At about halfway through our very casual Space unit, I decided that I’d like to document our process and resources. I believe it takes years for a homeschooling parent to acquire true, unwavering confidence. I have not gotten to that point.
I found that nothing has ever really been open-and-go. Everything is tweaked to serve the whims of the person having the deepest of moods!
The best learning days are often the ones made up of casual chats, clawing through pages of books on the floor. And also when the kids get to play outside and experience stimuli that aren’t from me.
This year, we started with geography and stuck with that as an overarching topic for three months. Then, April and May were allotted for Space. The rest of the year will see topics on plants and animals. With mathematics interspersed in them. I hope.
We go through topics on a weekly basis and then we just stretch things out another week longer for broader subjects such as planets. Sometimes a sub-topic cannot be dwelt on for an entire week because the kids may not exactly be interested, so we just move on.
Since we’re coming off of Geography (which became really more about geopolitics than physical geography due to some prominent world events), my jumping-off point was the Space Race. We have talked at length about the Cold War previously, so we simply followed the thoughts and ideas that have already been laid out.
Books Used
We are reading this beautiful picture book called Adventurer’s Guide to Outer Space and it sets us up quite nicely. It’s super simple that my 8 year-old could read it and not be overwhelmed. She can also read some bits to the 6 year-old.
I found that as we read it page by page, the kids will be asking me questions that pop into their heads, especially the 6 year-old with her inquisitiveness.. and the blurbs in the book usually answer that. This might be the most age-appropriate book for the subject.
This big reference book by DK publishing, Universe: The Definitive Visual Guide has been on my list since it came out around 2 years ago. It’s a heavy book and it costs quite a bit to ship to us and I can’t get myself to buy it. But I found it locally and for a fraction of its price! I was very happy about that because I was ready to spend a small fortune but then the planets aligned for us.
I use it as my main reference book as it has a bit more raw data that I can look at when the kids ask me something that they can’t find in the junior books. It’s my security blanket and it’s as comprehensive as one could hope.
One of the things that I don’t like doing is Google-on-the-spot. I’d really rather grab an encyclopedia and read from there. If we don’t have it, then I’d have to read by myself on the computer the night before, or anytime prior to a lesson. I want the kids to rely on and refer to written text before making use of other interfaces.
I really like the art in the Science Museum series, but with the reference books we already have, things are bound to be redundant. The books from that series are also quite expensive, frankly. However, the Junior editions are almost half the price and are a great size! In Planetarium Junior Edition, the content is the same per spread and they pretty much have the same number of pages. The bigger ones just have slightly longer text but if you have more detailed reference books then this won’t be a problem. So with the Junior editions, you get the vintage art, which is nice when we want to draw planets and want to have a nice frame of reference for illustrating them.
I really did want to go for that 60s Space Race vibe. If you check out book art from the 60s and 70s, with all the Jules Verne re-imaginings, they’re pretty consistent. I feel like we also immerse ourselves in a bit of art history in this way.
One of our highlights came in the form of biographical picture books. We honed in on women’s contributions to science. I’m so glad that there are now lots of picture books to get kids interested. We have been big fans of Mae Jemison since getting a Women of NASA Lego set. We learned more about her in an edition of Bravery Magazine. I then decided to funnel our book budget towards Hidden Figures, One Step Further, and The Girl Who Named Pluto so we can get to know more women’s stories.
I used to have a lot of doubt about biography picture books, but I stand corrected. My kids are always inspired after reading them. It’s kind of amazing.
I love that they can simply open up a book now and read as they please. I remember more from stuff I read at home or from the school library than from things delivered in the classroom. It is my absolute joy to pick great books for our small home collection.
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