Jungles

January 12, 2013

Jungles

rain forest

I'm SO looking forward to our curriculum's next unit - jungles! The first unit was "around the pond" which was okay. Kara is really into frogs, turtles, bugs, fish, etc. The next one was "transportation." Really? Modes of transportation as a unit? Bo-ring. I let Christmas decorations take over more for that one. The one we just finished was "children around the world," which was so, so great. We learned where a new country was each day, and one or two facts about that country that would be interesting to a 6 year old. Each day's math word problems had kids names that would be typical for that country. We really got into that one. We broke out the globe and maps for that one. I had her find USA first, then see where the other countries were in comparison to that, which I hoped gave her a good reference point.

rain forest, Vietnam

Anyway, next time we're doing jungles! I got an amazing book from the library and I want to watch Planet Earth's rain forest episode this weekend before we get started. All the different ecosystems are fascinating to me, but jungles (aka rain forests), are probably my favorite. The height levels that are each their own little worlds. The way the Lord made bugs, fungus, plants, animals, etc. all work together so perfectly. And I tell you what, we sure could learn a thing or two about recycling from nature! Humans are the only things on this planet that are wasteful - and it's really only been like that the last couple hundred years. Anyway, I'm going to really like studying jungles. In the dead of winter, studying such a colorful, warm, sultry environment is going to be fun. AND, a "temperate rain forest" is in the pacific northwest, where we will be going on vacation this year.

Olympic Peninsula "temperate rain forest"

School is really plugging along and I hope to keep it that way. Now that Christmas is done, our home school group has been lining up field trips left and right, and we have a history fair and science fair planned.

Looking forward to a great January in school!

Pssst! Did you hear me mention we're going to the Pacific Northwest this year? Yay! We're going to visit the redwoods, among other things again, like we did 3 years ago. Here's some awesome pictures from that trip three years ago....