Our Week: Astronauts, da Vinci, and the Printing Press

Three Rs

We're very close to finishing up a few things. Colin already finished his regular math book. He's almost finished Life of Fred: Fractions and is working on Challenging Word Problems. Molly is also almost finished with her math book. This week she's done a lot of skip counting and she keeps asking why she has to do it every day. Colin has started on his last spelling list in the Spell to Write and Read book and is just about finished with his grammar program. I can see the end in sight and am just trying to keep us all on track for a little longer.

History

We started the week reading about Gutenberg's invention, the printing press. We read Breaking into Print, Johann Gutenberg and the Amazing Printing Press, and How a Book is Made.

Using directions in the SOTW activity guide, we made potato prints.

We also used broken pieces of spaghetti to make words like a printing press, an idea I saw here. This was good because it also went with our study of Leonardo da Vinci, who we found wrote backward in his notes.

We also learned about Reformation and Counter Reformation. We read some books to learn more about the Catholic faith.

Art/Unit Study

To go along with studying the Renaissance, we learned about Leonardo da Vinci. We read lots of books, did some art activities, and Colin made a lapbook. Read more about that here.

Science

We finished Exploring Creation with Astronomy this week by reading about the International Space Station and how to become a NASA astronaut. We read books about astronauts, what it's like to work in space, and living in a space shuttle. The kids were fascinated about how they just float around, how they have to eat, and how they go to the bathroom. I got them some space food to try. They all really liked the ice creams. Molly didn't like the strawberries, but the other two did.

Everything Else

Molly lost tooth #2 last night.

The eggs in the nest on our front porch hatched this week. The picture isn't very good. They just look like fuzzy balls right now.

 

Today we're going on a field trip.

Leonardo da Vinci

In history, we started learning about the Renaissance last week. We haven't gotten to art this year as much as I'd have liked so this week we studied Leonardo da Vinci.
We read a lot of books. Here are some of the them:
Leonardo's Horse
Who Stole Mona Lisa?
Katie and the Mona Lisa
Monday with a Mad Genius
Uh-Oh, Leonardo
Leonardo and the Flying Boy
Da Vinci by Mike Venezia
Leonardo da Vinci by Diane Stanley

One of the suggestions in Discovering Great Artists is to draw and write notes for inventions like Leonardo did.
Colin's was hard to see in a picture. He had a breakfast maker that would make a bowl of cereal with milk and some bacon for you. Another of his ideas was spring shoes and he drew all the different parts.

These are the girls' invention drawings.
The top is Molly's. It's a flying car, a flying bed, and wings so people can fly. We'd just read about da Vinci's flying machine.
The bottom is Caleigh's. It's a monorail to take you into outer space.

Caleigh found a box to make her space monorail.

This is from the inside, where she drew pictures of planets. She poked holes in the top part so light could come through and be like stars shining.

 

The kids made horses from clay like Leonardo would have before making his statue.

Front to back: Colin, Caleigh, Molly

Colin's notebook pages with mini-books from here.

Easter Day

Caleigh made these bunnies for us. She's so creative.

The one on the left is made from packing peanuts.
For the one on the right, she folded paper for each part and stuffed it with the peanuts.

 

Egg Hunt

Caleigh decided her strategy would be to run

The Easter bunny came

Colin

Molly

Caleigh

Easter morning

Colin and his new goalie helmet

Molly with her new bike and bunny helmet

Caleigh with her new skates and cat helmet

Fun Easter Activities

Cupcakes we made

Decorating cookies

Coloring Easter eggs

Fun Easter Lunches

Kids' lunch today

Bunny sandwich cut with cookie cutter, chocolate chip eyes, jellybean nose, carrot whiskers, strawberry cut for mouth

Annie's bunny graham crackers in Easter themed cupcake liner

Applesauce in silicone bunny cupcake holder

Egg shaped sugar cookie with jellybeans

I made this lunch yesterday and it's very similar, but I didn't like the bunny too much so I tried again with a different shape.

Bunny sandwich cut with cookie cutter, marshmallow eye
Annie's cheddar bunnies in Easter themed cupcake liner
Strawberries in silicone cupcake holder
Marshmallow bunnies
Carrots

First Goal

Colin usually plays goalie, but this session there are two goalies on his team. They decided to take turns so he's getting a chance to try new postitions. In Wednesday's game, he scored his first goal and I just happened to catch it all on my camera.


He's in blue taking the shot.

You can see the puck at the top of the net.

It's in!

Excited #51

Our Week: Constellations, Beginning the Renaissance, and Michelangelo

The kids keep watching the nest on our front porch in anticipation of the babies hatching. We also found a nest in a tree next to our back porch with some beautiful eggs in it. I let the kids make their own bird nest from Rice Krispie treats. You can see pictures of the bird nests (the real ones and the edible ones) in this post.

History

It's probably only when your kindergartner is homeschooled that your dinner conversation includes your 6 year old telling Dad that she learned about a man who kept marrying different women to try to have a son and then he even had two of their heads cut off. Yes, we learned about Henry VIII.

We also learned about Martin Luther and the Ninety-five Theses.

We also finally made it to the Renaissance, which we learned was a time when people began relearning things that had been forgotten and making new discoveries. We found out that art began to look more realistic and studied Michelangelo. We read Michelangelo by Diane Stanley and Michelangelo by Mike Venezia. I taped paper to the bottom of tables to allow the kids to lie down and paint, an idea from Discovering Great Artists to represent Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Caleigh's bunny

Colin's bunny with eggs



Molly's- big egg at the bottom, grass, eggs, rainbow, some people at the top



Science

We read all about constellations. We made a constellation planetarium by punching holes in a shoe box in the pattern of the big dipper and shining a flashlight from the other side to show it on the wall, but I wasn't able to get a good picture of it.  We made some constellations on paper by drawing them and putting glitter glue on the places where the stars are, an idea I found here.

We also read about some events that led to space travel, the first rockets in space, the Space Race between Russia and U.S., and the many great accomplishments of the 1960s.

Everything Else

 

Molly was very excited to lose her first tooth this week.

 

 

 

 

Colin scored his first goal in hockey and I was lucky enough to catch it with my camera. See more including his celebration in this post.

 

 

 

 

And just because she looks so pretty in this picture, here's Caleigh.

 

I love close-ups where you can see the freckles she swears she doesn't have.

 

We spent today on Easter activities. The kids made handprint bunnies, painted ceramic eggs, read lots of Easter books, and had an Easter themed lunch. Tonight we're watching a couple of movies and making some Easter cookies.