NC Museum of Natural Sciences

Last week we went to the museum to see Raleigh's groundhog. The only other time we had been there was for Bugfest when it was very crowded and I had been meaning to take the kids back, but just hadn't gotten around to it. Luckily, it wasn't too crowded and we had time to look around this time.

Looking for bats

Colin and Caleigh petting snake

Molly letting snake lick her hand

Our Week: Groundhogs, Painting, and a Birthday

It has been a very busy week. I had trouble fitting in school. We did manage to get through a few days of the three Rs, two chapters of history, and a holiday unit study.


Monday we did regular school and learned about the Diaspora and Jewish holidays.

Tuesday Colin got to go ice skating for the first time. Right now he plays roller hockey, but he hopes to move to ice. I've been wanting to take him, but it's hard because I don't know how to skate and the girls don't want to do it alone and fall. My husband was home for the day so he was able to take him. A boy with NHL dreams needs to learn to skate on ice.

While Colin was gone, the girls played some math games. It was Molly's first time playing Go to the Dump, which has been a favorite of both Colin and Caleigh.

In history, we learned about the Mongols conquering China, Genghis Khan, and Kublai Khan.

We spent some time on Wednesday reading about Groundhog Day, groundhogs, and shadows. We did a fun craft, lapbook pages, and had groundhog pancakes. See my previous post for more about what we did and pictures. We also visited the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and got a chance to see the local groundhog come out to make his prediction.

Thursday I had planned to do some things for Chinese New Year, but we only managed to find time for some fortune cookies.

My sister was visiting and we took the kids to a paint your own pottery place.

Colin had a hockey game that evening.


Today is Colin's 11th birthday. We had friends over for a party.

Groundhog Day

We did some fun stuff to celebrate Groundhog Day.

We read books about groundhogs and shadows.

I made groundhog pancakes that I found here.

They were really easy to make and we already had everything except the donut holes. For each, I used:
a pancake with a small hole in the middle
half an apple to go under the pancake and raise it a little
1 donut hole
1 mini marshmallow cut in half for eyes
4 chocolate chips (2 for ears and 2 for eyes)
red M&M for nose
The original directions called for icing to use as glue. My donuts were glazed and everything stuck to them without any icing.


The kids made groundhogs coming out of a hole (cup).

Caleigh's groundhog and his shadow

We went to see our town's groundhog, Sir Walter Wally, make his prediction. Unfortunately, he didn't agree with Punxsutawney Phil and predicts 6 more weeks of winter.

We used Homeschool Share's lapbook for our notebook pages.

History Timeline

I spent a lot of time looking at timeline ideas. This is the first year the girls are doing a history curriculum and I thought it would help them understand better. Colin likes to look at it and see how everything lines up. I saw a lot that were kept in books, but I knew that I would forget if it was on a shelf and not add things to it. I wanted something we could add to as we went along instead of it already being finished. I decided to write the year on clothespins and hang them on a rope. I like the clothespins because they can be moved if needed. The spacing isn't exactly the same between each one. As it gets to times when more is going on, I have them spread apart farther. The space between them is always 100 years.

I had it in one continuous line, but it had to go over the door. The time in history we're studying right now was the part over the door so I decided to move it so the kids could see it better. Now I have 2 lines on one side of the wall. The top is B.C. and the bottom starts A.D. The part on the other side of the wall is still blank because we haven't studied it yet.

I bought these timeline figures, but I've actually been using free ones from the file section of this yahoo group more. I like them because they match up with Story of the World and they're more colorful.

An update on having a School Room

I saw this "Show off your Homeschool" link up party. I love seeing where everyone does school. I thought this would be a good time to give an update about our school room.

I was so excited to have a homeschool room when we moved into this house. We've only had a separate school room one other time and only for a couple months. It was in the basement, but there were some windows so I thought we'd use it. Within days we were dragging books upstairs to the kitchen to do school though. After working to get it all set up and having dh make us a table, I hoped we would actually use this new school room. Now that we're half way through the school year, I'm happy to say we do use that room. I love having a separate place for our school. I'm so glad I don't have to worry about clearing off the kitchen or dining room tables every day. I like that school books mostly stay upstairs and not in piles around the house. I like having a place to display art work and projects. I like that our shelves of books and supplies are in the next room for easy access. I think it works because it's a big open room. The large table gives us space to all work together and spread out books or projects. Having a couch in the room is great because we can do our read aloud books right there. I find that I get less distracted by other things because I'm upstairs away from the kitchen, laundry room, etc.

