Unit Studies - Love they way they flow...

We are currently in the throws of yet another History unit study, using "History with Jackie French". After the great success and interest last term with Hitlers Daughter (which by the way is still bringing up many many questions and comparisons in daily life), we chose "How the Finnegans Saved the Ship" for this term!

The story in short is about a mother and her seven children who are sailing by ship to join their father in the "lucky country" (being Australia) from Ireland. They are sailing not long after the infamous sinking of the Titanic so they are excited and scared all at the same time. 

This time the boys have a couple of friends joining them for the unit, so not only will they get a feel of working in a "group" situation but they can all hopefully bounce even more wonderful ideas and thoughts off each other! 

As we had a little trouble getting a hold of the book locally, we started off last week with a bit of a talk on Immigration and how our families came to Australia. We then talked about what we thought the book might be about and why Mrs Finnegan was bringing her kids here. We also talked about life for kids 100 years ago and compared our lives to theirs. We discussed the Potato Famine in Ireland and how terrible it would have been for children going hungry. We looked at pictures of different ships over time.

We read a non-fiction book about the Titanic, which was really interesting and looked at pictures of the ship. We then had a long discussion on the ins and outs of the journey, the people, the clothing and more so the different classes which was a little hard to understand for modern day boys! We even did some sneaky writing and math activities.

We read some newspaper articles from the time and discussed their accuracy! We then completed some work sheets to back up these theories. 

We finally got our book and read the first chapter! It was interesting and at times funny! After determining the reasoning for the Finnegans immigrating we planned on immigrating to different countries ourselves. Each boy chose a different country and then they planned their trip. They checked out the climate, the customs, the local landmarks, and had to work out how they were going to get there (eg. boat, plane etc).

Cal decided that this was not an option for him thank you very much! He already lives in the "Best country in the world" why on earth would he want to move somewhere else? So he is moving to another state. LOL

The boys then went online and hunted for some old motor cars from the early 1900's and paired up to research.....

They then prepared a "for sale" newspaper article promoting their cars (which while they found rather interesting to look at decided were really not worth buying as clearly one could walk faster than those cars!) 

And now for the part that I love the most, the way one thing leads to another and all.  Unlike our last unit which we worked on nearly every day till we got sick of it. This time as we are learning with others, we are only doing our Unit study once a week. So rather than lose interest, we have been extending it from our end by reading and following interest in other areas that tie in.

(Zak!!!! Is that how you listen to the story? Here let me have a turn of that!)

Yesterday we read the first book in the series Titanic by Gordan Korman (yes we read the whole book and I think mum enjoyed it as much if not more than the kids). (Anna....Guess what you might reading next week? LOL) We have been talking about the titanic a lot and are planning on watching the movie which the boys have not seen yet. We will start on the 2nd book tomorrow and have the 3rd book on order. We also got a hold of a My Story Titanic book which we will read together as well.

I take that back, we will be starting the 2nd book right now, Zak wants to know more! Well it did kind of leave us hanging! And they do have to go to their metal work class later today! I guess I will catch up with you again later.

Have a lovely day all! Keep Smiling.......

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxoxox