I wanted to share some of my favorite books I found for Oklahoma history.
S is for Sooner is of course a favorite and we have read it several times! You really should check out Sleeping Bear Press books, they are beautiful and educational!
“The Dust Bowl” is all written as if it was telling your story. As you go along you are given choices of what you want to do and then you go to the page that goes along with that choice.
This was my first time with the “You Choose” history book and it was amazing!
It was a chapter type book but since the boys were listening for the choices they did not even care how long it was!
I let them make a bad choice by staying in a airplane while a dust storm was coming but thankfully they just ended up in the hospital. 🙂
There are many more books for different times in history and I will definitely be getting them!
“Beautiful Land” was a well written book about the land rush in Oklahoma.
It follows a family waiting to get in and their journey to find a home.
The boys really liked it and I thought it was a great book to start our journey into Oklahoma history with.
I tried to get some books for my 1st grader to read that went along with the era we were learning about.
“Dust for dinner” was a really good book for him to read.
It was really sad for most of it (anything for that time period is) but it had a happy ending and he came away knowing how amazingly blessed he is.
He liked prairie school as well.
I read aloud to them “The voices of the dust bowl” and it made me cry.
The end.
I had trouble finding a good classic literature book for us to start our day off with.
I finally decided on “Little House on the Prairie” by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
It gave the boys a nice sense of what it would have been like to be homesteading at that time.
It can be a little bit detailed so I had the boys build a log cabin with lincoln logs along with the book.
We also made corn cakes to see what the food they ate tasted like.
The Oklahoma Historical Society site has a lot of great resources available for free.
I printed some on the state symbols and the boys painted them as we talked about what they were.
My art wall.
I bought a kit for making one of these but it was too much work so I threw this one together.
All it is is nails, picture hanging wire, and clips from a craft store.
It works great and took me very little time and no planning.
Score!
RightStart math is going great!
I am liking it so much more this year!
The boys love how hands on it is.
I think the fact that both of them do it together is making all the difference.
They feed off of each other.
They keep forgetting how to write their numbers correctly so I made the sandpaper numbers that their math games book suggested.
I had them put the same amount of tally sticks under the number so they would have a little better visual of the what number was as well.
My children often dress up in costumes to do their school.
I had the boys play with playdough while watching creation science videos from this site.
Kent Hovinds seminars on Creation science are now on youtube!
I love that they did that for us!
Whenever I think I might be pushing the boys interest levels though I break out the playdough.
I have had this science kit for a couple years now and finally got it out!
It was too far above them when I bought it but it was perfect for them now!
They love science!
Color changing liquid!
We attempted to make rock candy.
The first try was a complete bust.
The second try went a little better but still only 2 out of 4 things actually had sugar crystals grow on them and it took over 7 days for it to look like the right side.
It was a little past my boys patience level.
Anyone have a trick to making it work?
I looked at several different sites and still did not have much luck.
Also for science we learned about native plants, native animals, and crude oil.
I found the site howstuffworks to be the best for information and videos on crude oil.
We borrowed some books from the library but none really stood out as being great for this age.
I usually request many books on one subject and then only read the ones that I think will keep the boys interested.
