One of my girls is charging towards puberty at warp speed. I’m SO.NOT.READY for all of that. However, being the planner that I am, I didn’t want “anything” to be a sudden surprise. So I bit the bullet and had parts of “the talk”. GAH!! I wanted this to be an informative, and not totally gross or embarrassing learning experience, so I decided books were needed. We used the American Girl book The Care and Keeping of You and added the Care and Keeping of You lapbook from Homeschool Share as our core for this study.
We briefly studied nutrition, exercise, how to care for your hands, feet and skin. We moved into discussions about feminine body care, leg shaving, nail painting and feelings.
To go along with the learning we did some “girlie stuff”. We had our back to school haircuts. It was really just a trim, no length removed this year. Isn’t her hair beautiful?!
We painted our fingernails and toenails.
And then we dyed Olivia’s hair pink, yes really.
Overall this was a great learning experience. We got to spend some one on one time together. I saw facial expressions that I didn’t know existed. (Imagine her chagrin to find out that period isn’t just a dot at the end of a sentence.) And technically it counts as health class, so its all good.
I highly recommend The Care and Keeping of You for this topic. It’s not overly informative (no talk of reproduction activities), but it really handles the body changes well.
I have the lap book downloaded, but didn't see any instructions. I don't have the book yet. Is this pretty self explanatory once you see them together?
ReplyDeleteYes, it's pretty easy. Just do the books that match what you are working on at at the time. I'll be working through it again this summer with my youngest.
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