Some of the fun things about Heart of Dakota

I really like the curriculum Heart of Dakota that I picked out for this year. I has all I wanted in a curriculum.

I wanted something very hands on.  Fun learning of history and science. Creative and enjoyable all the while learning. Easy for me to teach with our crazy life. 

I found that with Heart of Dakota and Five in a Row. 

Five in a Row will be another post...

In history she does vocabulary, crafts and so much more to go along with the reading, 

In science she does experiments to go along with the reading. We have also taking our science to the beach.  That brought her learning to life.  

The art work adds some fun and ties everything in.

In history she is learning about early explorers.  In science she is learning about the ocean and all the life in and around it.

Taking the learning to the beach!  

Digging for the creatures that live in the sand

 Her art making it look like the ocean Finished project resembled the waves

 Showing me the route that Christopher Columbus took

 Activity to show how God made each creature special.  Birds have the right size beaks to collect the food they need.  Longer beaks to dig deep in the sand to get the creatures who live there. Smaller beaks to get the creatures that live on the sand.

 They didn't talk about the Vikings travels so I added this in

 Painting with water color on wax so much fun.  Thanks to the advice of other HOD users we skipped using wax paper and used crayons instead.

Homeschool days at Plimoth Plantation

 We took at field trip with our friends to Plimoth Plantation.  We had lots of fun. Did you know that in the native American culture the children had no responsibility besides playing? I asked them how they disciplined their children and I was told they didn't. All they expected them to do was be children and play. We also visited the Mayflower II, did some activities they  had set up for homeschoolers. Also learned that Plymouth, Plimouth and Plimoth are all the same place just when they wrote back then they wrote how they heard the sounds and depends on who wrote it would depend on how it was spelled.   Learned at artifacts.  Now on to the pictures.

A week of How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World...

So last week and into this week Samantha and I did the story How To Make An Apple Pie and See The World with Five in a Row.  We had so much fun with this book. There was a lot of crafts and learning that went along with this book. We made homemade apple pie scented playdoh. It was a fun week of learning.  Until reading this childs book I didn't know where cinnamon came from. Do you? One of our goals was to make the pie from as many of the home made ingredients that we could.

First we did the salt water experiment. She waited and recorded how long it took for the water to evaporate and leave behind the salt

We then made butter from whipping cream... 

She made the stores on the city block from the book....

We then went apple picking... I forgot to get pictures with her picking apples... but here is the hay ride part.

Today we made an apple pie.... we used our butter and salt from the evaporated water to make our crust....

We used the apples that we picked at the farm...

The pie came out delicious!  Samantha loved it and she normally doesn't like apple pie. Goes to show if the kid helps make it she will eat it.

By the way cinnamon comes from the bark of a tree... The most popular cinnamon comes from the kuranda tree on the island of Sri Lanka.