Desert Habitat

Miss E, 1st Grade, Epi Kardia, Unit 1

Ancient Egypt, Joseph, Moses and the Exodus, The Nile River... all of this leads up to DESERTS!
To see our history activities around Ancient Egypt, click here.

One of the kids' favorite sites is brainpopjr.com. They love learning with Moby. I also get excited when there is a video on one of the topics we are discussing because I can utilize their worksheets and quizzes. I say that I'm lazy, but really I think it comes down to not reinventing the wheel so to speak.

I logged into the brainpopjr and let both kids watch the science video on desert habitats. I wanted Miss E to do both the quiz and the activity from the desert section. She was able to do the quiz by herself while I printed off the worksheet activity. Miss E labeled and colored the desert animals and plants. Little Man (pre-k) just colored the picture.

She still thinks animals need to be colored like a rainbow.

We took two days and made a desert mural with paint. The first day I had Miss E paint only the vegetation that would be found in the desert. We read the book Storm on the Desert and we discussed the types of plants would be found in the dessert based on the book.

The second day she added the animals after discussing desert animals from our book.

I purchased a Desert Biodome. I thought it would be fun for both of the kids to watch different cacti and succulents grow. They had fun making their little biodome. Now we watch and wait for our plants to grow.

**Update: We are more than a week into our biodome and we have not seen anything sprout. I don't know if it is user error or if our window just is not hot enough. Maybe it is not a good idea to start a biodome the end of September. We'll keep an eye on it and keep you posted.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom {Virtual Book Club}

This month for the Virtual Book Club we read books by Bill Martin Jr. With the start of our school year I did a little bit of research to find a book that would work with what we are already learning.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a fun book to read. We have read through the book several times. The book that I bought also has a CD with Ray Charles preforming the story. The kids love to listen to him tell the story, too. We listened to the CD version several times.

This year for Little Man (pre-k) we will be focusing on new letters each week. Here are a few letter inspired activities that we have done.

Puffy Paint Letter Tracing 
(to make homemade puffy paint, click here.)
I printed off some outlined lowercase letters for Little Man to trace or decorate with puffy paint. He starts tracing the letters and then fills the page with paint. Not a picture I can display but it is fun for him none the less.

Magnet Coconut Tree
I made my own coconut tree with construction paper, laminated it, and then added magnets. I have a huge magnetic oil pan I purchased from Wal-Mart. I pulled out our lowercase magnet letters and had Little Man decorate our tree. I left the tree and letter up on our board for several days and both kids have come by retelling the story on their own.

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Blessings,

Elizabeth

**This post is a part of the Bill Martin, Jr. Virtual Book Club. You can see more fun here.

Betsy Ross and Old Glory

During our Revolutionary War Unit we read two books about Betsy Ross and The American Flag; Betsy Ross by Alexandra Wallner and Red, White, and Blue by John Herman. I learned several things while reading these two little books. Proof that homeschooing parents also learn a ton when they teach their kids.

I found a worksheet online about Besty Ross that Miss E and I filled out together after reading Betsy Ross. When I first found and printed off the worksheet I didn't think it was going to be too hard for her, but once we started filling in the blanks, I found out differently. She knew the answers, she remembered that Betsy Ross was born in Pennsylvania, that George Washington came to her to make a flag, etc... but physically writing the answers was too much for her. As I write this, I'm asking her to tell me about Betsy Ross and orally she can tell me the highlights from the book. She just told me that she is always telling me about Betsy. Funny girl!!

We did do a couple of crafts related to the American Flag...

Miss E made a five point start, just like Ross's. With prompting she folded a square of paper as our directions dictated and made the one cut. She then decorated it.

Later in the week we read Red, White, and Blue. Both Miss E and Little Man made their version of the American Flag. The 50 stars were a little too much for Little Man. Miss E ended up helping him at the end. Other than the love of glue, they did a great job. 

I tore some white paper into 12 strips for the white stripes and I cut the square of blue for the stars. The kids assembled their flags with very little instruction. They say the Pledge of Allegiance every week at our Bible study so they know what the flag looks like. I was impressed that they both left red at the top and at the bottom. Each flag has 50 stars, they are just not in any particular pattern.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Week 4

Some units just lend themselves to a ton of crafts while others, do not. This week IS a big craft week. We've had a ton of fun, too.

Monday

Bible Genesis 41:14-43, Memory verse Romans 12:21
Classical Conversations (CC) memory work. We are reviewing weeks 1-2 this week.

For English I worked with Miss E on the words that we know. I made little cards that I laminated and put on a ring. We will start taking them everywhere and will work on memorizing our words. She did her Lexia, but we've hit a 'harder' level so she is easily frustrated.

For math we talked about recording data on picture graphs. She has started telling me what we need to do to make things equal and she loves to count everything to give me a 'total'. We LOVE math in our house.


