Homeschooling ADD Kids

                                                

 

We chose sheep for our unit study this week because kids seem to love them and also because there are people who still rely on sheep as their livelihood. In view of today’s economy many people are looking into ways to live of the land and owning sheep and/or goats really can help. They provide food (milk) and clothing (wool) and they are super-interesting creatures. Did you know that there are over 200 different kinds of sheep?

 

Lets begin our unit study and see what else we can learn!

 

Reading, Spelling, History, Art, Animal Science

If you’ve been using my unit studies for a while, you probably are already familiar with my advice on how to teach children with ADD or other learning differences how to read. If not, read our post " Tips to Teach Your Child How to Read Better ". 

 

First, find a book about sheep that fits your child’s reading level.  You might wish to purchase one from Amazon.  Here’s a list of books about sheep that you can buy online and have delivered to you.

 

If your child is very young, you might want to read the free online version of Baa Baa Blacksheep (originally written in 1880!).  Or try this other free online children’s book (1840) called The Flock of Sheep, or Familiar Explanations of Simple Facts.

 

Read one of the books that you ordered or downloaded and then talk about it. If it was a book that was just a cute story about a sheep ask your child what they thought it says about the personalities of sheep. Do they like sheep? Would they want to own a sheep?

 

Well, if you are really into the idea, you can actually adopt a sheep .  Please let us know if you do this and how it works out!

There is a lot of variety among sheep.  Here are pics of some different kinds of sheep:

 

 

 

These are some of the pictures we found online, but you may want to search for more. However never leave your child unattended to scout out pictures of anything online. When Googling something, be sure to add “for kids” or something like that. When you do find your pictures go through them and ask your child to determine what sheep he thinks best pictures the sheep you read about. Now go find your sheep! See where it lives and where it came from. Wikipedia has a section all about the different breeds. Use Pronto.com to get a printable map of the world if you don’t already have one and find the country that the sheep comes from. What is the climate in that country and how would that affect the sheep and farmers of that area?

 

Have your child draw a picture of some of the different sheep you find and have them write the type of sheep it is under each picture and the country of origin. When writing the name of the sheep have him say the name out loud and then spell the word also out load as he writes. This process allows for visual and mental recognition of the words.

 

A few more sheep facts

Female sheep are called ewes, baby sheep are called lambs, and male sheep are called rams. A group of sheep is called a flock.

 

 

They normally live to be about 8 years old, but can sometimes live to be as old as 20. Sheep usually give birth once a year and have 1-3 lambs. Lambs form strong bonds with their mothers. They can identify their mother by her bleat. Can you tell the difference? This site has some sounds that your child might find funny. Our dog loves it!

http://www.sheep.com/sheep_sounds.cfm

 

Depending on how old your child is you can teach your child the classic songs “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

 

Math, Making a Living, Reasoning

Sheep Farming (also known as Sheep husbandry)

 

Go to this article on Wikipedia for a great description of what is involved in raising sheep to sell either the sheep or their milk or fleece for a living. There is also a section on sheep shearing or clipping.  Typically each adult sheep is shorn once a year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or "sheared").  Depending on the size of the farm some farmers shear up to 3000 sheep in a day!

 

 

The assignment for this section is to figure the cost of raising, owning & shearing sheep.  Now figure out how much money is made by selling the wool, or the profit in making a sweater or a blanket to sell. Write these down and get the cost and profit totals. You can add the profits of selling the milk or cheese to make this a bit more challenging as well.

 

 

 

Example:

Cost 1 sheep $20

Shearers $5

1 sheep 6 pds of wool

$ per pd $5

 

With one shearing a year how much money would you make?

 

Add the selling of milk or cheese:

1 sheep produces 1 gal milk

1 gal milk worth $6

 

Now lets say you want to just raise and sell the sheep:

1 female sheep (ewe) $20

1 male sheep (Ram) $20

1 baby sheep (Lamb) $25

 

If a female sheep has one to two sometimes even three lambs at a time, what could your profit be for the year?

 

Depending on your child’s age you can make this easy by figuring this with one sheep or for older children making it a flock of 10 etc…

 

Sheep in daily life

Do you have any wool sweaters or blankets in the house? Have your child feel it. Compare the wool to something made of cotton. Discuss the values of wool and how it keeps the sheep warm in the winter and even cool in the summer. Ask your child what they think of the texture, the purpose and the value of wool.

