Parkerkids Homeschool News

We've been busy with school for six weeks, learning about all kinds of things. I'm in third grade, and my sister is in kindergarten this year. We like school because it's fun. We do our schoolwork at home.

We've been studying geography. In geography, we're learning about biomes. Biomes are regions of the world that share characteristics of climate, bodies of water, and landforms. Landforms include mountains, plateaus, rivers, caves, dams, and other things. We made a map about landforms out of clay. It cracked a lot, so we didn't bother painting it. But we learned a lot about landforms by making it, anyway.

We've also been studying Africa, learning about the artist Michelangelo and the composer Handel, and making other things out of clay, like beads to make African necklaces, a bowl using a pottery wheel, and animal figures to go with Noah's Ark.

Here are some of the things we've made!

Narration By Dulcie

Have you ever gone rock-climbing? I have! Rock-climbing is hard. I climbed to the top of a 24 foot high climbing wall at Midway Park.

First, you put on a harness and tighten it up. It goes around your legs and waist. Then you hook a cable to the safety harness to catch you if you lose your balance.

There are plastic holds that you climb on. They look like curvy puzzle pieces, and they are red, blue, and green.

It felt scary climbing up the wall. When I got to the top, I was very proud. I pushed a buzzer to let everyone know that I was at the top. Then I flew down to the ground by the cable.

Rock-climbing was so much fun that I want to do it again!

By Dulcie

Using The Writing Road to Reading, Keni has spent the first few weeks of school learning the phonograms associated with the letters of the alphabet, along with writing her lower-case letters. Now that she knows the sounds of the letters and how to form them, she is drilling additional phonograms, and is reading and taking dictation from the book Alphaphonics. These are some of the sentences that she is learning to read and write. She is so thrilled with her work, and practices sounding out words every chance she gets! Please click on the paper to read what she wrote.

One of our field trips this term was to the city of Erie and Presque Isle, where we visited the Erie Maritime Museum, the US Brig Niagara, and Presque Isle's Nature Center. These quotations are from Dulcie's dictation exercises:

During the War of 1812, there was a great sea battle in Lake Erie. Commodore Perry commanded the American ships. His motto, which was on his battle flag, was "Don't Give Up the Ship".

In the Battle of Lake Erie, Commodore Perry defeated the British. He wrote, "We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop."

Morocco is on the northwestern edge of Africa, and it is a desert. Morocco as mountains called the Atlas Mountains. The weather is hot and dry, and also there are people there who build adobes with mud. They dry the mud out in the sun, and it becomes brick. Their roofs are flat, so little rain can drain off them, because the desert is dry and not much rain falls there. The people take care of their sheep and cows, and they mostly have oxen. For their job, sometimes they fish. Shepherds sometimes often go to the plains to find some grass for their feed for their cattle. Dates grow in the plains, and palm trees too. Sham came from Morocco, in King of the Wind. He is an Arabian horse, and they come from Morocco.

We spent the first week of school this year doing a geography unit study on the continent of Africa. Over the course of the year, we will be studying each continent in turn. If you would like to try a challenging word search puzzle about Africa, please click here to print it out!

Biomes are regions of the world that share common characteristics of landforms, climate, and bodies of water. There are three biomes in Africa. One is the deserts. There are two deserts in Africa: the Kalahari and the Sahara Desert. The Sahara Desert is the biggest desert in the world. There's not a lot of animals that live there because it's so dry. Camels live in the Sahara Desert. Adders live there too; they're snakes. There are animals there that burrow in the sand because the Sahara is so hot, and they come out at night when it's cooler. Actually, it's cold at night and really hot in the day. The animals come out at night to find food. Some of them eat seeds and insects.

Another biome is the rainforest. The rainforest is so wet because it gets so much rain -- 300 to 400 inches of rain a year. The rainforest has two seasons -- it has a dry season and a wet season. People live there in huts, and it's hot there all the time. Even though it rains, it doesn't get cool there. It stays hot, kind of like the desert. Tropical rainforests are around the west coast of Africa. There are tons of animals in the rainforest.

The last biome is savannahs. There are savannahs in the Great Rift Valley. Also, there is the largest volcano there, and it is called Mt. Kilimanjaro. It is a dead volcano; that means it no longer erupts. There is also a savannah called the Serengeti Plain, and in the Serengeti Plain there are animals like lions and hyenas. The lions eat animals, and jackals and hyenas follow behind eating the dead animals. The lions eat antelope and zebras. Elephants live there too.

Africa has some of the biggest and longest things in the world. Victoria Falls is in Africa. It is the widest waterfall in the world. There is also a river in Africa called the Nile. The Nile goes into the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt. The Nile is the longest river in the world.

Now that I know about Africa a little more, I think it's awesome!

Narration by Dulcie

We took a field trip to the Allegheny Observatory during this term, and learned a lot about the work that is done there. When we returned, Dulcie practiced her transcription, spelling, and cursive handwriting skills by writing this piece from dictation. Please click on the paper to read what she wrote.

Once there were three adorable kittens. They were very fluffy and playful, and they liked to explore. One day, it was naptime for the kittens. They didn't want to go for a nap, because they weren't tired. So, they went out of the house and into the grassy yard and played.

As they were playing, a tiny blue bird came from the sky. The bird told the kittens that they were supposed to be taking a nap, but the kittens said that they weren't tired yet. They decided they would go into the quiet woods and play there.

The climbed trees in the woods and ate some juicy berries. They played in a cool pond that they found. Then they found some little golden fish, so they decided to catch some. One of the kittens fell into the water, but it didn't like the water! It paddled out of the pond, and then the other two went to get more fish. The third one decided to climb a tree instead.

After a while, the other kittens came out of the water. They were wet and shook themselves off, and dried their matted fur in a little towel made of green leaves. Then they were hungry, so they went off to look for more berries to go with their fish. They squeezed the berries onto the fish and ate the fish with berry juice.

Then the kittens went to their grassy yard again, and their mother was angry with them because they didn't take their nap like they were supposed to do. She went into the house with them and told the kittens that they were very, very bad.

They were going to have delicious ice cream and leftover birthday cake, but since they were bad, they didn't get to have any. Their mother sent them to bed after dinner with no dessert and no story. After that, they went right to bed at naptime, and were (almost) never bad again!

Narrated Story By Dulcie