Monthly Archive: September 2009

1

Animals and World Geography

The continents cards (both the small and large cards in the post above)  are available in our World Animal Packet. We placed world animal cards on each continent. There are three for each continent. LD, DD and I take turns saying, “This is a __buffalo__ it lives in __North America___” and putting it on the correct continent. There is a much more recent post about Animals Around the World with...

World Geography 0

World Geography

We spend a fair bit of time learning about geography. A lotof it is incidental because we have a world map hanging on thewall behind the dining room table. LD likes to test us, “whereis South Africa? Where is Brazil?” But we also have a fewgeography activities that show up in the workboxes everycouple of weeks. Pictured below is DD (age 3) doing a continent push pin map.I printed it...

Asia Push Pin Map (in a box) 1

Asia Push Pin Map (in a box)

I don’t like this anywhere near as much as the push pin andfoam that I made (pictured above), but here is the flag andcountry matching activity. It was made with a laminatedmap of Asia taped onto of styrofoam (and placed in the boxso our toddler wouldn’t destroy the styrofoam!) We still pullthis out every few weeks. I think I got the Asia flags (free) from this site:http://www.montessorimaterials.org/geo.htm If you are...

Mini Eraser Activities 0

Mini Eraser Activities

We got a wonderful assortment of mini erasers from OrientalTrading and have been using them for all kinds of math and sorting activities. Below LD did skip counting by 3s (http://filefolderfun.com/FirstGradeMath.html)and grouped three items below each wagon. I asked himhow many items there would be with 4 groups of 3 (12) andso forth. DD did some general counting (pictured below) while ED,the toddler, just put the erasers and numbers into...

Some Arts and Crafts Projects Last Week 0

Some Arts and Crafts Projects Last Week

DD did a couple of different masks while LD made a knight’shelmet out of paper mache. He came across this project in aScooby Doo magazine and begged to do it. “I’ll even get my handsdirty this time!” he told me.  (The first time we did a paper macheproject he didn’t want to get his hands dirty with the flour-glue.) Paper mache recipe:  mix 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water. ...

Cardboard Tank 0

Cardboard Tank

LD made this cardboard tank about a month ago. He wasvery excited by this project so I thought I’d share theinstruction link for others if you’re interested:http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-a-Cardboard-tank/

Art Appreciation 0

Art Appreciation

Most every week Mom puts up a new artist in our weeklycalendar. Below are pictures by Norman Rockwell andAlbert Bierstadt. We’ve also done some of the followingartists:Leonardo DaVinciMichelangeloRembrandtVan Gogh I usually post a self portrait of the artist and we talkbriefly about each picture (what they see, what they likeor don’t like about it) and leave it at that. I notice it doessink in as LD noticed a Van Gogh’s...

Country Box Exchange — China 4

Country Box Exchange — China

We did a “country box” exchange with another familywho lives and homeschools in China. The kids werevery excited to open their box of goodies. We weretruly overwhelmed by their generosity and it madeour study of China fantastic! The Chinese paper cuttings you see below are sointricate; its hard to believe they are done with scissors. In the first picture below you can see the kids are wearingscarves.  Chinese school kids...

A Study of China 1

A Study of China

LD worked very hard to put together a book on China. We have a new binding gadget and have moved awayfrom lapbooking and instead are putting pages togetherwith a comb binder. He did some sand writing (China andthe GreatWall using glue/colored sand). He did somelapbook elements (the capital of China, the flagand thingslike that). He did some Chinese writing(with the answersfolded up on the left). We read some interesting storiesfrom...

Our Homeschool Corner of the Living Room 0

Our Homeschool Corner of the Living Room

These are some older pictures of our homeschooling corner.You can see this is before we put labels on the boxes. Wedon’t have much room in the living room/dining room area,but this is just perfect!! Then pictured below is the hard filebox holder. These pictures were taken several months ago.  Now we usesubject labels on the outside of each drawer (more details below).