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

Creation

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

Little Man, Pre-K, God's Little Explorers, Week 2

Picture from from Google Images
http://godordirt.com/

"In the beginning God..." Creation is probably my favorite science subject. I love how we start our year off focused on our Lord as creator God.

1st Grade

We read the Biblical account of Creation from the Bible and a book called Song of Creation by Paul Goble. I have a children's story Bible, but it is terrible when it comes to the Creation story. I was disappointed, so we read Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 straight from the Bible. Miss E made a lapbook on creation, her first big project.

We took our time putting the lapbook together. We read the account of each day, Miss E memorized a sentence in regard to what was created that day, and then made a mini book to represent the day with her own picture. On the inside of the mini book is a verse that corresponds with that day.

Here is the completed lapbook.

The sentences she has memorized about each day of creation.

Day 1 - God created day and night.

Day 2 - God created the sky, land and sea.

Day 3 - God created plants and trees.

Day 4 - God created the sun, moon, stars and seasons.

Day 5 - God created birds and fish.

Day 6 - God created animals and man.

Day 7 - God rested. 

Her completed timeline of creation.

Pre-K

In Little Man's curriculum there is a lot more going on with week 2 than just creation. I'm just highlighting the creation part here.

Both kids created a sticky book on creation. Like I did with Miss E, we read from the Bible the account of creation and then they made their book pages themselves.

(Pictures to come)

For Fun

With the help of a friend, I found this site. I used her creation printable to make magnets and we retold the creation story on our magnetic board. Miss E used her memorized sentences and Little Man used his own words to retell the story.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Science at the Beach

Okay maybe it really isn't science but when you read a book about the seashore you might as well plan a trip to the beach. Miss E has been asking to go to the beach for months! I'm not really a beach person, it is a lot of work! However, to the beach we will go, or rather we went.

We read The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zolotow for science. The book is about a mom telling her son about the seashore. They live in the mountains and he had never been to the beach.

So, we went to the beach. Twice actually in one week. Here are some highlights!!

 Trip #2, Daddy got to come with us!

 Looking for sand crabs.

Part of our summer fun!

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Studying Wind

We read Gail Gibbons book Catch the Wind! for science. (As of the time of this post, I am not an affiliate of Amazon, I'm just including the site for book reference.) The book is all about kites. My kids loved it. They each took turns pointing out different things about the different kites on each page. I was impressed that Miss E actually let her brother point things out. They both started thinking about how they were going to decorate their kites when we made them.

To start off our study of wind, I did a little experiment with the kids. What I wanted them to understand is that wind is just the movement of air. We took a Coke bottle and put a balloon on the top. 

I put a little bit of water in a skillet and warmed it up. 

I then put the bottle in the hot water and we watched the balloon expand. Pretty much like magic in the eyes of my kids!

We also made wind socks. We used a small paper sack, some crayons and colored pencils, crape paper, yarn, and tape. The kids decorated their sacks. Then they tapes pieces of crape paper around the opening. I punched a hole in the bottom of the bag and attached the yarn. We then took our wind socks outside.

Our front patio is pretty protected from the wind. The kids did see that a slight breeze did move their wind sock as they held it but there was nothing too exciting.

 I was not going to let the kids go outside our gate because they were in their jammers (and I didn't want the neighborhood kids to think we had a ton of time to play). However, I knew that the wind was blowing and I knew that the kids would see it better if we were not in our protected front yard. So, out we went. There was a pretty good gust of wind that make their wind socks take flight. They started to run around like they were trying to make a kite take off. I later learned that I was supposed to cut off the bottom of the sack. Oh well, the kids had tons of fun anyway.

Of course when you read a book about kites you have to make a kite!! Using the directions in the back of our book, we made a Flat Kite. This is what we did.

I had some large packing type paper and had the kids paint their kites. I do believe Miss E ended up helping Little Man with his at the end.

  

Miss E's

Do you see Fox In Sox??

Little Man's 

After the kites dried we worked on making the frame for the kite. I just used small dowel rods, kite string and glue. I quickly learned that I'm really not the DIY type person. If it wasn't for the help of Daddy, I don't think we ever would have finished the kites.

The finished kites...

We headed off to the park. I just said that I'm not a DIYer and I had no faith in our kites, so on the way to the park we stopped at the Dollar Tree to buy a kite. I had to have a plan b. When we arrived at the park we were in for a surprise. First it was the hottest day of the year and second there was absolutely no wind or breeze or anything when we first got there. I didn't think we were going to get our kites to fly at all.

The kids kept asking when they would be able to fly their kites and I kept telling them we had to have wind. Finally the wind kicked up and we took our first kite a test drive.

We did get it in the air for a couple of seconds and then it started to fall apart. We then pulled out the kite I bought and it didn't fair any better. We'll have to try flying kites again some other day.

My good friend, Allison over at Train Up A Child did a great tutorial on making kites, check it out!

I'm now on facebook, find me here.

Blessings,

Elizabeth