How we researched on Volcanoes...

I wanted to post about how we are proceeding with research after our Great Lesson Last week.  I did not have a definite plan on how to go about this, but we eventually found our groove.  At first D wanted to research about a ton of things.  I don't think she understood exactly what research meant, but she was just excited after the great lesson.  So I asked her to write down all that she wanted to know more about and she made a list.

Obviously (!) "Volcanoes" made it to the top of the list!  When we did our Great Lesson, I made our Volcano using newspaper, but I had ordered this one for the kids to use.

D used this a lot for eruptions.  We own two Volcano books, one is below and the other I can't find a link for.  I had purchased these at various library book sales long long ago.  The prizes on amazon are ridiculous though!

We read through these, but I still wasn't sure how to go about the research.  Then I read through the notes on MissBarbara.net and figured out I could give simple questions to D that she could find answers for in the books, then I could help her summarize and record it.

I gave her the question and wrote down what D summarized in her own words (with prompting) on our white board for her to copy down.  At this point, she can copy as much as she wants and can work through copying over a few days.  I am happy to say that (may be a little brag!) D loves writing and she often wants to copy the whole thing in one sitting!

As you can see I've written the summary in cursive and D writes it down in cursive too! Thanks to Handwriting without Tears!

After a few days we wanted to find out the parts of a volcano and this time D choose to draw and color.  She gave up drawing after a few tries and wanted me to draw an outline for her which she choose to color and label.

On another day, D cut and drew a volcano and used glitter glue to decorate her picture.  Yea! Art for the week was covered too!

D wants to research on rocks next as most of the texts on volcanoes talk about Igneous Rocks.  I have a few books Rocks and Minerals that D is reading through.  I want to order a few of the rock and minerals kit so she actually see the rocks and properly understand what minerals are.  So I am planning to work on the Earth's layers till my purchase arrives.

Hope this post helps some of you see how work after the Great Lessons proceed based on your child's interests.  Each child is different and it is wonderful to see how learning happens at this level at different home schools!

Great Lesson Charts - Free Download

Here are the charts we used for our great lesson story.  I made these using Google Images for the first two and hand drew the rest using outlines present in the Kathy Zielger albums and browsing online for various pictures.  Not perfect, but gets the job done.  You can click on the links below the images to download the files for your personal use.  These are also available in the downloads page.

Sun and Earth Chart 

Solar System Chart

Dance of the Elements

Volcano Cloud

Beautiful Earth

As always these are for your use only and not for sale.  If you want to share these, please link back to this post, thank you!

First Great Lesson: The Beginning

If you had read my original plans for this year, I wasn't keen on doing the Great Lessons this year.  I was going to follow my favorite blogs (here, here and here), see how they do this in their home schools this year, prepare myself and then voila, I would have everything laid out perfectly for the next year! But seems like fate and D (who is going to be six in December) had other plans.  We began the year with out usual primary presentations, but D wasn't satisfied with just what I presented, she was questioning everything.  She was asking me really deep questions of how everything was created starting from herself to planet earth.  We have a collection of "All About" books on a wide range of topics and D was researching on her own based on her interest.  If you've been following my blog, you know that we have completed almost all the primary language presentations.  D can read well and is very keen on writing fluently in cursive.  She is almost done with the HWT 3rd grade cursive book and writes in cursive now whenever she can.  We are progressing steadily in Math, but in Geometry D is ready for more.  So I've had a really hard time keeping up with D this year, hence my really infrequent blog posts.  Meanwhile I won a giveaway and received this book.

This is an amazing introduction to the Big Bang Theory and is the book one of a trilogy.  D got a hold of this book before me and read the entire book cover to cover and asked for more!  Granted I had to explain a few concepts, but she just loved this book.  She has been asking for the rest of the books in this series and I have placed an order for that too!  So finally I gave in and decided to do the first great lesson now when her interest is this high.  She is not six yet and I did not want to present things too soon, but then doing this now also gives us plenty of time to repeat things and we can have a longer elementary cycle!  So here we are a almost the end of October starting our Great Lesson Number one!

D and M patiently waiting for me to begin

Since we had read the above book a couple of times before the lesson, the presentation was very interesting to D and there were a lot of a-ha moments for her!

The next few shots are a close up of the layout.  I have a couple of different free albums and I also used MissBarbara.net for our story along with a few additions of our own.

The black balloon, lantern, Attraction/Gravity Experiment and a bowl of Salt

Sorry this picture is Right to Left, but here you see our Sun vs Earth chart, globe, Dance of the Elements Chart, Matter Trays.

From L to R, after the Matter Trays is a small bowl with hot milk (crust on top),  Liquids of different weight experiment, home-made volcano and the two Volcano Charts.

As you can see above, I created the Sun Chart and Solar System Chart using google images.  I hand drew the Dance of the Elements, Volcano and the other Chart.  I found another hand drawn version at Discovery Days and Montessori Moments after I had finished these!  I am definitely planning to use her Timeline of Life for the next presentation!  In the mean time if anybody would like a copy of my hand drawn charts let me know, I can upload my charts.

We had an awesome time with the presentation and as with everyone else, the Volcano was the big hit! It has been repeated several times since the presentation which happened on Monday!  D pulled out a few of our books on Earth, Volcanoes and Rocks and started reading through them this week.  I am helping her research specifics and create reports based on what she read.  We've been working on volcanoes this week, but that is for another post!