Author: Liesl - Homeschool Den
The cicadas are out now and I promised LD that wecould go to the park to hunt for cicadas. I packed a picniclunch and we headed there after Kindergym (for ED). At first the only wildlife we saw were the birds (galahs,middle picture and the crested pigeon, bottom).
Then we saw the dreaded bull ant (these ants are an inch long and inject an acid that REALLY hurts). Poor DD has been bitten by these several times (but not yesterday!) I was even nervous taking these photos because the ants are so aggressive!
But then after our picnic lunch we went down closer to the (now mostly dry) river bed and saw lots of little critters– a little frog, a cicada coming out of its shell and a large 6-inch/15 cm praying mantis. By the way, once the cicada has dried, it is orange and black we just happened on it in the ten minutes or so when it’s still drying and the...
LD spotted another cicada just about to emerge from its shell (this time in our backyard). I didn’t get the camera in time for the initial emergence, but I promised LD to put pictures up. To be honest, I find this as fascinating as the kids!! How amazing nature is!!
LD really enjoys this activity. I’ve talked about itbefore, but it’s worth another mention. It’s adaptedfrom Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math. On the back of a rug, I drew a target (it’s hard tosee the target in the picture but the rug works wellbecause it has little rubber nubby things that helpstop the paper clip from sliding). The center circleis worth 1000, the next ring is 100, the next is...
Honey over at Sunflower Schoolhouse made a very cute princess-themed board game that you can download for free. It is a generic game and you can fill in the cards to suit whatever you are studying. Here’s the link to the Princess Quest Game.
Today we started our big unit on biomes (deserts, forests, tundra, etc.) and animal habitats. I’m so excited about the pin map I made! I bought the picture cards set of biomes from http://teacherdesk.info/ (for $2.00 US). I printed them out along with some of the smaller photos. (See the photo below this post.) I printed out the world biome map and the key from http://www.science-house.org/workshops/buncombe/Mazzei/index.html Then I combined the...
The biomes picture pack came with 30 cards, flow charts and more.
World Biomes Pin Map – Rain Forest, Desert, Savanna, Tundra and More For the map and pieces to this map click the link above!! I was pretty excited with how this turned out! I made this over the Christmas holidays and have been itching to show the kids. What do you think?!! This is the full version, but I’ll be using it piece-meal as we cover a new biome. Again, continue on to this...
————– Here’s what we did today with our forest biome study: 1) We sang the continent song and the kids placed the continents in the world map (the world pin map is at the top right almost out of the picture). 2) We talked about the fact that different places in the world have different temperatures and different climates (ie. different biomes). We talked about our own climate (a desert)...
This week we’re going to make a diaorama on thedeciduous forest and its animal inhabitants. First wemade deciduous trees. The kids used cut up tissue paperand placed the bits onto contact paper. Then we putgreen paper onto the contact paper and cut out a treeshape. We’ll add a tree trunk later. Our other project today was to make coffee groundsquirrels. The kids decided to use colored sand for thesmaller version...
DD and I played a squirrel math grid game today. We took turns rolling the dice and gathering acorns for our squirrels. She also quickly did the oak tree life cycle. Both activities were from Prekinders.com (the acorns were from another game I printed out that we’ll play tomorrow, but if you have real acorns nearby that’d certainly be a better option!)
My son really enjoys spy gear. Making a periscope (whichhe immediately started calling a “spy scope”) was rightup his alley!! Today’s science experiment was very simple and took lessthan 15 minutes. We took a long tubular box, cut a flap onopposite sides and opposite ends of the box, glued a smallmirror to the flap and taped it the flap on the inside of thebox at a 45 degree angle (make...
I wanted the kids to be able to repeat experiments theywere especially interested in. As we’ve done eachexperiment, I’ve written the steps out on index cardsfor LD to follow. After we’ve done the experiment I’veprinted photos of the experiments on card stock andplaced them on a key ring. LD can flip through the stackand choose experiments to repeat (and I have them onfile and easy to access in the coming...