High as a Kite

As part of our studies on Ben Franklin the inventor, we decorated and put together a kite. This simple kite was purchased at the moving beyond the page website as part of their Ben Franklin unit study. The instructions were fairly clear and easy to follow.

The only real difficulty was trying to give the kite more string when it finally caught a little wind. The rectangular cardboard wound with very thin string was just too difficult for young hands to manipulate while simultaneously trying to get the kite airborne. But we sure had a lot of fun in the process.

We were lucky enough to catch a break between downpours long enough to get outside and test our beautiful kite. Luckily we live in a pretty quiet cul-de-sac, so I was comfortable with the kids running across and in the street to attempt a lift off.

Fortunately, nobody snapped a pic of me and my 24-week belly running down the street with the kite.  The good news is that I actually had it up in the air, if only for a brief time. 

Decorating the kite before assembly

I'm sure the hand-held fan was instrumental in getting the kite up

Oh, if only we could have let out the string a bit. This was a very near success!

Preschooler preferred to watch our antics from secret hideout.

Spooky mystery hand....reaching for the innocent princess. OH MY.

Pumpkin Farm

I love this time of year.   One thing that we all look forward to each year is a trip to our favorite local pumpkin patch!

We skipped a few of our favorite activities, like shooting the corn gun (they were out of corn, if you can believe it!!) and riding the cow train.  But this year we let the older girls try out the corn maze and of course we picked up a few treats from the country store while we were there.  They always manage to squeeze us for a few dollars we hadn't planned to spend.  :)  But we love it.  It's become a family tradition.

Riding the wagon out to the pumpkin patch

We tell the kids they can pick any pumpkin they want as long as they can get it in the wheel barrow with out help.

corn kids

Sometimes the funnest things are free! It turned out to be a very warm afternoon

Special delivery!

Brazilian Hot Dogs

Did you know that in Brazil (at least in Sao Paulo) hot dogs are served with some very unique toppings?  It's true.

If you were to go buy a hotdog from a street vendor,  he would automatically put  TWO dogs in your bun.  Then, in addition to your normal condiments of ketchup, mustard, and relish, you could also choose mashed potatoes, corn, and those pik-nik  string potato chip things.  Yes!

When I lived in Brazil the vendors were all very shocked when I insisted on just one dog instead of two (they're the same price).  But I did learn to love my high-carb dogs with mashed potatoes and chips on top.  Yum.


So today I introduced my kids to this gourmet delicacy.  Let's just say it was a big hit!

Preschool Lesson: Letter A

I'm sure our preschool classes are starting much later than most. And our class is very small: Just two sweet little three-year-olds.  And we only meet twice a month.  So, yes, this is a very low key, low stress endeavor.  That's exactly how I like it!  I figure these girls have two years of preschool ahead of them. We can afford to take it slow.

Anyway, today was A.  So here's what we did:

We started with a story.



Then we peeled our apples and put them on to simmer.

While the apples simmered. We read another story:
 

Then we made some alligators to go along with our story.

If you're familiar with the Montessori method, you may know about sound drawers.  It's been a while since I've had a preschooler, so it was fun to pull out the sound drawers and talk about things that start with A: apple, ant, astronaut.

We traced letter A (big and small made from sandpaper) with our fingers. And then we tried writing it in the salt box.

We made some As from playdough too.

By then our apples were ready to smash. So that's what we did!!

smooshing

Stirring in the sugar and cinnamon

Enjoying sweet success

After 15 minutes of  play time, class was dismissed! So much fun.

Art Lesson: Spooky Mono-prints

We're using Harmony Fine Arts again this year (third grade) and this week's lesson included a bit about Durer.  We looked at some of his wood carving prints, and then tried our hand at making some prints ourselves.

I loved how simple and fun this project was. And the kids got a lot of satisfaction from the process.  There was a definite learning curve.  Using plenty of ink and pressing firmly on your paper were key to our eventual successes.

We taped wax paper to the table where we spread the ink with a brayer.  We found that the best tools for creating your picture were very sharp pencils (for small detail), the end of a craft stick, or a plastic spoon.  Using an eraser didn't work well for us.

I got our supplies online at Amazon.  The ink is water soluble and easy to clean up. 

Using the brayer to spread the ink

Placing the paper over your image

It's October so we went with a spooky theme.  But obviously you could do what ever you like!

