Magic Tree House books, Geography and Much more

Buck, Honeybee, and I have started out on an adventure with Jack and Annie, characters from The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne.  In her first book

Dinosaurs Before Dark, we are introduced to this brother and sister team.

I was sooo excited when I found CurrClicks Lapbook Study Guide for this book.

We have already read the first two books.  For this study we are going back and reading a chapter at a time and lapbooking it. 

Now I have to ask, have you read the cover story of the Spring 2011 issue of

Mater et Magistra magazine?

This is a magazine every homeschooler should subscribe to! 

The article is entitled, "Further Up and Further In" written by Jennifer Mackintosh.  You may recognize her name from her blog Wildflowers and Marbles.  As I read this article, I felt as though I was sitting at a homeschool retreat/conference listening to an awesome home educating mother's inspiring story of "real learning" in the home.  I have long shared her thoughts on giving our children room to build relationships and discover connections in the everyday rhythm of our home.   I found it most intriguing that we would have one of these experiences this morning.

Buck was a little restless in putting together his lapbook this morning.  He was wanting to color in a Power Rangers book I picked up for him yesterday.  We don't watch the show...  Anyway, as we were going through the lesson, we were asked to find Pennsylvania on the map.  I pulled out the globe to show them. Buck had a "light bulb" moment and asked, "Mom, do you remember that big map that used to hang on the girl's wall?  It's downstairs on Snuggle Bug's bookcase."  I ran down and got it and we opened it up on the table on top of all our other work.  We found PN and AL and they filled them in on the teeny map that goes on the lapbook.  Then he said, "Mom, we should color in all the states like they are on the map."

I could have had two responses here:

1. OK, we will do that after we finish this work for the lapbook. or
2.  That's a great idea!  I'll print out a map for you and you can get started right away.

Can you guess which one I chose?  If you said #2 you are right!  If I would have insisted on finishing the work I had "planned", I probably would have lost or at least dampened his interest. 

I printed off a blackline map for the two of them and they both sat with map spread out on the floor in front of them and we talked and talked.  They started coloring in the states according to the color they were on the map.  We discussed the abbreviations of the states, what it meant to be a bordering state, places we had been or are planning on going to.  We also called their grandparents, who are on a trip, to ask where they were right then so we could find it on the map.  These are just a few things we talked about. 

This was the best kind of study. 

It wasn't planned, it just came about naturally.

Wonder where tomorrow's adventure will take us??

Thank you, loving Father, for this amazing homeschooling journey we are all on!