Unplanned Learning

A few months ago I signed up at C-SPAN's website to receive a free presidential poster.  It came to our house and I promptly put it in my "I'll get to this later" pile.  I completely forgot about it until I was cleaning off my desk a month later.  I opened it up and it was HUGE.  What was I going to do with this very large poster?  I was tempted to give it away. I folded it up and brought it down to the kitchen where AH was hanging out.  I showed him the poster and started unfolding it.  He was fascinated!  We laid it out on the kitchen floor and sat looking at all the information at our fingertips.  Not only did it include a list of presidents, but when they were born, other public service posts they had held, military service, what party they belonged to, America's population along the timeline, technology, supreme court rulings, constitutional amendments, and more!  We must have spent a good 45 minutes just looking and talking.  I wouldn't have considered this part of our "school day", but AH loved it so I couldn't just give this goldmine away.  It needed to be up, on display, somewhere we spend a lot of time.  Hmmmm....

The poster on our kitchen wall.

You wouldn't believe what we have done with this poster.  During dinner AH has taken to quizzing us on our presidential trivia (I am the worst!) and asking to be quizzed.  One day during breakfast he wondered just how many years of military service had been served by our presidents altogether.  He not only added all the years up, but then decided to make a chart with this information.  He found this exercise so interesting that it led to a series of charts that now grace the wall above the poster: Presidential states, birthdays, political parties, and more.

Years of military service.  No, Eisenhower did not serve the most years.

Presidential parties

Presidential birthday months

None of this has been planned.  It is AH's continuing interest in this poster and subject matter that has made learning history, social studies, and government so easy and so much fun.  He blew me away last week when he listed the first 8 presidents in order.  I asked if he could list all of them. He needed only one hint (he forgot LBJ).  I was reminded that learning occurs when you can take advantage of an interest and encourage a spark of curiosity to become a flame!

My kitchen won't win any decorating awards, but we sure have fun!

Post Cards!

Who doesn't love to get mail? We rarely get "real" mail. By real, I mean letters, personal notes and post cards. (Bills don't count...I get plenty of those!!) AH has discovered the pleasure of receiving mail. Last week I put out a plea to my facebook friends to send AH a post card from their home state or a state they were visiting and he would research each state as he got them. 3 days later we had our first post card from Barry in South Dakota!

Then the cards really started pouring in!

That's when I noticed that AH really loved this project. I made up two notebooking pages where AH could tape a post card and list some interesting facts about that state. We printed out state flags, license plates and state quarters on sticker paper and AH cuts them out and adds them to his notebooking pages. I really got a lot of ideas from Jimmie's 50 States Notebooking lens at Squidoo. AH loves the stickers. In addition to those items, AH researches each state to find the year of statehood, state motto, capital city, other cities, and any notable rivers and/or mountains and records it on the notebooking pages.

He has gotten up every morning since we've gotten these postcards to work on this project before anything else. He hasn't done this since our baseball project! It's a miracle!

Below AH looks up the state motto of South Dakota which is : Under God, the people rule

South Dakota notebook page 1:

The plan is to gather all the sheets into a 3 ring binder and, hopefully, learn about each state as they come in. We have a pile to go through already, but it won't take him long to get through it if his enthusiasm holds. I have a feeling that as long as those post cards keep coming that won't be an issue!

Thanks to my dear friends for all your help. Your effort is making learning fun for this 11 year old!

Animal School

This brought tears to my eyes because I am privileged to live with a Bee: