First Lost Tooth

My baby lost her first tooth Tuesday. It seems like everyone she knows has already lost teeth. She was always asking new kids she met. I think it worried her because she's 6 and she knows her brother and sister were both 5 when they started losing them.
She's been telling us she has loose teeth since she was 3 and Caleigh lost her first one. She was so happy to finally lose one.

Last picture with all her baby teeth (taken Monday night)

Bird Nests

The kids have been excitedly watching all the bird activity around our house for the last few weeks. A couple weeks ago they watched a bird build a nest on our front porch. Last week they noticed that she was sitting on the nest a lot and must have laid her eggs. To go along with that, they made their own bird nests.

We made a batch of Rice Krispie treats using butter, marshmallows, and Rice Krispies.

I rubbed butter on the kids' hands and they shaped them into nests.

Then they added candy eggs and peeps.

Here is the nest on our front porch. The kids really wanted to know if there were eggs in it and how many. I waited until the mama bird left and then climbed the ladder and held up my camera to snap a picture.

We found this nest in a tree next to our back porch.

Canada Unit Study for the Geography Fair

For anyone who knows us or has been reading my blog for a while, you probably aren't surprised that Canada was chosen for our geography fair project and you probably know who's idea it was. Colin wants to live in Canada, where he imagines he'd be surrounded by hockey and find outdoor ice rinks on every corner. 

Since it was our first geography fair, I thought it would be best if they just did one country together. Colin immediately said Canada, but the girls weren't too thrilled with that idea. They named other countries, but never seemed set on one so I talked them into doing Canada. I figured Colin would do more of the work since he's older and should do something he's interested in.   

We used the Download N Go (DNG) study, Expedition Canada. From this we got to watch lots of videos showing different parts of Canada. We learned about a different animal each day, some places there, inventions, history, popular sports, Canadian cities, geography, and holidays.



Some of the books we read



Caleigh made this beaver, a national symbol of Canada, and this totem pole, which were made by the First Nations peoples.

Lego Creations: Colin made the CN Tower and Caleigh made an inukshuk, both of which we learned about in the DNG study.

In addition to DNG, we also used Homeschool Share's Canada lapbook and a Canada mini lapbook from Fortunately for You for our lapbook. I think this is the first time we've ever done an actual lapbook. We usually just add the mini books to our notebooks, but I wanted something they could display at the fair this time.

We made maple cookies with real maple syrup. You can find the recipe we used here.

Kids at the geography fair. Along the bottom of the table, we taped coloring pages for each of the provinces and territories.The kids spent a lot of time coloring them.

Display board: It was Colin's idea to use black and red. Caleigh came up with using maple leaves under the letters in Canada. On the bottom right is a Mountie paper craft that Molly put together. Also on the board: map of Canada, map of North America, flag, popular sports, major industries, major crops, information about what the word Canada means, languages, holidays, animals, and Levi from Children Just Like Me.

On the right, we brought along some of the inventions from Canada. On the left toward the front of the table is a French Canadian counting book.

In this picture, you can see Colin's hockey helmet, a puck, the Lego CN Tower, and a French/English color words matching game.

I'm so glad we did the geography fair. It was lots of fun showing our display and seeing everyone else's. The girls and I weren't too excited about doing Canada since it doesn't seem as exciting as some other countries, but we did learn a lot of new things and it ended up being a good study for us.

In my previous post, I have some pictures of other projects at the fair and Molly getting a henna tatoo.

Geography Fair

Last week we went to a geography fair for the first time. It was really nice. The kids enjoyed seeing all the displays, talking to people, and trying new foods.

Here is their Canada display. I'll be posting more about it and the unit study we did on Canada.

Molly getting a henna tatoo over at the India display.

A ladybug

Here are a few of the displays I managed to get pictures of.

Our Week: Taken Over by the Geography Fair

I'm not sure where this week went. It just flew by. We didn't get to everything I had planned because we spent lots of time preparing for a geography fair. I had meant to start weeks ago and got books from the library and a display board, but our weeks have been so full that it just didn't happen. I need to work on not passing down my procrastination problem to the kids. So this week we spent time reading lots of books, researching, watching videos, doing a Download N Go study, using Homeschool Share, making a lapbook, decorating a display board, making crafts, and baking cookies. I'll be posting more about the geography fair, the kids' display, and our week with Canada soon. It was our first geography fair and everyone had a great time. Caleigh liked looking at the displays, Molly loved sampling foods, and Colin liked talking to people looking at his display.