 

Go outside and look at grass, the main food source for sheep. Take your shoes off and walk barefoot to get a feel for it. Discuss what that is like for the sheep how they would chew it and maybe even talk about “chewing cud” (Wikipedia has some interesting information on this) This is why humans and dogs can not live on grass like cud chewers (sheep, goats, horses) do. If your child is very young, just have her run around making noise like a sheep might do.

 

 

Writing, Science, Nature

 

No true sheep farmer could live without the help of his trusty ol’ sheepdog. A sheepdog is a type of dog whose original purpose was to herd or guard the sheep. They were first trained thousands of years ago and the herder was able to get them to act on the sound of a whistle or by voice command. Many sheep dogs are now kept as domestic pets these dogs are very active and intelligent so they require both physical and mental exercise.

 

Watch the following video together:

 

 

Now ask your child how would he train a dog to do this.  Ask him or her what commands might you need to train a sheep dog?

 

Have your child write an essay about 200 words in length to describe either all that you would do with your sheepdog or an essay as if you were the sheepdog. What would a day in the life of a sheepdog be like? The essay does not have to be perfect since, after all, your child may be pretending to be a dog. Take the words that your child has trouble spelling and make them into spelling words. Rewrite them and then play catch outside while you help your child to spell these words out load again say the word spell the word. Now go back inside and have your child try to write and spell these words on his own.

 

Here’s a fun video to watch about "extreme" sheep herding:

 

 

Arts & Crafts

Many people have a potential "sheep" right in their house. People have been spinning dog hair into yarn long before the Spaniards introduced sheep to North America. Chiengora (she-an-gora), or dog yarn, is up to 80% warmer than wool, very soft, similar in appearance to Angora, and sheds water well. All you have to do is save the brushings from your dog!

 

Here’s a site with instructions on how to make dog yarn.

 

 

Art, History, Science, Math

 

Try making sheep milk cheese (feta) with your child! (click on the words "sheep milk cheese" in the previous sentences for instructions.  Make sure to use this occasion to teach measurements to your child.  Have him or her measure the ingredients.  Ask him to figure out how much of each ingredient you would have to use if you needed to double or triple the recipe (or perhaps divide it in half).  If your child doesn’t know fractions or is not skilled at adding, multiplying or dividing them, this is a great time to teach him!

 

You might prefer making pecorino cheese (similar to Romano, that you use on pasta with tomato sauce):

 

 

OR

 

…try making sheep or goat milk soap:

www.ehow.com/how_4551864_milk-soap-cold-process-method.html

 

Next unit study

The next unit study will be in two weeks, on the topic of space!  See you then!

 

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Welcome to Part 2 of our unit study on dinosaurs!  Last Monday your child read a short book to you which had a dinosaur as the main character, then you read some info from websites which taught basic science facts about dinosaurs.  After that your child learned some computer skills while writing a few paragraphs about what he learned.  You and your child also did a little math, learning about coordinates and grids in a game called Dinosaur Dig.  And he finished the unit lesson by drawing a dinosaur on the computer.

 

This week we’re continuing our dinosaur theme.  The subjects covered are writing, math, science, art, and memorization.

 

If you haven’t used our unit studies before, then first please read our previous post on How to Use Unit Studies on This Blog.

 

This unit study is different than some of our past studies in that it is extremely "link-heavy".  However, it’s not just a list of links like the results you get from Google if you type in "dinosaurs".  I visited tons of sites related to dinosaurs before deciding on these based on the the following criteria:

 

• Cool.  Yeah…not just interesting, but cool.  Most of the sites linked to here are the type I think most kids would think are cool.  They should do a good job of holding the attention of kids with ADD.
• Educational.  Of course!  Just because a site is fun doesn’t mean it can’t teach your child scientific facts or theories. 
• Flexible.  As we’ve mentioned before, our unit lessons are not for specific grades.  So we chose sites that can be used at different levels.  Explain just the basics to young children or kids with very short attention spans or go deeper if they are older or have longer attention spans.

 

DINOSAURS WERE REAL

 

Kids can sometimes get fiction confused with fact.  If you teach them about dinosaurs, they might just think you’re telling a story about make-believe "monsters".  Or that you’re talking about Barney. :-) 

 

Help them to understand that dinosaurs really existed and that this has been proven by fossils.  Explain that fossils are parts of animals or impressions in stone made from the animals.  Show him how this works by using Playdo or clay and have him press his hand or a few fingers into it.

