Spring Break

Ah, Spring Break. The week I stay home and hit the books hard, while everyone else and their dog is out crowding up all the fun places. Go to Thanksgiving Point with 2 zillion other people? No thanks, we'll wait until you're all back in public school so we can have the place to ourselves. 

I did get is some really awesome, solid school days over Spring Break. It felt good. Here's one of our art projects. A waterfront scene, done with construction paper and watercolors. The idea was to notice how the buildings would reflect upon the water, so that water is the color of the buildings. Pretty cool. Even Adelia joined in and did really well. 

Lincoln's

Ivan's

Adelia's

Adelia has been really interested in bugs for awhile now. Almost every night when I'm tucking her in, she tells me how when she gets up in the morning she's going to study about bugs for her school work. Sometimes I feel like she gets the shaft when it comes to school, because I spend a lot of time with the boys, and they pick a lot of our subject matter, and Del just sort of tags along. So during Spring break, I decided we'd do a little bit of studying about bugs, because I knew Adelia would like it. 

One thing we talked about was Monarch Butterflies and how the migrate thousands of miles every year, from Canada and North America to forest in Mexico, and aback again. We made butterfly sun-catchers to hang in the window. And watched a Wild Kratts episode on Monarchs. Del was in heaven. :) She's been asking for bug books for bedtime story each night. 

Lincoln has been learning about the Scientific Method at Harmony, and needed to conduct a simple chemical experiment over Spring Break that he could apply the Scientific Method to.

He chose to mix lemon juice and baking soda (which creates carbon dioxide, and replaces oxygen) to put out a candle in cup. He found, and conducted the experiment all by himself, all I did was light the candle and take pictures. :)


We have a Showcase coming up on Plants. For his project, Ivan wants to show how plants roots know how to grow down into the dirt. The answer is gravity. We are trying to sprout 4 different bean seeds, each facing a different direction. We think the beans will sprout and that no matter which way they are turned the roots will go down to the bottom of the container. I'm hoping we get far enough along in the experiment by Showcase time, but I think we may have started a little late. We'll see. But here's the set up:

We're keeping our fingers crossed that they sprout. :) My other kids still haven't come up with what they are going to do for their projects. Hopefully we think of something...we're kind of running out of time to get anything to grow in time.

Lest you think I'm a slave driver, you should know that we also went up to Hooper to play with Gramma Tam for part of Spring Break. And, Aaron had Friday off, and so we decided to make a wall around our front flower beds. We only got one side done. And we still need to put in the drip line and buy plants for that side, but it looks AWESOME! I'm so excited to get it all finished so that our front yard doesn't look quite so redneck.

Big Pumpkin: Writing Summaries and Art Project

Today we got down to business and started our focus on summarizing stories. I found a really cool method online called Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. Which teaches the basic five things you want to look for when you are summarizing a story. I also wanted the kick-off into summarizing to be fun, we made an art project to go along with it. :)

We started off by reading a Halloween book, Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. It's one of my favorites, and it's also super easy to summarize.

After we read the story, I wrote the word "Somebody" up on the white board, and told the kids that when you summarize, the first thing you want to look for is the main character. Who is this story about? That's our "Somebody". So is this case, "Somebody" is the witch.

The next thing I wrote on the board was "Wanted". The "Somebody always wants something.He/she has a goal. What was it? In this story the witch wants to make pumpkin pie.

After that come "But". This is the problem in the story. What is stopping the main character from reaching their goal? What is stopping the witch from making pumpkin pie? In our story the "But" is...The witch wanted to make pumpkin pie "But" the pumpkin was stuck on the vine.

Then we get to "So". We already know the problem, "So" what is the main character going to do about it? How is he/she going to try and solve or resolve the problem? In Big Pumplin it looks like this, "So" the witches friends come over and they all work together to pull the pumpkin off the vine.

Lastly in the "Then" after the problem is solved, then what happens, or what do the characters learn? In our story it's simple, "Then" the witch makes pumpkin pie.

Altogether is looked like this on our board:

The next step is putting it all together into 2 or 3 sentences. I had my boys write theirs on a piece of paper with a pumpkin shape on it.

Lincoln's

Ivan's

Then for fun, we made covers for our writing summaries, using tissue paper and Mod Podge. When everything was dry we cut them out and stapled them to the front of the summaries. Then we hung them up on our closet door to display until Halloween.

I plan on using this outline every day with pictures books, until the kids (Lincoln mainly) get the hang of it, and then we'll work up to a little bit harder books, and then harder, and so on. We probably won't do a fun art project every time though. But I plan on this being our writing curriculum for the next little while.

Homeschool Showcase: Getting to Know You

Today the kids participated in our homeschool group's Homeschool Showcase. Basically each month our group gets together, with a certain theme in mind, to allow the kids to get up in front of each other and present something that they've been working on. In my mind it's the perfect thing, I don't have to teach a class, or do anything extra, but my kids still get the opportunity to practice speaking in front of people, and explaining about a project they've been working on.

This month's theme was Getting to Know You. So, each kid got up and introduced themselves. I loved seeing the variety of creative ways everyone came up with to do this.

