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On this day we read about the Moon and did the lapbook components to add to our science notebook. What’s perfect about these lapbooks for us right now is the writing is not overwhelming and reinforces the main points we’ve gone over. We used the Moon — Speedy Lapbook by Homeschool Bits (which was quite inexpensive). Moon Craters: Our activity that day was to talk about why the surface of...
The moon is very far away (225,622 miles to 252,088 miles depending on its position in its elliptical orbit around the Earth). NASA had to be very careful about the calculations they made to send someone to the moon especially since the moon is a moving target. In this activity, the kids are trying to hit the moon (a nut suspended on a string) that is swinging back and forth....
Since we are taking a couple of weeks off, I have some posts scheduled to post automatically. I’ll be sharing more pictures of our astronomy unit on Wednesday and then over the course of the next week or so. Today, though I wanted to come on and wish you all Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year. Each evening at dinner, our family takes a few moments in silence...
This is by far my favorite craft we did this year! You glue toothpicks onto a star (cut out from cardboard or poster board). Then you spray paint it with gold paint and glue a toilet-paper roll on the back. Easy and quite beautiful! DD loved the cardinal art lesson from Art Projects for Kids. Below the kids made a few ornaments for the tree this year: little reindeers, a...
We seem to talk about the planets about once a year, don’t we? This time we did a little activity that showed the four inner, rocky planets, the asteroid belt and the four outer planets, the gas giants. In this picture you can see that the asteroid belt has two layers as well! We did the inner and out planets speedy lapbook by homeschool bits (25cents) — and even ED...
The kids have been begging for some hands-on science experiments. I have a bigger unit planned, but since December and January will be a bit broken up as far as our schooling goes, I decided to delve into a short unit with lots of experiments based on one of Janice VanCleave’s books (202 Oozing, Bubbling, Dripping, Bouncing, Experiments) and lots of notebook/lapbook pages from Homeschool Bits. Here’s some of what...
I feel like I haven’t written a long post about ED’s preschool work in forever. That’s because she’s been such an integral part of all our latest activities. She did all the owl crafts in our forest unit, did the dissection of the owl pellet. She takes notes and writes out her letters when the kids are taking notes on their science activities. She gets her own lapbook pages and...
Often while I’m reading aloud (in this case we’re still reading Little House in the Big Woods) I have the kids working on other things. A few days ago I had them cut out the pieces of a quick owl lapbook (All Owls, a 50cent lapbook by homeschool bits). It had great tidbits of information, reinforcing all we had read last week. They put it together and were so excited...
Find the missing addend activity: Do you ever get attitude when you do certain subjects with your kids?? For some reason, LD has been reluctant to do math from one of his books. Playing games has turned that attitude around (for the time being) and he’s really done some great math work in the past couple of weeks. (We start with games like our beloved Speed! Multiplication Game, the division...
I run two little music classes (for free) for our friends. We try to meet once a week (though illness, holidays, and travels sometimes gets in the way of that!!) For our music class last Friday we played a cute game that was a huge hit. Two parents made a bridge with their hands. The kids stood in a line and went under the bridge, circling back and going under...
DD just finished up a lesson on plurals in her spelling program (we use All About Spelling which we love, love, love!). I saw this game over at First Grade and Fabulous which has the kids decide whether to add an -s or an -es. We played over and over. It was absolutely perfect timing for us, plus it’s really cute! Thank you so much, Deanne!
As I mentioned yesterday, we did a lot of reading about owls to lead into the awesome science study on owls! We talked about the forest food chain (who eats whom) and then I asked them what owls ate. Owls eat mice, voles, snakes and other small animals. They swallow their prey whole and about eight hours later spit out the parts they can’t digest in a pellet of fur...
We have had so much fun with this forest unit so far. We’ve done a ton of crafts and coloring. The kids colored in these cute owl pages (which are no longer available – http://katibura.xyz/printable/printable-coloring-pages-for-adults-owls). The kids did a simple fall craft we got at oriental trading: All the kids have been doing the forest animal sorts and we talked once again about vertebrate and invertebrate animals. The kids sorted...
Since LD and I have been playing his division games daily, DD wanted her own board as well. I made one up for her last night so she can work on her sums to 16, 17, 18 and 19. (ie. 8+8, 9+10 and so forth). If you are interested the addition games and cards are found here.
