The FireKeeper's Son

Last week...we finished up our S. Korea study by doing a unit study of The Firekeeper's Son by Linda Sue Parks. We talked about how Korea is a peninsula. The unit study was from homeschoolshare.com They have a wealth of info that is great for homeschoolers. And the best part is...it's free!

We used The Firekeeper's Son to discuss science related ideas. We talked about Sang-hee's father when he fell down. He could have possibly sprained his ankle. We talked about different grades of sprains and what it means to sprain your ankle. How it is a stretching or tearing of ligaments. So of course, we had to discuss what a ligament was in relation to bones and such.

We also talked about what it means to break a bone so that lead to studying a little bit about the skeletal system. We read a few books about the body and how its important to take good care of our body by eating healthy and staying active.

For social studies we talked about Sang-hee's temptation not to do his duty in lighting the fire for his father. We expanded on responibility and honoring our parents even when its not something we may want to do. We compared honoring his father to us honoring God when we do things we know is right even if its not something that is our desire.

I told them how parents often know the feelings their children have because we were once children not long ago.

As far as Language Arts, we talked about similies and how it is a comparison that uses like or as. We also discussed personification. I had the girls personify a tree. I also had them personify emotions such as hate, frustration or happiness.

We also explored ways that people communitcate without words.

For a little math lesson, we practiced using ordinal numbers. We played a game online to help them understand more about first, second and third and so forth. The girls had fun with this...they did very well!

We also studied triangles and their names by what length their sides were. I am not sure the completely understood but at least they were introduced to the idea. This is my purpose in most of this study...basic introduction to ideas.