Fabulous Fun Family Friday

Material from a previous blog:

A new creation that we came up with this year are: Fabulous FUN Family Fridays!  Our goal is to get in 4 good solid days of school work each week.  If we can get 5, that’s gravy.  One way we motivate ourselves to get 5 is with the new FFFF.  Every Friday we take a break from our regular studies & do a one day wam bang unit study.  I have always wanted to do unit studies & it just never fit my personality exactly.  I suppose I am a little too structured (strict) to give my whole school curriculum over to unit studies & they always seemed like a lot of work.  Well, no more.  Here is what we do.

On the first Friday we have 4-H which is an all day affair.  After that (and because we are in town) we make our monthly library trip & often visit the second hand store in town to see if they have any treasures.  That is our FFFF for the first Friday of the month.  I have 3 boys who are old enough to voice a reasonable opinion & they each receive one of the 3 remaining Fridays of the month.  On the 2nd FFFF of the month L4 gets to pick the unit study topic for the day, on the 3rd FFFF E6 gets to pick, & the last FFFF of the month goes to F9.  On the occasional month where we have 5 Fridays we get to catch up if we’ve missed one (like this month when we went out of town.)  Of coarse this would work just as well with more or less children & just letting each child pick every 6 weeks (for six kids,etc.)

FFFF has been wonderful for us.  The children have to select their topics for the month by the first FFFF when we attend the library.  I check out a ton of books on each of the 3 unit study topics of the month.  As the month progresses I include these books in my younger sons’ book baskets for them to look through.  Longer, more detailed books for my oldest are included on his literature list & he has all month to read them.  On the week of the unit study I do some searching through materials I have at home & on the internet & try & find a paper craft or hands on project to go with the topic.  I select a few books from the librabry assortment that we will actually read together & flag any pages from other books that I want to look at together.  I think about what information or skills will be appropriate to each boys age & plan to include that in our study.

So far we have done a lapbook on each FFFF.  These are not meticuluosly planned; we just record info we learn in appropriate fold-its & then fit everything into a lapbook at the end of the day.  These have been a lot of fun for sharing with Daddy & friends & the boys are very proud of all they have learned.  So far we have had FFFF about Alligators & Crocodiles, Lizards, The War of 1812, Airplanes, Camoflouge Bugs, & D-Day.  I will try to post pictures of some of our lapbooks soon!

Material from an earlier blog