or like last night, she had to go to bed. The book is a fun, fictional story, but involves a lot of good facts. They have already mentioned Galileo and talked about a science experiment, which we did after we finished that chapter. (The one where you rub a balloon on your head and hold it near a stream of water and it moves it.) And I looked further into the book and there are several real life photos of space! How exciting! We can't wait to get to those and study them. :)

So, to finish up our unit, we will have a few activities to do today with the moon, finish our book, and take Sam to the planetarium this Sunday afternoon.

Our next unit is weather! We had a bad storm yesterday, and while watching it from the window, Samantha asked if she could learn about weather next. Of course I told her yes. It will tie perfectly into our space unit, as we talk about the atmosphere and move on. And then it will tie into our Spring unit as the weather changes! I have started finding some experiments to do for weather that Jessie is very excited about. He is really into that sort of stuff. I Love anytime he can get involved in her learning!