Have fun with this.  We sure did!

Let's Invent!

I love our science class this year.  We are studying the history of inventions and some famous inventors. This involves covering some basic physics along the way, especially simple machines.  I'm excited. It's not something I know a lot about, so I look forward to learning along side the kids.

To compliment our studies we have been reading


I like it so far.  To help make our reading more interesting, I bought a Lit. unit guide to go along with it.  You can check it out here.  I also bought the little kite kit that goes along with it. I'm sure you'll see our post about that in the future.

The lit guide is a good one if you're focus is on the literary value of this book.  But unfortunately, it's not so great as a science companion.  However, I've managed to pull a few activities out of the lit guide that correspond nicely with our class.

For example, today we did an activity on inventing.  I pulled out a big 5 gallon bucket and filled it with random objects from the garage.

I asked the kids to work as a group to use at least two of the objects to create something new! The new item needed to have a name, and it needed to have a purpose.  Well, because my kids ALWAYS get along with each other, they quickly figured out that they'd rather do their own thing and make their own inventions.  So much for group effort.

Their inventions were somewhat imaginative, to say the least. (They weren't practical in other words.) But I could see the creative juices flowing and that was worth something.

Here's what they came up with:

 This is a model roasting stove.  I think.    I can't really explain to you how it's supposed to work.  But the inventor could explain it to you in great, great detail.

 This is a device for spreading grass seed.  The seed is dispensed via the holes in the "flipper"  as you scoot along the yard.  Many other uses for this invention were also note worthy.

This inventor didn't have a name or a purpose for his creation.  But it was quite a work of art and he enjoyed the process.

Story of the World Vol. 3 Chapter 1

So, we've almost finished our first whole month of the school year. The kids are very glad to be back in a routine, surprisingly! And they especially are glad to be back to their beloved history lessons. They really do love using this curriculum. 

We're scheduled to have our first History Club review session tomorrow, but since most of the kids in the class have colds, we're trying to reschedule.  So for now I'll just post a fun activity we did as a family while studying the first chapter together.

We learned about the Spanish raid of precious metals in the Americas.  They exploited the natives to work in their mines. We explored the concept of mines and mine shafts and tried our hand at building a flour mine shaft. 

We dug tunnels to the bottom of a bucket of flour trying to discover the 3 plastic coins I had buried there.  It was tough to keep the flour from collapsing on itself.

So we built some shafts using craft sticks, paper and tape. We had several prototypes.  You'll see one of them pictured below.  Mostly we just had fun digging in the flour!

The not so fun part?  Finding plastic coins in my pizza dough mix a few days later!!

9/11 Memorial at Our House

Every year in the past, I've always felt like I wasn't doing my part to remember this important day in history.  So this year, I decided to be proactive.  I organized  a small 9/11 memorial with a few other homeschooling families so we could teach our kids what this day is all about.  None of us have children old enough to remember what happened on that day.  So as one of my friends put it, we're making sure that the next generation doesn't forget.  

We began with a prayer and a pledge.  Then the other moms and I took turns telling the kids what we were doing on that day when we heard the news of the attacks.  I knew I was going to cry. And I did!  I will say that I felt very supported by the other moms as I listened to their experiences. It's the first time that I've actually been able to share stories about 9/11 with other adults and it was healing for me to hear that their emotions and experiences were not so different from mine.

We moved to the couch to watch a  5 minute video on Youtube. Of course, I cried all through that as well.   Here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPHnadJ-0h

1. 

   
   

  I hope the point came across that even though it was a horrific event, a lot of good came from it. I think our humanity was strengthened.  We felt united.  I can't think of a time before or after (in my lifetime) when the country was more closely knit than on that day and the days shortly after. 

Then we dug into our 9/11 lapbook. I used the one from  In the Hands of the Child. We only had a total of 2 hours, so I had done a LOT of legwork ahead of time to get the lapbooks all folded, and all the components cut out and ready to be glued into the books.  I had also assigned 5 of the older kids topics to research and report on to the group so that I wouldn't have to do all the talking.  

Of course, we didn't have time to do it all. I had already picked out the most important points I wanted to cover, and even then we didn't get to all of it.  It was time consuming for the younger kids to write down the information on their various entries. To facilitate things more, I had used a white board at the front of the room to take notes as the kids gave their presentations.  These notes were then copied by the kids into their lapbooks so they wouldn't have to spend much time asking, "What do I write?"  or "How do I spell..."

