We watched a lovely documentary about Petra. It talked about how it was made (perhaps), the type and number of people who may have lived there, what it may have been used for, why it was deserted, etc. We were inspired after to build our own Petra! This Petra is complete with tourists, archeologists, angel statues, and treasure!
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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!'? 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! 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. The Spring Equinox is here! And while there is still plenty of snow on the ground, you can tell it's on it's way out (oh, I hope so)! So, to celebrate, we planted some seeds! Hooray for some green! And especially greens we can eat! We planted red and green lettuce, parsley, thyme, dill, basil and spinach! Yum! 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! :) A firefly in the fireworks! The Very Lonely Firefly In keeping with the Eric Carle theme, we bounced from the hungry caterpillar to the lonely firefly. While we were reading it, I honestly didn't have anything in mind as far as a lesson plan, but it sure came easily! As we read, I loved the look of the fireworks in the book, so I found some black paper and some oil pastels, and we made the fireworks scene! I loved all the sound effects the boys made as they drew their own fireworks exploding in the night sky! We talked about the fact that the fireflies come out mostly at night/in the evening and they could be classified as nocturnal (a new word for the littles) and we discussed what other animals would be considered nocturnal (owls, bats, koalas all came up). We talked about how the caterpillar was hungry and the firefly was lonely; then we picked another little critter (a spider) and thought up a problem for it (it lost its' web) and made up a vocal story about our spider and how he searched for his web and what he found along the way. It was a very enjoyable little lesson time! Leap!! Also, since today is Leap Year day, we made a jumping theme! I taught the boys to play Leap Frog (a big hit!) and then we talked about some animals that jump/leap/hop: Frogs, rabbits, kangaroos, grasshoppers were the big ones. We ran around the house and collected books about those animals and read them and did many actions to the books--I certainly got a workout from 'flying' in circles (Grasshopper on the Road), jump-roping 100 times (Days with Frog and Toad), Jumping and Running with kids through seasons (Run, Jump, Whiz and Splash), and looking at all sorts of things in The Eye Book (there's a rabbit). We've leaped through the day and enjoyed pretending to be hopping animals. A very fun way to celebrate Leap Year! Andrew's Amazing Creation! The Very Hungry Caterpillar I found this amazing lesson plan for Eric Carle's 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', so I thought I'd give it a whirl with my boys. It was a hit! They loved all of it! We read the story, did a little quiz, then painted tissue paper just like Mr. Carle does! We cut out different foods from a Good Housekeeping magazine, laminated them, punched holes in it and strung it on a piece of yard as a caterpillar food necklace. When the paint was dry on our tissue paper, we cut out circles to make a hungry caterpillar--and they turned out so great! Andrew loved it! I think the best part of this lesson, aside from creating a super cool painted tissue paper caterpillar, was acting out the life cycle of the butterfly. Why hadn't I thought of this before? We crouched down in a ball (the egg), then we popped out and squirmed on the floor (larva/caterpillar), next we wiggled inside a sleeping bag (cocoon/chrysalis), and then we made our way out of the sleeping bag and flew around the room as butterflies! The boys loved it and they jumped inside their cocoons often throughout the day and turned into beautiful butterflies over and over again. What a lovely way to teach science! And they didn't even know they had learned something awesome! :) (Oh, and if you go to the link for the lesson plan, make sure you click on the link to learn about painting tissue paper! It takes you straight to Eric Carle's website and you can watch him do his amazing creations step by step! Very cool! Ok, so I had to link it here, too. He is just so awesome!) Our Projects from this Unit:
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