FIAR: Very Last First Time

Our latest FIAR book was Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews. It's the story of an Inuit girl named Eva who goes searching for mussels at low tide under the sea ice in the winter in Canada. It was a great book and the kids loved the idea of being able to walk around under the ice. 

 We did an experiment to show what tides do. First we put rocks and a couple of animals (ok... dinosaurs) on the rocks. Then we filled the water a little bit (low tide) and the boys could see how they could still easily move across the rocks without getting wet.

 Then we poured more water in (high tide) making it so most of the rocks were now under water and so trapped the animals on the rocks where they were. 

 Rebecca picked up a bag of mussels from the store one evening and we let the kids see how they opened up when you put then in water. 

The artwork in the point has a lot of pointillist style, so we tried an art project we saw on someone else's page where they used spiky rings to paint with, creating a sort-of-pointillist effect.

We also read a couple of other books: Arctic Son (which our library thankfully had, since it's out of print) and The Three Snow Bears. We talked some about polar bears and how they have a thick (up to 6 inches!) layer of fat and how they can swim in the icy arctic waters. 

To illustrate how that works, Gabe and Ezra stuck their hands in ice water and held them there for a minute. 

Then we made a "glove" out of two ziploc bags with shortening in between them. They stuck their hands back in with the gloves on and didn't get cold at all!

Irene thought that was way cool, so she wanted to try it, too. :)

This was a really fun and interesting unit study for all of us.

The Biggest Lapbook Ever

Olivia took a break from her regular studies around the time of Thanksgiving to complete Amanda Bennett's Thanksgiving unit study. She had to copy many interesting quotes as well as Bible verses. She also got to practice her dictionary skills many times over as she defined selected words from the study. She looked up information about many interesting people involved in the story behind Thanksgiving. She did map work. And at the end of it all, she had to write a story as though she was a character on the voyage and arriving in the New World during that first year. She did a great job! Then we put it all together in the biggest lap book ever! She has done many lap books since the beginning of her schooling but this one takes the cake for sure. We mostly stick to note booking now-a-days and this may show you why. But this was fun. :)

South American Adventure

Our homeschool curriculum took us to South America, specifically Brazil. Olivia really loves identifying places on the map and "traveling" different ways to these countries--air, land, sea. As she enters the country, we put a flag sticker with the date in her passport.

Olivia and I tired to learn some samba dancing. Daddy taught her some about soccer. And, again we use you tube to listen to Portuguese language and attempt to learn some. There are all kinds of good resources there (just don't try to search for them with your child standing right with you. ;) )

Here is some of her art projects as we spent time in Brazil:

carnival dancer hat

dancer

drinking straw flutes

chimes (we were discussing how silver is mined in South America)

rain stick (postal tube, about 150 nails, beans and paint)

We spent a lot of time reading and learning about the tropical rain forest and the Amazon river. This involved tons of library books. Olivia loved reading about all the different animals and plants. At the end of our 3 weeks, she made a lapbook to remember some of what was learned. It came from homeschool share.

this is her front and back (i guess you call that a deconstructed rain forest of sorts... :) )

this is a little hard to see but it is like a diorama but in minibook form

We also had a food day. We had rainforest sandwiches, that involved mixing banana, coconut, cinnamon and raisins into a normal peanut butter sandwich. We had rain forest "icecream". It was avocado mixed with frozen cool whip and a bit of powder sugar, making it very green. And then of course, we are all grateful for the chocolate we have from the rain forest right? So we made these Brazilian chocolate caramel balls rolled in chocolate sprinkles. :)

Our read alouds were the biography of Nate Saint. He was an Ecuadorian jungle pilot. His story is just amazing and inspiring. I highly encourage you to read it. We also read Erth's Birthday. This was a story of a very grumpy porcupine (yes, they live in forests but not so much tropical rainforests, i know) who ends up taking care of some fox kits after their mother is killed. It is a funny and good story overall. It teaches a lot about animal behavior, for instance a porcupine is an herbivore, loving salt and tree bark, while the foxes are carnivores. This creates some interesting challenges for this porcupine. As I said, he is very grumpy and there is also a "bad guy" animal (a fisher) so I would suggest that you preview the book before reading it aloud. Nonetheless, we did enjoy it.

And now we are packing up to head home and then to Europe for a while. See ya soon!

Early America Lapbook

This was a very simple lapbook that Olivia and I put together to review the first 13 colonies, a few of our founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell, the first 3 presidents, and the first flag. The picture on the front is of George Washington and a dog, from this book. 

Bird Study, homeschool extras

A few months ago, we went on a field trip to the zoo. We attended a short introductory bird class. Then we were given binoculars and some time to observe the birds in the aviary.

