Ancient History: Stone Age

We started the unit by reading:

• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 108-109
• Story of the World: Chapter 1

Nonfiction books we enjoyed:

•  It's Disgusting and We Ate It!: True Food Facts From Around the World and Throughout History by James Solheim (641.3 So) - pages 16-25 cover some foods eaten in Ancient and Medieval times 
• You Wouldn't Want to Be a Mammoth Hunter! by John Malam (930.12 Ma) 
• Horrible Histories Savage Stone Age

Fiction books we enjoyed:

• Magic Tree House #7: Sunset of the Sabertooth by Mary Pope Osborne
• Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age by Raymond Briggs - silly cartoon-style book about a boy who keeps trying to invent things that won't be invented for thousands of years after the book is set, and the people around who think he is ridiculous for doing so
• Stone Age Boy by Satoshi Kitamura - a modern boy falls into cave times. Light reading with brief factual bits about what people did and ate.
• Boy of the Painted Cave by Justin Denzel - tells the story of a boy who wants to be a cave painter even though his lineage doesn't allow for it. This one is a longer, more complex story aimed at ages 8+ but worked well as a read aloud for us.

Documentaries we enjoyed:

• Cave of Forgotten Dreams - a little lengthy for The Kid, we watched about half of this. She and I both liked seeing the video of the pristine images from so long ago.

Activities we enjoyed:

• Cave Painting 

Following along in history? Go back to the main Ancient History page.

Cave Paintings

We are getting underway studying Ancient History, beginning with a unit on cave dwellers and the Stone Age. We took advantage of a lovely spring afternoon to get a little messy with this project!

Our "cave" was a large piece of packing paper taped to the shed:

Our painting materials:
- A large bowl of mud mixed with a bit of Crisco (in place of animal fat)
- A bowl with a bit of crushed charcoal. We added some crumbles of charred wood from the fire pit once we took these outdoors.
- A bowl of blackberries to smush up to add some color

And some cave paintings!

Ancient History by Region

We have completed our prehistory study and plan on covering Ancient History region by region during first and second grade. I'll list the best resources we find as we go along. The outline is on this page and the resource lists will be linked from here.

I know it is more common and popular to study history chronologically rather than regionally, and there are many programs and schedules available for this. For this first pass through Ancients, I decided to focus on the culture of Ancient people rather than the timelines. We are using a timeline to add events to in order to see the progression through history.







Note: Because of a big shift in how we approach our schooling, including a heavier emphasis on child-led and child-chosen subjects, this history sequence has been abandoned. I will leave the completed parts here, but don't want anyone to start on them thinking more are coming!

I don't schedule most of the resources we use. When we start a unit, I gather books and documentaries and we jump into the pile and go through things by interest. We do start each unit with reading from the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History and Story of the World to give us a basic framework. We are a non-religious family and all materials are fully secular unless noted individually otherwise. Because religion plays an important part in history, we are doing a separate World Religions study and omitted the sections of Story of the World that were primarily religious in nature.

• Stone Age
• Southwest Asia/Near East
• Sumer and Akkad, Babylonians, Assyrians
• Phoenecians
• Persia
• Africa/Egypt
• East Asia/China
• South Asia/India
• Americas
• Europe
• Europe
• Greece
• Rome

Michael Clay Thompson: Island Level "Schedule"

Michael Clay Thompson loves language and this is clear in his educational materials. I have to assume he does not love schedules because in the many books in Island Level, there is not one schedule. We completed our main lesson once per week, with the extra practice or Practice Island scattered in on other days. See additional notes at the bottom of the list.

