Sunday, April 18, 2010

Exploring with Lewis and Clark


Imagine my surprise when I scheduled a unit on Lewis and Clark and my husband said "who are they?" WHAT?? I thought maybe it was just him. So I asked some coworkers and all but one gave me a blank stare. The one thought she had heard about them somewhere but did not know why they are famous. Hmm...


This unit was great for the whole family it turns out. Since we were going to be talking about exploring I bought the kids foam explorer hats I found at the craft store. They loved them and wore them everyday for two weeks, even when it wasn't "school time." Fred was really interested in learning about the exploration since he thought he had missed out on it the first time, so every evening Ms. Q got to relive the lesson in teaching it to him. We spent two weeks following the expedition.


We used the book Lewis and Clark and Me by Laurie Myers.  The author uses excerpts from Lewis's expedition journal to write adventures from the point of view of Seaman, the Newfoundland that accompanied the expedition.

Homeschool Share had some wonderful ideas for language arts activities. I gathered some more ideas from Lessonpathways and free lapbook minibooks here.







The family really enjoyed this adventure unit and here are some pictures of Q's lapbook.