Counting Pinecones: Throwback Thursday: Apollo 11 and the Continents

Today's Throwback Thursday revisits one of our funnier moments last year. We were in the middle of a review for the SchoolhouseTeachers.com website and decided to work on a project in regards to the Apollo 11 mission as well as stared up with Story of the World for history (which, I ended up ditching because I found it way too simplistic and instead we began using The Mystery of History).

Neil Armstrong ( Aug 5,1930-Aug 25th, 2012), Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins (Dec 5th at JSC)

We had a lot of fun studying Apollo 11 and I'm always surprised that a year later, the kids remember who Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were.. We had a good laugh about this two days ago when my oldest daughter came home and said she had an assignment in JROTC to pick either an astronaut or an unmanned space mission an write about it. I told her if she wanted to impress her Colonel, then write about Michael Collins. Her response - "Who?" to which the kids replied "He was the guy left behind while Buzz and Neil walked on the moon".. Yup, Homeschooling at it's best :) I can't get to upset with her though as most adults haven't a clue who Michael Collins is either. She did indeed do the report on Collins and I am waiting to find out what her grade was but she now knows exactly who he is and why he was just as important to the Apollo 11 mission as Buzz and Neil were.. We are still loving SchoolhouseTeachers.com and use various lessons from their site all the time.. It really is a great site. OOOh and yeah...Thankfully, the kids are well aware that the continent we live on is indeed North American and NOT North Carolina.. LOL

This post is part of the Throwback Thursday linkup found at the "Tots and Me.. Growing up Together" Blog. Do you have a Throwback Thursday post you'd like to share? Click the button below to add your link

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

When did North Carolina become a Continent?

Today we decided to start tackling the good ole subject of Early Modern History. We've covered a lot of the Ancient histories such as Egypt and Rome but after our discussion involving the Pilgrims and their voyage to America, the kids wanted to start studying what happened after they got here. We decided to skip over to Volume 3 of our Story of the World and will supplement it with various lessons I have found involving Colonial America and such.

I really love this pic of her today

To kick off the SOTW Vol 3, we went ahead and started refreshing ourselves on the continents and oceans. This is something the kids have known for a while and have never had an issue with before. So we bring out our trusty globe and start reviewing. Today I added a short discussion about the Equator and how it divides the Earth into a Northern and Southern hemisphere. I guess the kids were too concerned about this new information about the equator, because as that went in, it seemed like everything we previously knew went out... lol

The kids recognized Antarctica and Australia easy enough. Asia and Europe required a bit of a hint, which that's fine.. South America was easy (Garrett is obsessed with Brazil so he knows that no problem).. But then we get to good ole home.. North America.. something we've discussed time and time again..

This is how our conversation went:

I point to the continent and say "Okay, so what continent is this?"..
They look at me like I have grown a third eye..
Me: "Come on kids, we know this.. Here, what Country is this (pointing at the US)?"
Them: "United States"
Me: "Okay, and what country is this above the US (pointing at Canada)?"
Them: "Canada"
Me: "And this country (pointing at Mexico)?"
Them: "Mexico"
Me: "Okay, so Canada, the United States and Mexico make up what Continent?"
They again look at me as if I just asked them to start quoting the Gettysburg Address in it's entirety.

Mapwork to review the oceans and continents

Me: "Okay, lets try this again.. What continent is this (pointing to South America)?"
Them: "South America"
Me: "Alright, so if this is South America... and this (pointing at Central America) is Central America. and this continent (pointing to North America) is North of South America and Central America, then what continent would it be?"

Ashleigh: "North Carolina"

FACEPALM!!!

Hangs Head in Shame...

Kids, gotta love them :)

We also had fun today talking about the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. We watched a few videos of the launch, the lunar lander making its approach to the moon, Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the surface and we listened to the famous words "The Eagle has landed" and "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"..

To have a bit of fun with it while practicing our copy work, we used an activity that I found on schoolhouseteachers.com. We traced out each kids footprints on a piece of colored paper and copied Neil Armstrong's famous words onto them, then pasted them on a printed picture of the moon.. The kids had a blast with this and I think they did a great job with their writing. (Especially Garrett, whom we were kinda told would most likely never write very well to begin with)..