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February 1, 2012February 1, 2012

My January Unschooling Fun & Resources

Can you believe it’s the first day in February? Each month I think we can’t have more fun than we did last month – and almost every month I’m wrong!

Now there definitely were some not so fun parts of this month for my family. Both kids caught pink eye, my husband had a car accident (with the car being in the shop for almost a month), and I came down with another sinus infection.

But, we were able to do a lot of new things at home, as well as go on some really fun day trips. I love the flexibility and excitement that comes from living this unschooling lifestyle!

Here’s some of what we were up to this month and the resources we used:

 

Books

Christmas in Camelot (A Magic Treehouse book)

Haunted Castle on Hallows Eve (A Magic Tree house book)

Merlin and the making of the King

Sir Lancelot and the ice castle

The sword in the stone

That’s Good! That’s Bad!

Mother Mother I feel Sick, Call for the Doctor Quick Quick Quick

The Secret Life of Math: Discover how (and why) numbers have survived from the cave dwellers to us!  This is a really great book with lots of hands-on activities.  We just got started on the first part of this book this month.

Snow Company

Sand and Snow

The Snowy Day

Night of the Mummy

The Man behind the Mask

Robin’s First Flight

Mad Hatter’s Movie Madness

Killer Croc Hunter

Grodd’s Army

Frostbite

Mandie and the Secret Tunnel

Moja means one: A Swahili counting book

Science in Ancient Mesopotamia

One…two…three…Sassafras!

Tally O’Malley

The King’s Commissioners

The spider weaver: a legend of kente cloth

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

King Arthur and the Black Knight

King Arthur and the Nights of the Round Table (A Great Illustrated Classics Book)

The Village of Round and Square Houses

The Kids Nature Book/365 Days of Activities

 

DVDs

 The Incredible Hulk

Mandie and the Secret Tunnel (we watched this after we read the same novel this month)

Mandie and the Cherokee Treasure

The Story of 1   * Everyone should watch this film. It’s a very funny, very informative story about the history of numbers. All ages will enjoy this. If you get Netflix you can watch it instantly. The host, Terry Jones has quite a few other history films, too, you can watch through Netflix.

All 3 of the Lord of the Rings movies

Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension

Happily N’Ever After: 2 Snow White

King Arthur and the Nights of Justice (this is an animated series)

Ironman: Armored Adventures (an animated series)

Arthur’s Quest  

Merlin and the War of the Dragons

Legend of Cougar Canyon

Iditarod: The Last Great Race (a 6 episode program from Discovery)

River Monsters (an Animal Planet series)

 

CDs

King Arthur and his Knights by Jim Weiss

Yellow Umbrella

Games

Ramses Return (a Lego game)

Pretty Pretty Princess

Candy land

An Animal Tracks Matching Game (from The Young Scientists Club Animal Tracks Kit)

Don’t Break the Ice

GeoSafari Laptop

Kits

The Young Scientists Club Animal Tracks

4DVision Great White Shark Anatomy Model

 

Outside Activities

Swimming Lessons

Open Gymnastics at Flying High Gymnastics

Oak Lawn Children’s Museum

MAX Bounce House

Long Grove Confectionary Tour (yea! Free chocolate!)

Shedd Aquarium (Oceanarium show, Wild Reef Exhibit, Animal Habitats Learning Lab and Polar Play Zone)

Snow Days Chicago at Navy Pier (international snow sculpting competition, dog sled races)

Chicago Children’s Museum

Moving my Sister to another house

Sledding & Building a Snowman

 

Other Activities:

Lots of Angry Birds, PBS.Kids.org, Google Maps (Alexa looks up a country or city in an atlas and then looks it up here), reading Beatrix Potter stories out loud and acting them out (first I act out a story while Alexa reads one, then the kids act out another story together while I read one out loud), making snow ice cream, feeding the birds, hand feeding our pet squirrel, drawing, writing words, lots of pretend play, painting, dictating stories they made up while I type them out.

 

Photo Credit: Serge Melki

Can you share one your family’s favorite resource or activity from January?

 

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Hi! I'm so happy to have you here. My name is Christina Pilkington. Those are my two wondeful children in the picture above (they're twins!). We daily live a life of passion, adventure and connections.

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