The Bee Tree

Or rather "school from the sofa" as I like to call it this week. I'm still recovering from major surgery and quite frankly I'm not allowed to do much at all! My parents are here this week and have enjoyed spending time with our kids which is a bonus for them. Monday Dan took the day off to take them to co-op. Yesterday my parents took them bowling. Tomorrow I have arranged for the oldest three to attend our regular MOPS group so they can go to 4-H which is what the homeschoolers in our group do for the MOPS time. Alas, I will miss MOPS myself!

I can sit on the sofa and school the kids and decided that The Bee Tree would be a good row. When R8 heard me mention The Bee Tree, she sighed a happy sigh so I thought we'd row it all together. We did this title two years ago when she was a first grader and I-6 was a 4yo. So, I set out to gather some papers and ideas and of course my trusty volume 3 FIAR manual!


Here are few resources I found that inspired me to do this unit this week. Well and admittedly it is one of my favorite FIAR titles of all time! Perfect for schooling from the sofa with ease.

Kendra mentions a free little unit study on honeybees. I enjoyed going to the Hagen Daz site the other day on saving the honeybees and learning about the honeybee problem and why they are so important to US crops. I see a project for the older kids coming on here...

Free honeybee lapbook from Homeschool Share- great place to find notebooking and lapbooking materials on the honeybee. You can also find some items specifically for The Bee Tree over there.

Once upon a time Hands of a Child had a honeybee lapbook which I downloaded as a freebie a while back. I'd love to link it but I can no longer find it over there. Consider this a public service announcement to check your stash because you might have it as well.

Once again I borrowed an idea from Lynn who put her Pumpkin Runner vocabulary on leaves on her curtain in her living room- the perfect idea to help us identify the new words in our story plus a few and a fun way to have school upstairs in our living room- not our normal routine.

Today we had a geography lesson on Michigan and peninsulas. I-6 did a great job telling the difference between and island and a peninsula and even managed to point to some water between an island and the mainland in our atlas and remarked- is that a channel? Nicely done I-6!! He did a fine job remembering his salt dough map on Madagascar. I LOVE it when the kids throw out stuff like that!

All the kids were delighted to gather on the floor of the living room to work on their maps and beehives. Even J3 enjoyed coloring his map and hive and now has a folder to keep on going with this week.

I'll post an update of our adventures with this book. Last time I created a scavenger hunt to simulate the chasing of a bee and it ended with a treat- some honeycomb cereal. What are the odds I can get my parents to make a honey treat or some bicuits to have honey with? Hmmm....schooling from the sofa is hard!!