Tuesday
Bible memory verse Romans 12:21 with review of all the previous verses.
CC memory work

Miss E was not feeling 100% and feel asleep after Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). After her nap we worked on our 'rainbow writing' again, she did her Lexia, and then math. That was about it.

Wednesday
Bible Genesis 44-46, memory verse Romans 12:21 with review of previous verses.
CC memory work

We finished reading the story of Joseph from the bible this week. I pulled out our Joseph book from a couple of weeks ago and we re-read the story. We were able to talk about what was going on a little more in depth this time around.

For math I pulled out the M&Ms again. It is funny how a little manipulative can make both kids very attentive. Probably doesn't hurt when the manipulative is edible. We were talking about rearranging objects in different patterns, but keeping the same amount of objects. She struggled a little bit with her assignment but I know she understands the concept. We also used the M&Ms to represent quantity. I have five cards with the numbers 1-5 on them, I had her put the correct number of M&Ms on each card. The last thing we did was make a poster that represents the number 1.

We did a lot of reading. We read The Empty Pot, Wildflower ABC, and Planting a Rainbow. Miss E also gave reading a try on her own. I was so proud!! Today she read Mat (A Bob Book). She was excited, too. 

We are participating unofficially with a virtual book club which started this month. I picked Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert, see my official post, here. It turns out that this little book goes perfectly with our unit this week. I love it when things like this happen!! So, for our activity for the book club we painted a garden. I gave the kids some green paper to make stems for our flowers and then they painted the flowers. I've said this before, I do not give too much instruction when we are doing creative activities. I'm firm on what I want when we do our math and reading/writing, but when it comes to crafts, I give the kids free liberty. I don't make a 'sample' for them to follow either. I love seeing what they come up with after I explain what we are doing.







One of the activities with Epi Kardia this unit is to paint a terra cotta pot. I rolled that into our rainbow flower painting. Who wants to set up paint, twice?

Thursday
Bible Genesis 47-49, memory verse Romans 12:21
CC memory work

Since I had a captive audience this morning, we did all of our reading in one sitting. After our bible we read two poems from Poems & Prayers for the Very Young, The Seven Chinese Brothers, Sunflower, Miss E read Mat to Little Man, and we looked at two pictures from A Child's Book of Art.

Our math objective is to represent the number 2. I pulled out the play dough (suggested from our Earlybird Math book) and we each made two balls. We then rolled the dough out to make the number 1 and then the number 2. Miss E proudly told me that when a 1 is next to a 2 you have the number twelve! We then had fun making other things with our play dough, shapes, letters, etc. When they were done with playing we went back to our lesson. After the lesson, I had the kids make another poster that represented the number 2. (I got the idea from a friend of mine who posted pictures similar to what we did on her facebook.) After our fun with our poster, the kids got out more paper and more stickers and just created fun pictures on their own.
 

 Our next project, since we are dealing with flowers in science this week, is to paint with fruit. We read Wildflower ABC which is a book of potato prints. The kitchen table smelled so good! Both kids were amazed at the patterns that the different fruit left on the paper.

 

English is the last thing on our agenda today. We are working with the letter 'C c'. I got out the Do.A.Dots for Little Man while Miss E did her copy work, then Miss E worked on her Lexia. The Do.A.Dot paper came from Confessions of a Home Schooler's Letter of the Week Program.

Friday
Bible Genesis 50 - Exodus 2, memory verse Romans 12:21
CC memory work

We started our day off with History. We read The Great Wall of China, along with a poem from Poems & Prayers for the Very Young. I wanted Miss E to work on some geography. I printed off a map of the Middle East and then one of Asia. We talked about Israel and Iran last week and China this week. I had Miss E write Iran and China in their respected countries and then had her color just those countries. I helped her find the country on the globe and then she found it on her map.

 For math we worked on representing the number 3. We got out the play dough again and worked on creating our numbers 1-3.
 
 Our new letter is 'D d'. Again Little Man worked with Letter of the Week (LOTW) 'D', Do.A.Dot while Miss E worked on her copywork also from LOTW. Later in the evening she read Mat to her dad.

We wrapped up our week on flowers with a flower life cycle project. We read From Seed to Sunflower first and then from there we made our life cycle. From google images I found pictures of the flower life cycle. I don't remember the exact website. I had both kids order the pictures and then glue them onto a poster.

We took our terra cotta pots that we painted earlier in the week and planted some viola seeds. The kids are really excited to see watch them grow. 

One thing about painting with Tempra paint is that when the pots got wet, the paint ran. We'll see how long they have any color.

Thanks for continuing the journey with us,
Elizabeth

Literature for the week:
Joseph by Brian Wildsmith
The Empty Pot by Demi
Wildflower ABC by Diana Pomeroy
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Mat
Poems & Prayers for the Very Young selected by Martha Alexander
The Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy
Sunflower by Miela Ford
A Child's Book of Art selected by Lucy Micklethwait
The Great Wall of China by Leonard Everett Fisher
From Seed to Sunflower by Dr Gerald Legg