In history, we learned about slaves in the New World. We also read more about Hernan Cortes conquering the Aztecs.

For science we read about the Milky Way and other galaxies.

Colin and Molly had basketball practice on Wednesday. Molly just loves her basketball clothes.

I told the kids if they finished most their geography fair project yesterday they could go to the park today. They had everything done yesterday except sticking stuff down to the display board and Colin did that right after breakfast. I was hoping to do the rest of the astronomy I'd planned for the week this afternoon. Once we got to the park though, the weather was so nice, there were lots of boys around Colin's age playing football, and the girls were having fun playing with other kids so we ended up staying longer than planned. They worked hard on their project and did a really great job so I think they deserved some extra play time. Constellations can wait until next week.

Our Week: American Kingdoms and Stars

The Three Rs

Molly had lots of fun with her phonics lessons this week. One day she reviewed all the ways to say /A/. I wrote words on cards and she had to take them and place them on the items they named. Here she is with the ones she placed on herself.

I don't know what's going on with this crazy pose. I have a hard time getting a picture of her without her doing something silly.

Another day she learned that ea can say /E/. She had to read some cards with ea words. Four of them said, "Eat a Treat." When she read those correctly, she got to have a Hershey kiss. She thought that was great, but had to make it out to be even better since Colin was working across the table from her. She kept telling him how good they were.

Colin finished RightStart Level E this week. Now he's reading through Life of Fred: Fractions and doing the bridges until he gets back to where he was before we took a break from it.

History

We spent a little time finishing some projects from our Christopher Columbus unit study. You can see more about that here.

For the rest of the week, we learned about the American kingdoms of the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. I found quite a few books to go with each of them.

The girls used popcorn kernels to learn how the Mayan and Aztecs would grind maize into meal or flour.

Science

The material this week seemed to be the most difficult of our astronomy study. We learned about stars, black holes, supernovas, and light years.

We used a balloon to demonstrate how the stars are moving farther apart from one another because the universe is expanding.

We made an astrometer to measure the brightness of stars. Unfortunately, it's been cloudy so we haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

Art

The lesson was about using photographs to help you see details of the object you're drawing. The kids chose pictures from magazines.

By: Caleigh

By: Colin (of course, it's hockey themed)

By: Molly
Since it may not be clear, that's a deer on the left side.

Everything Else

Colin had hockey games on Sunday and Monday. There hasn't actually been anything else this week. I got sick as soon as we got home from KY and didn't feel well the whole week. I ended up skipping all of our activities. The kids didn't seem to mind and spent their free time skating in the driveway or sitting in front of our dining room window watching some birds build a nest on our front porch. When we moved here a year ago, we discovered a nest with eggs very close to where this one is now and the kids loved watching it until all the birds flew away. They're excited about getting to do it again.

Here is the mama bird in the nest. She's been working hard building it.

Christopher Columbus Unit Study

Did Christopher Columbus really discover America? We spent time debating that question in our house last week. We read two books, Who Discovered America by Valerie Wyatt and Who Really Discovered America by Avery Hart, to help answer that question. The kids weren't really sure who discovered America, but they all thought that Columbus couldn't have discovered a place where people already lived.
Other books we read: A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus by David A. Adler, Christopher Columbus by Stephen Krensky, and Follow the Dream by Peter Sis. Colin also read Meet Christopher Columbus by James T. de Kay.

We did an activity to show how ships could sail off the edge of the world if it were flat.

Molly dropping the weight tied to the ship off the side of the table to show it falling off.

Then Caleigh demonstrated how ships can sail around the world without falling off because it's round.

We made a paper mache globe. We actually started this at the beginning of the school year when we did a unit study on maps, but didn't finish it. I meant to finish it when we studied the earth in astronomy, but I forgot. It seemed to go well with this unit study though. After painting it, Colin labeled the oceans, continents, and some countries.

The kids made ships in a bottle.

We also had jello boat snacks. To make these, I cut an orange in half, scooped out everything making sure not to break the rind, poured in jello, and refigerated it. Once it was set, cut in half again and add the sail.

Using Draw Write Now, they drew Columbus' ships.



Top: Colin
Left: Molly- her ship is pretty small in the top left corner
Right: Caleigh- She drew all 3 ships

Notebook pages
         These mini books came from In the Hands of a Child: Christopher Columbus lapbook.

The kids watched this cartoon and read this poem.