Most of the things we've done in the past week or two have been 'intangible'. In other words, not really picture worthy! :) Andrew is BIG into severe weather and maps. So, we've been watching documentaries on severe weather: tornadoes (or tomatoes, as Peter calls them), hurricanes, blizzards, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. We've also been focusing on animals of all the different continents and we've started learning the countries of South America. So far, we've learned about Brazil, Chile and Peru. But Andrew's favorite, by far, is 'Tornado Alley', which includes Texas. He thinks that is the coolest place ever (even though he NEVER wants to go there--his words)! Normally, he has me draw Texas (or other places) so he can decorate with tornadoes and houses, etc. Today, however, I gave him a book called Super Storms which has a map of the US with the hotspots for tornadoes. He discovered which was Texas, and decided to draw it by looking at it!! I am impressed! He did a fantastic job! I believe we have a budding artist! My mom would be proud! :) The best, though, is that he is doing some pretty advanced (for his age) art, along with learning the geography of the US and some weather science! Cool. How many 5 year olds can look at a tornado and tell you, 'That looks like an F4 tornado!'?
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After our exciting Palm Sunday adventures, we decided to learn a little more about birch and willow trees. We learned that the little buds are not leaves, but seeds. We painted pictures of them. Brown stems with paintbrushes, then the pods with fingers, and then, since it was actually snowing outside, we added snow by dipping a brush in white paint and flipping the paint all over the picture. We had a great time using different methods of painting! There is a tradition here in Finland on Palm Sunday to decorate branches of birch/willow trees with feathers and stuff, dress up like witches and wizards, go to people's houses, recite a poem, and get some candy! Sort of like trick or treating. We decorated our sticks and went out and enjoyed a great day of Finnish culture! :) What is the weather like today? We colored 6 different weather types, cut them out, laminated them, and used them for a memory/concentration game. Then I posted it on our calendar wall and we talk about the weather every day! Luckily, the template I used just happened to have a tornado on it, so the boys were happy! We've been learning a bit how rainbows are created. So today, we made a rainbow mobile to illustrate how it's done! First, the rain comes (umbrella), then the sun comes out, and it makes a rainbow! With the rainbows, we only used the 3 primary colors and mixed the lines together to make the rainbows 'pretty'. A fun painting day, and a great way to teach a scientific aspect. My idea was to introduce the boys to murals. Their eyes were so big and round as they watched me throw the roll of paper across the floor and say, "Color!!" It was supposed to be a mural of spring, but it morphed into something different, and that's ok! We have our rainbow, pot of gold and four leafed clovers, flowers, rain showers, trees and grass and bushes... Peter drew 'skiing paths' all across the entire sheet of paper. Andrew was very creative with his section! He drew Santa in the north pole first, then it was off to tornado alley! He started out saying it was Turkey, full of tornadoes, earthquakes and even a meteorite! Then it changed to Texas with "eighty-hundred-million-gazillion" tornadoes. Oh, and Satan lived above tornado alley in a dark house. I loved the creativity of this project. It kept them so busy and happy for hours and they learned about murals--that they follow the taste and inspiration of the person making them! :) I call this a success. Andrew was itching to spell Tornado, so we pulled out the magnetic letters and sounded it out on the fridge. He was so pleased that he could spell tornado! We found an old magnet with the picture ripped off and drew a tornado on it, so now we also have a tornado on our fridge! We used our color combining skills to make green clovers to represent each day of the month of March. Now we're remembering the name of the month, and learning the order of the days of the week and counting all the days. It's great to learn more and less (which day came before the 18th?) and I love the intro to using a calendar. We had some great fun today! We did a science experiment, where we saw what happens when you put some water and oil in a pot, add some flour, salt and cream of tartar, and heat it up while stirring: You get playdough! :) So, we made our own playdough, and while it was cooling, we talked about colors. I pulled out 3 bottles of paint: Blue, Yellow, and Red. I drew six circles on their special painting paper and wrote the names of six of the rainbow colors in the order the boys yelled out (Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple, Blue...which worked out quite well, I think) and asked if they thought we could make all six of those colors with the 3 colors I had on the table. They said No Way. :) So, we attacked Green first. Green wasn't on the table so we hypothesized which of the primary colors would we be able to mix to get green. Peter guessed Red, black, brown, and blue. Andrew guessed correctly and I dropped a drop of yellow and a drop of blue in the middle of the first circle and we stirred the paint together with our paint brushes. The look of surprise and excitement on their faces as they saw green 'magically' appear was so priceless!! We did that with every color and they absolutely loved it! We then took our color creating to a different medium: Playdough and food coloring. We separated the dough into six small balls for each boy, I had them make holes in the middle and we dropped the right colors/combinations in to make all the colors of the rainbow. We squished and squashed the playdough to make the colors appear, then rolled them out into long snakes and made beautiful rainbows! What a fun day with colors! March is always best known for 2 things: Spring, and St. Patrick's Day. I'm a big fan of celebrating holidays, no matter how obscure. It brings a spice to life and makes things interesting! So, we've been talking about St. Patrick's Day and a few of the things that are associated with it: Green, Clovers, pots of gold, rainbows, and Leprechauns. It's been so much fun! We made four leafed clovers by cutting hearts out of paper and stapling/taping/gluing them to a stem. Then, we talked about the meaning of the word 'luck' (since finding a four-leafed clover is considered lucky) and wrote down things that make us feel lucky! We also pretended we were seeds growing (down in a ball as the seed, our legs go up as the roots, then our arms are the leaves, and finally, our head comes up as the flower). We learned the life cycle of a plant and they did some cutting and pasting to put the life cycle in the right order (the template can be found here). Andrew is learning how to use scissors quickly--not an easy feat for a lefty! :) |
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