Monthly Archive: February 2010
I made this bear lapbook with/for DD a while back. Since we’re talking about forest animals, it was time to bring it out in the workboxes again. The girls have both had fun with it (even LD has had a couple of goes). It contains a number of different little activities. As you can see from the lapbook cover, DD made her own little pom-pom bear. Then we used the...
LD has been asking (gasp!) to do these math worksheets (number families up to 18; so for the 10 family you’d have 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, etc.): http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/math/number_families/main/worksheets.html Here’s another similar kind of worksheet she calls “tile cards” http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/math/number_families/main/tile_cards.html (these also cover the number families up to 18).
DD’s workbox had this really great matching activity. Ithink it’s from the Teacher Book Bag. DD had to matchthe ingredient to it’s source (butter-cow; flour – wheat). It’s similar to the Where Things Come From activity thatyou can download free at Montessori for Everyone, butthis particular activity has all the basic cookie ingredients(including baking soda, salt, etc.) Since we bake a lot hereat our house, it is a great activity...
It’s been in the back of my mind for ages, but we finallymade butter today. DD poured cream into a plasticcontainer. We added (clean) marbles. It took a lot ofshaking, but it turned out well. Yum! Also part of DD’s workbox was a cute game called“Cooking Cookies” where you have to turn over all theingredients for your cookie, just make sure you don’tget a rotten egg or you have to...
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve brought out the felt board.ED and DD have enjoyed playing with the hearts I madefor them. The flowers and butterflies are just patches that Ihappened to have around in my sewing stuff. We made our own felt board out of two painting canvases;it folds in half for storage and is about 2 feet square.You can check out how I made it here and...
We continued working on the little crafts for our forestdioramas last week. We learned a bit about owls andmade this little craft (using Styrofoam, felt and fabricpaint).
We also learned about foxes this week. Our fox was primarily a sewing craft. We used feltand did a few stitches to form a nose. Then theysewed the head onto the body with a few stitches. They pulled knotted embroidery thread throughto make whiskers. The tail was also sewed on, but we wound up justgluing the legs on (there was only so much sewingDD wanted to do!) The ears and...
This project idea was adapted from Ancient Greece!: 40 Hands-On Activities to Experience This Wondrous Age (Kaleidoscope Kids Books). (affiliate link) We bought some self-hardening clay and looked at various maps to make a map of Greece with its many islands. Obviously Mom had a hand in forming the mainland areas of Greece and Asia Minor (now Turkey). The kids did all of the islands. We’ve been reading Mary Pope...
We added labels to our map of ancient Greece. Then we took turns adding deep blue water and making the Aegean Sea! It was a good lesson on much more than just the geography of ancient Greece. Some of the islands were covered by the water. We talked about the fact that there are mountains under the oceans. We also talked about the fact that when the levels of the...
Last year we did a unit on Ancient Egypt. We really got a lot out of that geography project as well and I thought I’d share it (since we started this blog after that). We shoveled sand into the container, then laid down a aluminium foil river bed (so the water didn’t all wash away). Then we placed fertile soil on the aluminium foil and “flooded it” and watched the...
I love music and it has always been a big part of my life.I play the oboe, guitar and piano and am learning thedulcimer. LD started learning the piano earlier this year and isdoing really well. Still, I wanted the girls to get to sing,dance and enjoy music as well. I set aside two differenttimes to do music activities during the week. One ismore for ED and the other is...
In keeping with our forest theme, we’ve played thisfun game outside the past few days. The object is to grabthe squirrel’s tail while protecting your own. In ourversion we each had a couple of tails to start out with! FOX AND RABBIT GAME: Another good game we played this week was the “Fox andRabbit” Game (from Family Fun website). Two players areblind folded. One is the fox and has to...