Horn Homeschool: Week 10

Week 10 continued our letter F themed studies with a unit on FARMS.

• Farm field trip.  If you live in Ohio and have children, a visit to Lake Farmpark should be mandatory by law. Heck, forget the kids, everyone must go regardless of offspring because this place was amazing!  Lots of demonstrations, education, and hands-on animal petting all facilitated by the most friendly and knowledgeable staff you can imagine.  We attended a milking and cheese-making demo, petted countless farm animals and even rode a tractor-pulled wagon around the grounds.  I appreciated the small scale to the exhibits and demonstrations.  The kids were all able to get right up close to experience everything.  
• Tractors.  There are a myriad of benefits to homeschooling but one facet that I especially love is incorporating special topics for both Chloe and Clive.  Since Clive is still so young I don't force or expect him to do much school with us.  But one aspect of the farm unit that I spent much time on was just for him -- tractors.  Chloe could care less about farm machinery.  That doesn't mean we wouldn't have talked about it some anyway but because Clive is a serious machine enthusiast we did it in excess for him.  It was so fun to see his excitement at reading tractor books and watching tractor dvds.  AND during our field trip he got to pretend to drive one.  Bonus!
• Farm pretend play.  Got out the little people farm and animals for our study this week.  It had been packed away for awhile so the kids had a fresh new longing to play with it and act out various farmy scenes.
• Food origins.  We learned much this week about where food comes from and the various types of farms that produce our food.  Even though we're weeks past this lesson, Clive still often holds up a piece of food from his plate and asks, "Mommy where this come from?" 
• Charlotte's Web.  We had already finished Charlotte's Web as our read-aloud a few weeks prior but the experiences and farm setting from the story were brought back to life with our farm study.  If you're doing a farm unit, Charlotte's Web would be a perfect and fun tie-in!
• Farm animal babies, mommies, daddies and groups.  There are a plethora of specific names for animal families.  It's borderline ridiculous.  We just did the basic ones and then reinforced with some matching worksheets.  Also read a whimsical book that depicted animal group names through the letters of the alphabet. Did you know a group of doves is called an exaltation?  And that a group of elephants is technically a kindergarten?   

The farm week was purposely light since we were coming off some heavy school weeks and needed a break.

Besides the above activities, we continued on with Chloe's regular math, reading, read-alouds and handwriting tasks.  And, as usual, we read LOTS of books about our theme throughout the week.

Chloe announced this week that she had changed her mind (again) about her grown-up occupation.  After week 10 she decided she wants to grow up and be a farmer.  Surprise, surprise!