1. Grammar Island 5-28
2. Grammar Island 29-44
3. Grammar Island 45-64
4. Grammar Island 65-74, extra practice on page 169 in TM
5. Grammar Island 75-87, extra practice on page 171 in TM
6. Grammar Island 88-94, extra practice on page 173, 177, 189 in TM
7. Grammar Island 95-114
8. Grammar Island 115-126, extra practice on pages 179, 190 in TM
9. Grammar Island 127-135, extra practice on pages 181, 191 in TM
10. Grammar Island 136-158, extra practice on page 192 in TM
11. Music of the Hemispheres 1-37
12. Sentence Island 7-56
13. Building Language 3-39
14. Sentence Island TM 268-269, one assignment of student's choice
15. Building Language 40-48
16. Sentence Island TM 268-269, one assignment of parent's choice
17. Music of the Hemispheres 38-47, pages 162-163 in TM
18. Sentence Island 57-108
19. Building Language 49-56
20. Sentence Island TM 278-279, one assignment of student's choice
21. Building Language 57-64
22. Sentence Island TM 278-279, one assignment of parent's choice
23. Music of the Hemispheres 48-63, refer to pages 154-155, 164-165 in TM
24. Sentence Island 109-146
25. Building Language 65-74
26. Sentence Island TM 292, one assignment of student's choice
27. Building Language 75-81
28. Sentence Island TM 292, one assignment of parent's choice 
29. Music of the Hemispheres 64-79, refer to pages 154-155, 166-167 in TM
30. Sentence Island 147-188
31. Building Language 82-85
32. Sentence Island TM 304, one assignment of student's choice
33. Building Language 86-93
34. Sentence Island TM 304, one assignment of parent's choice
35. Music of the Hemispheres 80-103, refer to pages 154-155, 168-169 in TM
36. Sentence Island 189-226
37. Building Language 94-101
38. Sentence Island TM 314, one assignment of student's choice
39. Building Language 102-109
40. Sentence Island TM 314, one assignment of parent's choice
41. Music of the Hemispheres 104-105
42. Sentence Island 227-256
43. Building Language 110-117
44. Sentence Island TM 324, one assignment of student's choice
45. Building Language 118-125
46. Sentence Island TM 324, one assignment of parent's choice 
47. Music of the Hemispheres 106-116, refer to pages 154-155,170-171 in TM
48. Building Language 136-128
49. Music of the Hemispheres117-130, refer to pages 154-155, 172-173 in TM

Notes:

• I include the extra practice in Grammar Island within the lesson in the list, though we did them during a different time slot than the main lesson. 
• We did not do all of the extra practice, just enough to know my daughter understood. 
• Likewise, we did not do all the writing activities in Sentence Island, just enough to have fun with the concepts.
• We do BraveWriter-style poetry teas. We talked about what we had learned from Music of the Hemispheres during the poetry teas and related it to the poetry we were reading.
• Beginning with week 11 (as soon as we had finished Grammar Island) we completed two sentences from Practice Island per week.
• If you are looking to do copywork or dictation, the sentences in Practice Island can be used for short passages.
• I do realize that 49 lessons does not fit into most people's "school year". I don't really think in school years, so this simply doesn't matter to me.

BFSU: Foundational Units

These three mini-units can be done in any order. Keep them simple. They are meant to help lay a foundation for later concepts, so they must be understood, but they will be reinforced repeatedly as you progress through the program.


Introduction to Gravity
Resources: Magic School Bus episode (was a good example of gravity having an effect on weight)

Lesson 1: BFSU D-1: Gravity I: The Earth's Gravity. Horizontal and Vertical. Part 1
Lesson 2: BFSU D-1: Gravity I: The Earth's Gravity. Horizontal and Vertical. Part 2
Lesson 3: BFSU D-1: Gravity I: The Earth's Gravity. Horizontal and Vertical. Part 3
Lesson 4: Magic School Bus Gains Weight


Introduction to Energy
Resources: Magic School Bus episode (just for fun)

Lesson 1: BFSU C-1: Concepts of Energy I: Making Things Go, part 1
Lesson 2: BFSU C-1: Concepts of Energy I: Making Things Go, part 2
Lesson 3: BFSU C-1: Concepts of Energy I: Making Things Go, part 3
Lesson 4: Magic School Bus episode: Getting Energized


Introduction to Living Things
Resources: None. I did use the Science in a Nutshell kit: Is It Alive? for this, but can not recommend it for several reasons. I recommend doing this lesson as written and saving the possible expansions for later topics in Thread B.