Although I had plans for some other things to do in the school room, it still looks pretty much the same as it did at the beginning of the school year. The only major change is a desk for the computer and our timeline hanging on the wall.

These pictures are what our main school room looks like today. There are two other rooms off from this one. One is what the kids call the library and the other has Colin's First Lego League table in it (and will hopefully one day be my scrapbook room if I ever get time to organize it).

To see more detailed pictures of this room and pictures of the room next door where we keep books, games, and supplies, go to this post from August.

Our Week: Robin Hood and the Moon

It's been a pretty good week here. We had playdates on two afternoons, but no other outside activities this week. It was nice not having too much going on, especially since next week will be really busy here.

History

We started out the week learning about Richard the Lionhearted. We also read about his brother, John Lackland, and the Magna Carta.
Then we spent the rest of the week on Robin Hood. We used these books.

The kids colored pictures of Robin Hood.

They made caps like Robin Hood's. These are actually Peter Pan hats, but the kids don't care and they were the easiest ones I could find.

Colin made some Lego creations.

On the left is Robin Hood and Little John fighting on the bridge when they first met.
On the right is Robin Hood with his bow. You can't see in the picture, but he has a quiver of arrows on his back.

Colin also did notebook pages, where he included information on the Crusades, medieval jobs, the quarterstaff, the bow and arrow, medicine at the time, and information about Robin Hood.

Science

We continued learning about the moon. The week our focus was on the exploration of the moon. We read books about Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin.

Three Rs

This was one of our best weeks in a while for this area. It's taken us a while to get back into the swing of things since the holiday break.
Colin and Caleigh took diagnostic spelling tests. Both showed improvement from the last test and scored well above their grade levels.

Molly had fun in math playing a handshaking game with her stuffed animals. It was to help her practice partitioning 10.

She's having them shake hands here

 She's also decided that under the table is where she likes doing math worksheets.

Owl Moon

Our Five in a Row book last week was Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. 

Some of the owl books we read

I think Owl Babies was the favorite book of the week for all the kids. We also read many books about the moon (I showed a picture of them in my weekly wrap-up), Crinkleroot's Book of Animal Tracking, and a section of Winnie the Pooh about tracks.


Owl Lunch:

Peanut butter sandwich with sides cut; banana slices and chocolate chips (or raisins) for eyes; almond for beak. Molly insisted she needed pretzels on the bottom for branches.

I ordered owl pellets for the kids to go through.

Bones from the pellet

Attempting to put the bones together to see what it was.

They also spent some time working with a virtual owl pellet.

Paper Plate Owls

Molly said hers is a snowy owl because she didn't want to color it

We made two kinds of owl cookies. When I shaped one of these to show the kids, Colin asked if it was a cat and Caleigh thought it was a bear. So I'm not sure they really look like owls, but the kids had fun decorating them anyway.

For these, I added cocoa powder to some of the cookie dough. I rolled the white dough into a log. Then I rolled out the chocolate. I put the log on top of that and rolled it all together. Then I sliced them and laid 2 of them side by side touching, added an almond nose, and baked. Once they were finished, we added chocolate chip eyes.

We also learned about the moon. Most of our time was spent talking about the phases of the moon. We used Oreo cookies to demonstrate them.

Telling time file folder game with owls.

These are the owls we got to see at a library program we attended on raptors.

Notebook pages:

Colin and Caleigh used all the same lapbook pieces so their pages are pretty much the same.

The other side of the extension I added is still blank. I'll print a picture or two from the week to put there.

These are Molly's pages. She didn't do the language arts stuff except for similes. She liked making sentences for that. One of hers was "The moon is large like Colin's head." Ahh... sibling love.

She did this extra book about owls, where she pasted pictures in for the answers.

For our notebooks, we used lapbook pieces from:
Homeschool Share Owl Moon
Homeschool Share Owl Babies
Homeschool Share Nocturnal Animals
Lapbook Lessons- Owls

They each drew two owls to include on their pages, one from directions in Draw Write Now and the other from Literature Pockets.