Friday, October 8, 2010

Expedition China

This week we did Download N Go's Expedition China.  This was really a crazy week...an unexpected morning of helping my grandmother with Alzheimer's, doctor appointments, several days of rain....just not a great week but we were still able to complete all of the lessons.  Honestly, I tried to do too much!  I don't know if I have mentioned this before but I have a problem with perfectionism AND I hate to waste stuff.  I purchased this unit in the summer after having only completed one Download N Go unit.  I printed EVERY page and because I did this I felt that we had to DO every page.  I would not recommend doing this.  There is so much in this unit, it's really too much to try to do in one week.  I think it would have been better if we had chosen a few things to focus on. With all that being said, we still enjoyed China.

Panda bears are so cute!


Emma was the only one that really completed the work in this unit.  Some of the kids watched the videos and did some coloring but Emma went through all of it.  (I did make her do too much.  I'll try not to do that anymore...LOL)



The week before we started Expedition China, I started reading, These are My People by Mildred Howard.  It is a biography of Gladys Aylward, a missionary to China.  We are enjoying reading it and I hope to finish it in the next few days.  I also got a stack of books from the library list but we haven't really read any.  I think I will read some before we return them to the library though.

I originally planned to cook some kind of Chinese food but we ended up going to a local Chinese restaurant with a few of the kids tonight.  It was fun and we got to try chopsticks.  They also have a fish tank with goldfish (one of the animals we studied this week) and it had a pagoda in it.

Emma trying to use chopsticks. (I'm not sure what Connor is doing.  LOL)

checking out the goldfish in the tank


So, my recommendation for this unit would be to buy it but, do one of two things:

1) Complete it in a week but pick and choose what you want to cover.

OR

2) Do all the lessons but take a much longer time to do it.

There is PLENTY here to fill several weeks especially if you add library books.  I am finding that I like to spend a week on a Download N Go unit (or 6 days if we add a field trip).  I just need to learn to scale back when I do this! :)

4 comments:

Leslie said...

I totally understand wanting to do it all - especially when there are so many good things. I feel like that with the FIAR units too. You are smart to pick and choose. You can always revisit a unit another time.

I enjoy reading about your times with these. Thanks for posting them.

Hugs
Leslie

Karen said...

Well, I would be smart Leslie if I actually did it! LOL! I have that problem with FIAR too. Hopefully as the years go on I'll figure it all out. We've been homeschooling for 13 years now..you'd think that would be long enough! :)

Anonymous said...

Karen, I know what you mean, they really do seem to have a lot in them, and although the two we have done, we did in one week, they could easily be expanded to a two week study :0) Or as the other commenter suggested coming back to it another time. I do plan on doing some more of the down load n go studies. Right now we are studying Jamestown though, so just using some internet sites I found on my own for that. I am having much fun with Julia for school this year - I love homeschooling the younger years the best:0)

Darlene

Karen said...

Darlene,

Do you ever use homeschool share? I have a button on the sidebar of my blog. All kinds of free lapbooking stuff. Check it out if you haven't already. I think you'll like it.

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