It’s Lesson Two in Paths of Progress Supply and Demand. (which I don’t even remember talking about until I was in high school).

The conversation wrapped mostly around ipods, ipads, itouches, and Christmas movies always having that one toy in crazy unrealistic high demand and even more unrealistic low supply.  Interestingly enough – the boy understood the concept of waiting to buy what you want when they drop the prices.  We often use the dry erase board to help with visuals during these readings.

One thing is for sure about Trail Guide to Learning – they offer great vocabulary words!

Week One the boy read all about James Watt and the first steam engine. This week the boy read all about John Gutenberg and the Printing Press. Which was fun to pull up the old photos from our local newspaper field trip.

Reading time consists of 3 different books.  We’re a bit behind in John Morse biography because it was shipped later.  The boy is also reading Munford Meets Robert Fulton which he liked so much he read ahead.  I’m glad he’s a strong reader and likes to read!

I appreciate hearing about all these famous men and what my hands-on son thinks is so interesting about inventors.  Homeschool always makes me realize the fact that I had zero initiative to ask questions or discover more on my own from assigned work in public school.    

Music this week was learning notes on the Recorder and playing them over and over and over.  I’m glad he likes it so much, and I’m glad music is only scheduled one day during the week.  Thank you Paths of Progress!

Day 5 is a scheduled “free day” or extra “enrichment” ideas.  The boy likes this day’s review activity sheets best because they’ve been crossword puzzles or word scrambles.

Check out more of our work in Paths of Progress!

We’ve enjoyed a fun week in Trail Guide to Learning, Paths of Progress

This week the boy learned all about friction and we tried some fun hands-on learning experiments. Like screeching bike tires down the street and leaving skid marks. {boys}  Or pushing chairs across carpet and tile which somehow turned into races. {boys}

We are absolutely loving this science and learning about tools/work after 3 years of biology. Even though I am totally out of my element <~ get it? It’ll come to you.

Homeschool mom tip, change up your science focus. I didn’t even know how burned out we were on biology until we started doing something completely different and seeing the fun on his face again! Not that there was anything wrong with what we were doing … we just needed the change.

My highlight was listening to Baroque composers: Vivaldi and Bach. Vivaldi’s Spring inspired pastel art fun. 

 While we had the pastels out the boy created a steam engine for his POP binder. Clay art started this week, but I forgot to pick some up.

Another great economics lesson, this one on services and how much we rely on other people to provide for us. Really, that’s a scary lesson when you easily list 10 services you use regularly and realize you can’t provide the basics for your family. (yes we homeschool and we do not have gardens, chickens, or a farm).

FACEBOOK PAGE: After a few weeks of trying to “engage” with my Facebook friends and the same four people respond … I’ve decided it’s a bit much time (I don’t have) for the feedback I’m getting. And everyone knows I just don’t like Facebook.  If you like keeping up with us subscribe to this blog for the updates!

I am very excited to kick off our 5th grade year using Trail Guide to Learning Paths of Progress by Geography Matters!

Last year we were sent Paths of Settlement Vol I and it was a very enriching curriculum. Unfortunately we had a problem with the disc and couldn’t figure out how to purchase Volume II separately (they come as a set). So we went back to our other curriculum to finish out the year. Homeschool = flexibility.

This year I was more than eager to purchase Paths of Progress (Vol I & II).  What sold me was the description, “To grow as a country, another group of leaders had to step forward during our history – scientists and inventors.”

Trail Guide to Learning offers far more than “American History” curriculum. It includes: geography, hands-on science, language arts, vocabulary, copy work, dictation, reading, discussion, historical biographies, and “electives” (music and art) into each lesson.  They combine everything to flow together so naturally students learn about all aspects of this time period.

Immediately we kick off the year reading about James Watt and Samuel Morse.  What better way to get a boy excited about American History than to start with the invention of the steam engine and a secret code?!

This time around the boy is using my ipad mini and Websters App to look up his vocabulary words.  Surprisingly, flipping through the dictionary caused complaining last year.  Art this year is with clay and sculpting – perfect timing!

Also this year we’re going to learn about the orchestra. At first he wasn’t jazzed about it, but once I shared this Star Wars Orchestra youtube, the kid totally changed his mind!  He will be learning to play the Recorder too (and it looks serious once we learned about proper airflow with a straw & candle).

One of our favorite lessons so far, believe it or not, was Economics. We discussed being consumers and what we consume the most.  After long thought the boy suggested electricity.  We spent some time online together finding out how electricity is produced and distributed.  (this is a fantastic visual how electricity is made!)

It was such a fun lesson that he even brought it up in conversation to his dad later. That’s when you know it was a good day! 

I’m really looking forward to Paths of Progress this year!  I added Teaching Textbooks for our Math.  I am also including All About Spelling 5 because I believe it’s the best spelling curriculum on the planet. no joke.  We also use WriteShop for an additional language arts lesson.