For my kids we turned it into an art project. I took our lamp from our nightstand and shined it at the wall, then I had the kids sit in a chair, so that their shadow projected onto the wall, and I traced the silhouette onto a piece of white paper. Then I had each kid tell me some things about themselves, and we looked around on the internet to find a clip-art that could represent that thing. Each kid colored and cut out their clip-arts, and glued them inside the silhouette of their head. Then using water colors, they painted colorful patches onto the remaining white space. Then we cut out their heads and glued them onto a black card stock. I think they turned out awesome.

Adelia: "My name is Adelia Swan. I like my name, Adelia, because it is my favorite name. I am 4 years old. I like to pick flowers for my mom. I like to cut things. I like to play soccer. I love everyone and I am good at making friends. I like worms. I put them in our garden. I know that princesses really exist, because there is one in England. I like to help my mom bake cookies. This year I am in preschool." 

Ivan: "My name is Ivan Swan. I like to build Trio castles. I like learning about scorpions. I like to learn about acting in my Triple Threat class. I also like to ride my bike and go camping. I like to exercise, and my favorite way to exercise is to pump weights. My favorite food is pizza. I like to look at books. I am really good at helping my mom unload the dishwasher, and going outside to check for eggs from our chickens."  

Lincoln: "My name is Lincoln Swan. I like snakes. When I grow up I want to be a scientist. I like to go hiking. I like to draw and build things. My favorite sport is tennis. I like to build robots. Some of my favorite things to do are read books, draw maps, and play the piano." 

The Flight of the Lincoln-Berg

Our history of flight unit has been so incredibly fun! I am continually impressed with our little book and the practical, relevant projects that come out of it. It was well worth the $11 I paid for it. I’d have paid three-times that and still considered it a good deal.

Today the kids and I made dirigibles; also known as blimps. Which, in case you were wondering, are different from hot air balloons because they have power and can be steered. :) The design for these was really basic. Three squares of egg carton plus two helium balloons, plus tape. Done and done. And then the fun began.

My kids spent literally hours sticking things like pennies, ping-pong balls, and little action figures in the gondola to see how much weight the balloons could hold without sinking. And to see which items made the balloons sink the fastest, and so on and so forth.

At one point Linc had his weighted just so; it sank very, very slowly to the ground. But he discovered that it would stay afloat if he blew on it, and that he could steer it all around the family room, landing and taking off again whenever he pleased. So cool!

Ivan and Adelia also had fun with this project. We’ve got The Ivan-Berg and Del’s Zeppelin.

Fun on Friday: Pumpkin Life Cycle and Acrostic Poems

We had a shortened school time on Friday because my mom and my Granny Jan were coming down to visit for the afternoon. Instead of doing Science and History, we did some fun Halloween activities instead. We started by reading the book Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. It's a really cute book about a witch who wants to grow a pumpkin to make pumpkin pie on Halloween. She plants a pumpkin and it grows and grows and it gets so big that she can't pull it off the vine. All the other Halloween creatures come over to help her try to get the pumpkin off the vine. The rhyme is good, and the story is fun.

Then we talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin seed. We painted paper plates orange. And colored these pictures that had the four stages of a pumpkin. We cut out the pictures, and glued them onto our plates, to make pumpkins. When they were dry we hung them in the window of the back door. I think they add nicely to our Halloween decor.

Lastly we made pumpkin acrostic poems. I explained what an acrostic poem was first. Then on a scrap paper we thought up all the words we could think of that might be usable in our poem, that started with the letters in PUMPKIN.Then I wrote two poems as an example. Then I supervised Lincoln and Ivan write their poems. They did them pretty much all by themselves. All I had to do was help them keep things short, and to remind them that they needed to start each line with the correct letter. They put the words together on their own, using our brainstorming scratch paper. Here are our poems. Mine and Adelia's are the two example poems I wrote. And then Lincoln's and Ivan's. I was pleased with how well they did.

I rock at first-grade poetry, ya? ;)

A Few of my Favorite Things

I adore fall. I love the crispness in the air. I love being able to wear my jeans and a light jacket without sweating or freezing. I love leaving the windows open. I love the colors. I love the smells. I love the food. And I love my view. Check out the colors on those mountains! And it's so much better in real life, the picture just doesn't do it justice.

School is still going really well for us. I feel like we've done a good job of finding a groove and working it. We've got enough outside-of-our-house things to do, but not too many. And now that soccer is winding down (one more game to go!), I feel like the set-up of our week is as close to perfect as I could possible plan it to be.

While I'm very happy with everything we're doing school-wise, I find that the two things in the week I look forward to the most are our Art Class on Tuesdays, and our Science Club on Wednesdays.

This week for Art, we made Vincent Van Gogh Sun Flowers. It was fun because even though there were a lot of steps to the project, all the kids did really well at following directions, and everyone's flowers turned out different and awesome.

