Beaches, Beaches, Everywhere!

The Handbook of Nature Study's Outdoor Hour Challenge was beach-themed for the month of June. Here in New England, the water is a little chilly early in June, so we have waited (until now) to entertain plunging in (despite our incredibly hot air temperatures).

Big Clyde says, "Life's a beach..."

As we are planning for our first beach trip next week, we have been going over the things we have been studying in our other homeschool studies, and realized that beaches were in all of them!

• The Swiss Family Robinson, our summer read-aloud, is taking us into exploration of life on a tropical island. I've been looking for my Hawaii photos to help us out... We are creating a theme basket which includes books on the plant and animal life on a tropical beach.
• An independent project on WWII has brought us to Hawaii (yet again!), for a study of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941...
• Learning about the geography of Japan has been teaching us about islands as a land form, and beaches as part of the geology cycle.

In preparation for writing about our findings, I have begun assembling a Pinterest board with all kinds of links to nature studies and notebooking resources for beach work. Did you know that, if you Google "beaches notebooking," you get over 21,500 image hits? I am having great fun checking out what other beach lovers have shared. Given the number of projects we have underway that are connected to beaches, I'm sure that we will be visiting this board, and adding to it, quite often!


Here is a nature study from last summer based on a beach trip to Ocean Beach, New London, Connecticut, and a jarful of shark's teeth mailed to us from Grandma in Florida: Beachcombing, Part I: Shark Teeth. Stay tuned for Beachcombing, Part II after our beach visit next week! (We'll be sure to take our beach pages from the OHC with us...).


Other things on our list of homeschool activities for the week (and links we're using):

Friday: Watermelon Sorbet - we're in the middle of this one right now, as a garden/nature study connection to summer, beaches, tropical weather and all things June...
Saturday: Tie-dying - we bought a kit at Wal-Mart, and I'm gathering white t-shirts today for a weekend of colorful fun
Sunday: Continued work on our Child Training Bible
Monday: Pearl Harbor videos - for our history study of Japan and WWII
Tuesday: A trip to the library for books about Japan, WWII and Hawaii
Wednesday: Cherry blossom art - this is so cool (I'll buy frames and paints this weekend). I'm not sure how we'll exhibit the art, but here are ideas: Rainbow Family Room and Jewel Tones in the Living Room
Thursday: Not sure yet, but I'll look over my Making Math Meaningful board for ideas...


One of those days (or maybe two!) will definitely be a beach day, so we'll look over Life's a Beach for ideas after the trip, and save whatever we don't do for another day.


Don't you just love summer homeschool?

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[This blog post is featured on the June 2012 Edition of the Outdoor Hour Challenge. Come check out other posts on bees, beaches, and other summer topics -- great ideas for summer nature study and homeschool work!]

Waikiki Beach, from www.aloha.com

Teaching Science and Nature Through Literature

Some of you may be subscribers to Barbara McCoy's wonderful blog, The Handbook of Nature Study.  She has undertaken an important project: to gather together reader-recommended literature that can be used to teach about science and nature.

What books do you use?  Here is one that I recommended for her list (the title is linked to a description of the book and a huge lesson guide [for purchase], but I've provided links to places where you can get the book for free or low cost).
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The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss, 1812) - A Swiss family in the Victorian days becomes shipwrecked on a tropical island in the Pacific on the way to their new home in Australia - a great book for studying island life, or survival, or the tropics. Written by the author to teach children about perseverance in times of trouble, self-reliance and Christian family values.

• e-Book (free .pdf) (Google Books)
• Nook Book (free) (Barnes & Noble)
• Audio Book (free) (Books Should Be Free)
• Paperback or Hardcover (used from $0.01) (Amazon)
• Paperback (used from $1.99) (Barnes & Noble)
• Kindle version ($1.99) (Amazon)

Also available:

• Graphic Novel ($5.35 - e-Book) (Google Books)
• Teacher Notes (free .pdf) (Penguin Readers)

If you need help developing lessons from the book, there are no less than 248,000 Google entries for The Swiss Family Robinson lessons! Many are downloadable by paid subscription, only. Here are some that look particularly well-done and are free (although I haven't used them myself -- our units tend to be free form, and go until they stop!):

• EasyFunSchool has a unit planner, by chapters, that includes a chapter summary, vocabulary, comprehension questions, and suggested activities. The suggested activities definitely support a study of tropical island geography, flora and fauna, as well as ships and shipbuilding. The questions tend to be "identify" level questions -- I would add some more "Why?" level questions to make kids think more.
• Sites Alive offers a plan for an "Island Survival" problem-solving lesson/activity that can be used with The Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Cay or any other book about being shipwrecked on a deserted island. This looks like a fun way to bring any of these books to life -- like Survivor, in the classroom.

My comments: My son loved it. We downloaded it with 24 other children's classics, for our Nook Color, (25 Favorite Kid's Books for Middle and Young Adult Readers, $0.99, Barnes and Noble.

If you would like to recommend a book for Barbara's project, go to The Handbook of Nature Study and send her an email. Include the title of the book you love, and a brief (1-2 sentence) summary of the book. If you have written about the book on your blog, send her a link to your blog. What a great resource this will be for all of us!

Peace... and happy (nature) reading!

Kim