Since I was busy teaching, I tasked my 10yo with being photographer of the day.  She did a fair job!  Here's another shot she took: 

And below you can see she took a picture of her lapbook as it was coming together. :)

I was so impressed with our 3 little girls that kept themselves very busy and quiet with puzzles, doll houses, kitchens and playdough!

My own little one became so tuckered out that she curled up with a blanket and took a nap behind the droning fan.  It was a very warm day here!

By attending the 9/11 memorial and doing the lapbook, the kids should be able to earn their Frontier Girls/Quest club badge for this event, which may in turn help them remember this day even more.  

I felt like I didn't really get  a chance to fully impress the significance of this day on their little minds. So much I wanted to say.  But then there's always next year  I suppose.  It becomes increasingly apparent to me that teaching the next generation to remember and conserve values and important events is a very daunting task. Over time, there are more and more important things to remember!  And I wonder how our war veterans and historic patriots feel when they see younger generations trampling on memories, events, and causes that are so dearly significant to them.   Do they feel their efforts were in vane? Lives lost for no cause when history does not perpetuate their memory in honor?  Maybe so.  But not if I can help it.

Our Last History Club: Story of the World Vol. 2 Chaps 40, 41, and 42

Hard to believe, but things are starting to wind down around here!  We finished up our history class and had our very last history club for the year last Tuesday.

I confess, that this time of year I have spring fever pretty bad.  It's just as hard for me (if not harder) to concentrate on school as it is for the kids.  Sometimes it's just grit-your-teeth-and-get-it-done when I'd really rather be putzing in the garden or laying on the deck catching fleeting bursts of sun rays.

But we're hanging tough these last few weeks of school.

And thank goodness for fun things like history club to break things up and give us some comic relief.

As usual, I didn't get pics of everything we did.  Like the Sir Walter Raleigh quote that we discussed and colored.  It gave us a chance to talk about the importance of studying history and why we bother to take time to do this class.

We also talked about the Canadian colonies among the Micmac Indians.  We made fish flakes from popsicle sticks.  We drew fish on our popsicle sticks, mixed them up, and then asked a partner to put the sticks back in order to form the picture again.  Like a puzzle.

The Micmac Indians lived in wigwams (which looked an awful lot like tee-pees) so the kids got a chance to figure out how to make a wigwam together using brooms and a blanket.

It was tricky at first!!

Success!

We talked about how the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English Navy.  When the English received news that the Armada was coming up the channel, the Brittish navy officers were in the middle of a game of lawn bowling.  They calmly finished their game before heading out to conquer the Spanish. 

So here's our little indoor version of Lawn Bowling.  The tennis balls each have a unique combination of colored rubber bands on them to distinguish them from the others.  The objective is to get your ball as close to the marble as possible.  The white board in the back simply had a list of participants and what their ball was marked with. It also helped us keep track of who's turn it was.

Then we folded paper boats, which turned out to be harder than I thought it would be.  Eventually every one ended up with a paper boat.  My kids remembered one of our history club activities from last year when we held a Viking funeral in our back yard (that means we burned a mini boat with a fake dead guy on it as we pushed him out to sea).  And they wanted a repeat experience.  So I agreed to let them burn their boats in the turtle pool again.  But it was such a windy day and the boats got wet so quickly that none of them really burned enough to give us a good show. 

After some free time the kids came in for a snack.  yeah, I only shop every 2 weeks and I was getting low on my rations,  so the kids got cantaloupe, nachos, and popcorn.  Mmm...good job rounding out that meal mom!  And the special treat was orange juice...something that I RARELY let my kids have.  We normally stick to water or milk.

While the kids munch we talked about some of our favorite history club activities and memories from the past year together.  It was a great review of our good times and fun lessons. 

I'm really not sure what we'll do for history this fall.  Honestly, my brain is too fried to think about it right now.  A friend said she had not heard great things about STOW 3.  I haven't check it out yet, but if anyone reading this has a review to share about STOW 3, I'd love to hear it.  But I'm sure I'll be checking out other options too.  I think I need a break from this format.  We'll see.  Come fall I always have renewed strength and energy.