Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Unit Studies - Elections and Olympics

The Olympics are finally over, and so is our Olympic Unit Study. The kids did some learning about the history of the Olympics and the specifics about this year's Olympics. We all learned new stuff about the sports that we watched. In addition, we looked up some of the countries represented. Overall, it was a success, although it wasn't very structured.

I'm adding in an Elections Unit Study from Little Blue School. The study started a few weeks ago, so I'm trying to do the first four weeks of the study in just two weeks. Actually, I don't think it will be too difficult since we did the first week's work all in about an hour today. (We are doing Sonlight on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and Elections on Tuesday and Thursday.) The homeschooling mom who did the study has kids who are younger than Ga'hoole Girl and Wild Man so the work isn't real intense, but it looks like it will be useful. During the study, the kids will make up a political party and pretend to be a candidate for office. Today, we did some worksheets and discussion of the basic structure of government and the electoral college system. During one of the units, we will make hats out of duct tape which will be really cool since the kids made duct tape wallets at camp.

I haven't been as interested in politics over the last three years, but my kids are showing some interest in this election. For one thing, they saw lots of political commercials during the Olympics. They are also noticing things that affect their lives. For example, we took the car down South instead of the van a few months ago because of the cost of gas. We are also trying to limit air conditioner usage. So, the kids are really keying in to energy issues, particularly the idea of whether or not to open up some US areas for oil drilling. We are going to listen to the Democratic party speeches on Thursday night and then to the Republican speeches on the last night of their convention so the kids will get to hear what other issues are on the national radar screen. Real life - read education.


1 comment:

Lydia Netzer said...

Hiya! I'm so glad you decided to join us, and your modifications sound awesome! :) Don't worry about catching up too much -- since we're still in the conventions mode this coming week we're going to stick on that topic and I'm adding a few more pages to the lesson for week 2.