Even Gabe got to try his hand at using the binoculars. :)

 After the field trip to the zoo, we began our study on birds. As part of our homeschool curriculum, we studied some of the state birds. I wanted Olivia to learn more about birds so we began to study them more in depth. We joined another family once a week and began putting together a lapbook to display what we were learning.

Here is Olivia's lapbook. She tells me that is a picture of her holding a bird. :) And, as you may have guessed, that is a lifecycle picture there on the front cover. We also looked closely at an egg and talked a little about reproduction.

On the left, is the the bird classification. Olivia wanted to study Hummingbirds specifically so her classification is of a hummingbird. The minibooks below that are of bird beaks and feet. We talked about their diets in that lesson as well. The bird report is her specific study of hummingbirds. We found a cool book of poems written by a family that had a hummingbird make a nest on their porch and observed its behavior. On the right are bird poems and songs. I was teaching to a group of 8 kids, ranging from Ezra, 4months at the start, to a 10 year old. It was a learning experience, to say the least, teaching to multiple ages.

The two minibooks on this page are about birdwatching. We learned what you need to be a birder, supplies (notepad, guide, etc) and behavior (sitting still and quiet). Olivia also recorded some of her observations from watching the bird feeder in our backyard. The best time to watch is in the mornings. We plan to do lots more birdwatching once warmer weather returns. Stay tuned for pictures of some of our common visitors tomorrow. The pictures at the top right were part of our discussion on aerodynamics and flight.

Here are our minibooks on the Ostrich and the Bee Hummingbird. The top right shows some types of bird feathers and functions. The minibook at the bottom is were she recorded what she learned about the differences in males and females.

The book at the top is a story that she read and then identified the parts of the bird. The flap book at the bottom contains our bible verse. Matthew 6:26 (although you should read verse 25-34) We don't need to worry. God is our provider and he knows our needs. We can trust him.

Here is a lapbook I made for Gabe. We read Feathers for Lunch by Lois Ehlert so that is where many of his activities come from. He is learning to identify his letters and even knows some sounds. So here we are reinforcing Bb. Then he has his copy of the bible verse. A child is never too young to begin instilling the truth of God's word in his heart.

There are minibooks covering counting, colors, and positions. The bird in the nest comes out and can be moved around. The game on the bottom left was used for colors and matching like birds (there are two of each).

Here are Gabe's copies of the poems and songs on the back of his book. Gabe just loves music, rhymes, and fingerplays

We made birds nest from chow mein noodles, shredded wheat, and melted peanut butter and chocolate. The eggs are jelly beans. We were talking about Robins that day so that is why we have blue eggs.

Here is our second nest. This day we played a game. The kids made bird masks (sorry, no pictures) and then had a meal of seeds, nuts, and dried fruit. They then had to go outside and gather materials to build a nest. (I planted fake grass and sticks around and we used the pb/chocolate "mud" again) Then they used playdough to make eggs for their nests. Then they received a bird. I believe Olivia made some worms for her bird to eat or feed her babies. Also, if you are wondering about the big leaf...It is providing shade to the bird as she sits on her eggs. :)

Here is Olivia doing some bird watching. We made fake binoculars out of paper towel tubes. While they don't actually work like binoculars, they do help her to focus on an area. She has a very hard time sitting still for long as you may well imagine. She will be getting a real pair of binoculars soon and we will be doing more bird watching when the weather warms up a little. Olivia's favorite, as I mentioned, are hummingbirds. We put a hummingbird feeder in the backyard but it was not very popular unfortunately. We are hoping for better success in the spring.

Creation Lapbook

We started a creation lapbook. We learned the story of creation and what was created on each day. We talked about how God created living and nonliving things, making a list of those. We also talked about cells. We have been learning the continents and oceans so I included that in this lapbook. I incorporated some of our memory work from Classical Conversations last year. We classified animals and will review plants soon.

Garden

According to my friend, Donnie, who is the son of a farmer and was a farmer himself for 20 years or so, May 1st is the day to get everything planted. So I took Olivia and Gabe out last Saturday and planted a few things.

Olivia was so excited to get to use her gardening gloves and tools.

Gabe was pretty gung-ho about it, too.

Olivia helped plant peas, red and yellow onions, zucchini, tomatoes, jalapeño peppers and basil. Gabe, however, ate every seed I handed to him. Oh well...

All-in-all, it was lots of fun and Olivia's so excited that we already have sprouts of everything coming up after only 5 days! She wants to go out every chance she gets to look at the garden.

To follow up the fun of planting a garden, Olivia and Mom put together a lapbook. For this lapbook most things came from www.homeschoolshare.com and www.lapbooklessons.com. We read the story Muncha, Muncha, Muncha and as well as a couple of other garden related books from the library. We are in the process of reading Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit Giant Storybook.

We aren't quite done with this one yet. Olivia will be drawing her pea seed and its progress inside the seed growth minibook.