Lesson 1: BFSU B-2: Distinguishing Living, Natural Non-Living, and Human Made Things, part 1
Lesson 2: BFSU B-2: Distinguishing Living, Natural Non-Living, and Human Made Things, part 2
Lesson 3: BFSU B-2: Distinguishing Living, Natural Non-Living, and Human Made Things, part 3

This post is part of my series on using BFSU as a science unit study.

BFSU: States of Matter Unit

Resources: Magic School Bus episode (optional, for fun)
                  Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases (exceptionally good, very educational)
                  Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids (good but not exceptional)

Note on resources: We dwelt on this unit for quite a while. There is no need to do so. I did find later when discussing topics in the Matter units that the work we did here made those units really easy and we could refer back to things learned with the kits. However, you could easily cover the BFSU lessons in 5 lesson times and move on!

Lesson 1: BFSU A-2: Solids, Liquids, and Gases (I covered this in one lesson without doing the demonstrtions due to using kits. If I were not using the kits, I would have separated out  Part 1 and Part 2 and done the demonstrations.
Lesson 2: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 1
Lesson 3: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 2
Lesson 4: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 3
Lesson 5: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 4
Lesson 6: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 5
Lesson 7: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 6
Lesson 8: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 7
Lesson 9: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 8
Lesson 10: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 9
Lesson 11: Science in a Nutshell kit: Liquids, Activity 10
Lesson 12: BFSU A-3: Air is a Substance (I introduced this in one conversation only, due to using a kit. If I were not using the kit, I would have separated out the three parts of this lesson and done the demonstrations.)
Lesson 13: Magic School Bus Makes a Stink
Lesson 14: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 1
Lesson 15: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 2
Lesson 16: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 3
Lesson 17: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 4
Lesson 18: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 5
Lesson 19: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 6
Lesson 20: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 7
Lesson 21: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 8
Lesson 22: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 9
Lesson 23: Science in a Nutshell kit: Gases, Activity 10

This post is part of my series on using BFSU as a science unit study.

Using the math balance to show that an inflated balloon is heavier than an uninflated balloon - all matter has mass!

Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding in Units

BFSU can be an overwhelming resource. After using it for a while, I realized that many of the topics are set up to flow in mini-units, or flowing chunks of information. Thinking of it this way helps organize it into topics, schedule lessons by interest and availability of materials, and cover prerequisites. I will post and link our plans here as we work through BFSU.

A note on resources: BFSU has extensive book lists at the end of every section. I tended to reserve all of them that my library had and have them in the book bin to go through at our leisure, but did not formally include them as part of science class. The books are a fantastic addition to teaching and I highly recommend including them. In addition to BFSU, I occasionally use prepared science kits, Magic School Bus episodes (often available streaming on Netflix or for purchase on Amazon), and the book Blood and Guts by Linda Allison. None of these resources are required to use BFSU and I will make notes of where I think they were more and less useful.

All of BFSU starts with lesson A/B-1. That lesson is a prerequisite for just about everything and you should start there. I don't list it as a prerequisite below because I just assume it was done first.

Foundational Units - These should be done before moving on, as they are prerequisites for most further lessons. They may be done in any order.
Unit: States of Matter
Unit: Introduction to Gravity
Unit: Introduction to Energy
Unit: Introduction to Living Things

BFSU K-2 - These lessons assume you have covered A/B-1 and the Foundational Units above. Any other prerequisites are listed next to the unit.
Unit: Sound and Vibrations
Unit: Energy
Unit: Matter and Magnets
Unit: Living Things (note: best done during warm months when animals/plants can be easily observed)
Unit: Time and Maps
Unit: Physics (prerequisites: Energy unit and Time and Maps unit)
Unit: Air (prerequisites: Energy unit and Matter and Magnets unit)
Unit: Rocks and Crystals (prerequisite: Matter unit and Air unit)
Unit: Plants (prerequisites: Living Things unit and Land and Rocks unit; Note: best done in spring/summer, when plants can be grown and/or observed)
Unit: The Human Body (prerequisites: Living Things unit and Land and Rocks unit)

 Then wrap up using BFSU D-9.