Awesome American History: 1892-1898

 This covered Lizzie Borden, Helen Keller, and the Spanish American War, pages 173-183 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

Having friends in the NFB, we decided to focus on Helen Keller on this one.

I know that a lot of people going for "what it's like to be blind," set up blindfolds.  Talking to actual blind people, this is not what it's like to be blind, and it tends to perpetuate stereotypes of blindness as scary and debilitating.

Instead, we did a fun project where the kids did their names in braille, using bumpy jewels to make large feelable initials or names.

We also did the punch method where we pressed a pencil point through paper to make raised dots.  The advantage was that the dots were much more the size of regular braille.  The disadvantage was that you have to do it reversed, which was too hard for kids.

Instead, I did some and had the kids read it using the alphabet guide.

 It was really fun! 

We also watched this TED Ed video of Ted Kish explaining how he uses sonar to navigate.

For our active activity we tried the sonar exercise he suggests in his talk.

 For our snack, we had brain cupcakes in honor of Lizzie Borden and it being October.

In a weird coincidence we (my A + P classes and I ) dissected sheep brains the same day I made brain cupcakes. It was weird.

Actually, I felt stuck between, "My life is weird" and "We are rocking this homeschool thing!"

And then the kids went outside and had an epic nerf battle, because... Spanish American War? 

Yes, I'm sure that was it!