 

Use the following link to show how dinosaur fossils were found and how they’ve built models based on those fossils.  Don’t bother reading through the info (unless you think your kid is the type that would be very interested in this type of info).  Scroll to the bottom of the page once you click on the link, then click on one of the links to one the museums listed.  Show your child the pictures of the dinosaur exhibits and talk about them a bit together.  Go back to the first page and click on a few more links to the other museums.  Don’t go to crazy with this or it will start to bore him.  This site is not as cool as some of the others, but is has the pics to prove the point:

 

photos of dinosaur exhibits and fossil mounts

 

Here’s a really cute video you can watch together about kids who go fossil hunting:

 

 

 

DIFFERENT KINDS OF DINOSAURS AND HOW THEY MOVED

 

Look through some pics of dinosaurs to see how there were so many different varieties of dinosaurs.  The "DETAILED TOUR" button shows you the different parts of dinosaurs.  If you click on the name of the part, it shows you a close up of it.  The "360 DEGREE" button lets your child rotate the dinosaur to view it from all sides.  The "SIZE COMPARISION" button shows the dinosaur size compared with that of a person.  But the coolest one is the "MOTION" button, which shows how it moved:

 

Dino Viewer

 

 

ANATOMY OF DINOSAURS

 

Go inside the body of a T-REX:

 

Tyrannosaurus: Airhead

 

 

HOW DINOSAURS DISAPPEARED

 

Ask your child if he or she wonders why dinosaurs aren’t around today.  Explain that no one is sure exactly how they died off, but scientist have a number of different ideas about how it happened.  View this video together about one theory:

 

The End of the Dinosaurs

 

 

DINOSAUR MATH

 

Time to practice a little math, while sticking to the dinosaur theme.  Here’s a dinosaur that your child can color with the appropriate colors after doing the math problems in the various sections.  It won’t print well if you don’t belong to the site, but you can create your own together by copying the idea here.  Change the math problems to make them more difficult if needed or to practice multiplication:

 

Color the Dinosaur

 

DINOSAUR ORIGAMI

 

Download and cut out a few of these dinosaur drawings and follow the directions to create little paper, 3D dinosaurs that your child can play with later.

 

Download-a-Dinosaur

 

DINOSAUR CONCENTRATION

 

Play this fun game of dinosaur concentration to help your child improve his memory:

 

Dinosaur Memory

 

DINOSAUR ONLINE JIGSAW PUZZLE

 

This online dinosaur jigsaw puzzle is lots of fun.  Help him with if needed.  I had fun with this one myself!:

 

Dinosaur Puzzle

 

WRITING ABOUT DINOSAURS

 

Have your child write a story about a dinosaur.  Instead of using the computer, this time have him do it by hand.  Help him to improve his handwriting while he works on it.  He might also want to draw some pictures in the story and make a little book out of it.

 

DINOSAUR MUSEUMS

 

If you can spend a day going to a museum featuring dinosaurs, you and your child will have a blast while learning a lot.  Here’s a link to a site with a list of states and where dinosaur museums are near you:

 

Dinosaur Museums and Parks

 

Here’s a video how you can search for fossils at the Dinosaur Walk Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee:

 

 

 

PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK!

 

If you enjoyed this lesson, please pay me with a simple comment on what you liked and let me know if you modified parts of this unit study.   Happy homeschooling!

 

 

 

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Can you believe it’s Monday again?  Sometimes it comes too quick, don’t you think?

 

Anyway, it’s time for our Monday unit study.  Last week we focused on memorization by using physical exercise and games.  The weeks before that our unit study had dogs as its theme. 

 

This time we’re going to study about a topic that interests most kids: dinosaurs!

 

READ THIS FIRST

 

If you haven’t used our unit studies before, then first please read our previous post on How to Use Unit Studies on This Blog.

 

READING & SCIENCE

 

First, have your child read a story, or part of a story that involves dinosaurs.  If you child cannot read at all yet, then simply read to him.  As I mentioned in the unit study on dogs, we will soon write some blog posts that discuss how to teach a child with ADD how to read.

