Total Language Plus projects

One of the things that I first liked with Total Language Plus was the ability to do more than Language Arts.  Using the project ideas you can easily turn your studies into mini "unit" studies.  This appealed to me because though I was a unit study mom "want to be" I knew in my heart I couldn't pull it all off.  We could just never fit it in but with Total Language Plus it was a different story. 

With some books we've done a lot of the projects and other times we've only managed a few.  The projects range from research, food, crafts, field trips and more.

Lexie with the Old radio we found

This year my youngest daughter is doing, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the Total Language Plus study guide.  For her this is the first guide that has more projects, dictations, writing assignments (Pen and Papers) and less grammar instruction.  She's used to going along and picking out some things to do so even though we're doing it in a co-op she came to the projects for the week and the suggestion was to visit an antique place that has a wireless and/or a wardrobe. 

Honestly, I probably would have said, "we don't have time", but my husband was home and said he'd like to try to do something with her for school and this seemed like a good opportunity.  We have an antique store only about a mile from our house so we stopped in to check it out.

We didn't find any wardrobes but the shop owner was very nice and showed my daughter pictures in a book.

As you can see from the picture we did find some old radio's to represent the "wireless".   It was interesting that they had buttons labeled, Berlin, Paris etc...

Besides looking for the items from the story Lexie (and Ariel) enjoyed looking at EVERYTHING and had a blast.  Both of the girls enjoy tea and having tea parties so we bought them each an inexpensive tea cup and saucer to remember the occasion.

Now, I know, I know, what in the word do tea cups have to do with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?  Well nothing really except that they had a wonderful school field trip, saw some things related to the literature they were reading and have a memory they'll keep forever! 

So, do we have time for this, you bet!  In fact we need to do more TLP projects!