I really liked that some of the kids chose to put their backgrounds vertically, and others chose horizontally. I also liked that they chose different numbers of sunflowers. I really like the way Ivan staggered the height of his sunflowers. And I really like the way Lincoln's red and yellow mixed a little in places to make some orange. And Adelia's just makes me happy because she had so much fun making it. Originally, I hadn't planned on her doing the art projects with us, because they are above her level; but, she pretty much insists that she gets to participate. So I help her with cutting and such, and let her do the gluing and painting.

I was also impressed with how well most everyone followed the directions to just dab the brush, instead of making long brush strokes while painting. I also thought they filled in the space nicely with their yellow and red. This has probably been my favorite art project so far. I had them hanging on the wall in my school room before the paint was even dry. :)

 Ivan's

 Lincoln's

Adelia's

My other favorite activity is Science Club. It is just so awesome every week. And it's great to be doing fun activities about something besides the ABCs. (Not that there's anything wrong with the ABCs, but I've just done a LOT of lesson plans revolving around them, so it's nice to switch it up a bit.) Today was our last day of mammals, and I was teaching about cows. 

As always, I introduced the topic by reading a book. It's another from my favorite Let's Read and Find Out Science series called Milk From Cow to Carton. It taught us about cows, and how cows eat grass and hay, which they digest using four stomachs! The cows body then turns the chewed up food into energy for itself and milk for a baby cow, or for us. 

We talked about how if a farmer has a few cows, he usually milks them all by hand, twice a day. But if the farmer has a lot of cows, he may milk them using machines. Then the book taught us what happens to the milk after it comes out of the cow. It gets homogenized, which means heated up really quickly to kill all the germs, then the milk is measured for it's butterfat content. To make different kinds of milk, you either leave all the butterfat in the milk (whole milk), or  you take out some of it (2%), or take out all of it (skim). The butterfat that is taken out of the milk is used to make other dairy products like butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. 

When we were done reading the book, we did a couple of fun activities to go with it. First I gave the kids each a pentagon with flaps. Each pentagon had a cow in the middle. Then I gave them a strip of paper with pictures of different dairy products on them. They had to cut out the pictures and glue them on the tabs, then fold the tabs in. This was to show which kinds of foods come from cows' milk. 

We also did a milk taste test. I gave each kid a small cup of three different kinds of milk, whole, 2%, and skim. After they tasted them, we made a graph of which one they liked best. The first-grade class (blue) liked whole milk best, and the Kindergarten/Preschool class (yellow) liked skim milk best. Since there are more kids in the younger class, skim milk was the overall winner. Yuck! :) But, I think it should also be noted, that they tried whole milk first, then 2%, then skim, so I'm wondering with the little kids, if they just picked the most recent one, because that's what they could remember. Either way, we were still able to make a cool graph. 

For our last activity, we tried our hands at milking a cow. I set up a board to run between the two counters. On the board I tied two strings. To each string I tied a latex kitchen glove filled with water that had small holes in the finger tips. (I made the holes by poking through the glove with a push-pin. Sometimes I had to stretch the hole a little bit, but be careful, if you stretch the hole too big the water will come out to quickly, and that finger will be ruined. You want the water to drip out very slowly when the glove is hanging, and to squirt out a little faster when you pull on the fingers. If the water is coming out in a steady stream, that's too much, your "udder" will empty too quickly.) The kids pulled on the fingers, the same way a farmer would pull on a cows teats to get the milk to come out. Some of the kids tried to squeeze the big part of the glove instead of the fingers, when they did that I told them that a real cow would have kicked them if they'd squeezed her like that. :) 

And my last favorite thing for today is the new book I'm reading. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I'm only about 100 pages in, but already I love it. The narrator of the story is Death, which I thought was an interesting choice. And this Death has a beautiful way with words, and a very funny sense of humor. The story is a WWII story, one of my favorite subjects. I don't want to jump the gun, because I still have about 400 pages left, but it seems as though the stars might be aligning for this book to be one of my favorites. I'll let you know how it goes. But in the mean time, here's the movie trailer. Doesn't it look awesome?!

More About Bats

Well, I told you I was going to do some more with bats. I couldn't resist, because this art project was too good (and too easy!) to pass up. I got the idea for it over at Mrs. T's First Grade Class. She has some great stuff.

First I gave each of the kids a black piece of construction paper, and a few bat cut-outs. They decided where they wanted the bats to be, and then I helped tape them in place, using masking tape, so it wouldn't rip the black behind when we pulled the bats off. Then we got out our sponges and our paints and went to town, making sure we sponged all around the edges of the bats. When we were done we pulled the bats off. To finish it off, I made a nice outline around each of the bats with permanent marker.

Then it was time to learn more about bats. Of course I had books ready. You know me. :) We read:

We also watched the Magic School Bus episode on Bats, which does a really good job of explaining echolocation in a way that younger kids can understand. Man, I love Magic School Bus. No wonder my kids are obsessed. :)

After that I had the boys write down three things they knew about bats onto this bats fact sheet that I made, similar to the one Mrs T. used.

Then we took their bat facts, and their bat art project, and glued them to a large piece of orange construction paper. Wha-la! Instant Halloween decorations. A little early I'll admit; but pretty and fallish just the same.

I love how they all turned out so different, even though we were all using the same materials and colors. That's why art is great.