 

Sources of books (skip this subsection if you use our unit studies regularly since it will be repeat info for you):

Several weeks ago, I suggested using SwapTree, which is an online community for trading books you that you no longer want for books that you are would like to have.  Since then I’ve traded two of my own books that I didn’t want any more for two books from the Swaptree community.  They arrived in great condition.  You do have to pay shipping cost, which are a little under $3.00.  Plus I had to pay for a box to ship it in at the post office which cost about $1.50.  So it’s not like you can get the books completely free because of shipping costs.  But still, $4.50 for a book is pretty good.  Even used books on Amazon usually cost more than that (although you can qualify for free shipping from Amazon if you order enough books at once, totaling $25.00 or over).  So I think SwapTree is a great option.

 

If you choose to get a book or use one that you already have,  before starting, read through our post entitled "Tips on Teaching Your ADD Child How to Read Better".

 

Free online books about dinosaurs:

If you’d rather start reading right away and want access to lots of books completely for free, try these links below.  Which book you choose will depend on the reading level of your child.  Take a look through them and find one that he feels comfortable with.

 

Tyrone the Horrible (fairly easy reading)

Tyrone and the Swamp Gang (more about the same dinosaur)

The Lost Dinosaur (This link leads to a site where you type in your child’s name and the name of some of his friends, and then their names are included in the book.  It’s kind of cool. If the dinosaur book doesn’t appear as a link, it’s because each week two different books are featured.)

I’m Tyrannosaurus! A Book of Dinosaur Rhymes 

 

Reading to you:

Have your child read one of the books above (or one you have at home about dinosaurs) out loud for about 15 to 25 minutes, depending on his age and ability to concentrate. As with the books on dogs in the unit studies a few weeks ago, ask him what he liked and didn’t like about that book or the chapter that he read.  Ask him why he thinks the dinosaur or other characters acted the way that they did.

 

Reading to your child:

Next, read some online information about dinosaurs to your child.  Most of it will be above his reading level, but not necessarily above his level of comprehension.  If you’ve been following our weekly unit studies, you might still be reading The Call of the Wild or another book about dogs.  If so, continue on.  Don’t worry so much about the topic of each unit study that you stop reading a book that you find he is really enjoying.  But also try to dedicate some time to reading information from the sites below to him since it will teach him scientific facts and theories about dinosaurs.

 

Dinosaur Tracks  (Make sure to click the "next" button at the bottom, right-hand side of the page.)

Short ThinkQuest articles about T-Rex’s, fossils and extinction theories.  Don’t forget to click on the links in the left-hand navigation pane.

 

BREAK

 

Take a 10 to 15 minute break.  Try doing some vigorous exercises together like jumping jacks, pushups and jogging in place.  Click here to see why it’s good to take exercise breaks like this.

 

WRITING & COMPUTER SKILLS

 

Now have your child use your computer to type a few paragraphs about what he learned in the sites you visited together. 

 

Show him how to change the size and color of fonts in Microsoft Word or whichever word processing application you use.

 

Then show him how to save the file, find where he saved it on the computer and reopen it.  Have him do this several times until he can do it easily.

 

If he is used to using the computer and already knows how to do the above tasks, try teaching him something a little more difficult such as changing the spacing between lines of text and creating a list of numbered or bulleted items.  It’s amazing to me how many young adults know how to send instant messages, e-mail and so forth, but don’t know how to use many useful word processing features.  Teaching him these skills now will make it easier for him to use not only a word processing program, but other computer programs that work in similar ways.  In the future, we’ll have some unit studies devoted to computer use, teaching such skills as graphic editing, audio editing and even a little web page design.

 

GRAPHS

 

Teach your child about coordinates on a graph while he plays this Dinosaur Dig game.  You might have to wait for the ad to run before it shows the game.  Also, for some reason it first shows a race car game, then that goes away after a second or two and the dig game appears.

 

ART

 

If he enjoys drawing, have him paint a dinosaur online at: Artpad’s Painter.  After he finishes it, you can save it and send it to me at kbroccoli@homeschoolingADDkids.com .  I’ll then put a link to it on one of my upcoming blog posts so all our subscribers and visitors can see it!

 

 

JUST FOR FUN

 

Watch this cool video (below) of a puppet dinosaur that looks very real at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.  If you live near Los Angeles, it would be great to take your kid to see this.  (Very young children might be frightened.)

 

 

COMING NEXT WEEK

 

Next Monday we’ll post Part 2 of the Dinosaurs Unit Study.  Meanwhile, let us know how you enjoyed this week’s lesson.  Also, let me know if you have any ideas on topics for future unit studies.

 

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