{FIAR} Mrs. Katz and Tush

 

 

Paper Driedel we printed and assembled from enchanted learning. 

 

 

We made a paper menorah and used the center candle to light a new candle each day we studied Judaism.

 

 

We used to be part of a yahoo group called flat travelers, it was like a Flat Stanley project. We had sent our polar bear Louie to Israel and while there he stayed with a Jewish family and celebrated Hanukkah. It was fun to go back through and read all he did while staying with his host family.

 

 Some fiction and non fiction books we read to go along with Mrs. Katz and Tush.

 We watched this fun DVD,now the kids want a kitten! Robin then drew Tush and her 4 babies.

Some fun fiction books about cats. Color kittens was a fun one for  Duck and Owl. We painted after reading this book and worked on color mixing in our egg cartons, then added some more painted papers to our pile for future art crafts.

We made a Cheesy Potato Kugel

We Celebrated Sukkot!

The kids decorating the baby gate that will be the roof of the Sukkot with paper fruit.

Playing Stack the States on the Ipad in the Sukkot hut, who doesn't love hanging out it a fort//hut?

Robin made signs for our pets to hang up on a telephone pole if they were ever lost like Tush was in the story.I didn't get a picture of them because when I tried to look for them they disappeared and were nowhere to be found!

We spent quite a bit of time going through Jewish holidays. We really felt like we related to this book. We had a Manx cat ( they have no tails) for many years before she died. Out neighbor came from Poland  many years ago and speaks very little English. And of course we just read about slavery so this tied in well. Tomorrow we are going through a house that used to be part of the underground railroad and see were they hid the slaves in the basement.

This was one of the more difficult FIAR stories  we have done due to all the confusing words and Jewish holidays but we all learned quite a bit. We actually rowed this book for 2 weeks instead of 1 partly because we had so many field trips interrupting our day, and partly because I really wanted to go deeper about Jewish holidays.

Non-Traditional Learning week.

It's been one of those weeks that were so busy I felt like we spent our days in the car. We had back to back field trips and events each day of this week that I am just so tired, and a bit behind in my weekly goals. Here a just a few of the things we did this week I am to tired to post it all!

What we were up to this week.

Live animal Sketching at the zoo with our homeschool friends. All the kids came prepared with a lot of interesting facts on reef sharks, I even learned a lot of new facts.

I love chipmunks, they are so cute and the zoo always has them running around. We found this little guy (or girl) running around in the bathroom, lost in the giant labyrinth of toilets, sinks and stalls  panicked by all the people. The bathroom has an open door so I am assuming that this poor chipmunk found its way out after we all left the bathroom.

 

We went back in time 150 years to  historical village that I haven't visited since grade school. We had so much fun.Here the kids are pictured with Mark the retired racing horse who now pulls the buggy around the village. My kids were enjoying themselves so much that while we were they they were already asking when we could go back. Hopefully we will plan another trip back this fall.

We spent the day at the water park, My dad and Falcon were enjoying the large hot tub.

The Red and White Kings of Egypt were battling it out to see who would take both crowns and rule Upper and Lower Egypt. - Using Story of the World for History.

 

 

We read : Build It!: Structures, Systems and You and have been using books in this series for easy science lessons for my little ones.

 Then we got busy building structures, our first was a cracker house with cream cheese as glue to hold it together.

 Next we built spaghetti stick/ marshmallow structures and gumdrop/ toothpick structures

 

Testing how our structure hold up to weight. This structure never collapsed but the tower would tip over.

This structure would only hold 1 CD.

Homeschool Mothers Journal

 

In our homeschool this week

With my little ones we worked on the Five on  a Row Story "Wee Gillis" you can read about what we did here.

 

We went on a tour through a candy factory with our homeschool group. That was a lot of fun!

 

We also started our Animal Adventures monthly zoo sketching event. I started it last year and wasn't very organized but this year I am much more organized with the event. I have already planned out all the animals we will be doing sketch's of all year.

Our 3 ring zoo folders and matching pencil cases. The kids used fabric markers to add names and decorate their pencil bags and decorated the outside of their folders with zoo animals. What we do is bring clipboards and printer paper to the zoo then when we come home we use a 3 hole puncher and add it to their folder.

Falcon's is on the top right Robin's is at the bottom. The little boys didn't really understand the idea of sketching so when we came home I  printed out some pages for them to color. I asked them to remember what the elephant looked like and color it the right color. Then I asked them to add some things to the picture that they saw the elephants doing. They each drew some hay that the elephants were walking on and eating. I think I will bring printables of the animals for the little boys and try and encourage coloring it lifelike colors and possibly adding other items they see from the animals environment.

 

 

I was unable to get action shots of all this kids sketching because Falcon left the camera in the car. All the children cam prepared with an interesting fact to share about the subject we were sketching. Robins fact was that elephants have over 100,000 muscles in their trunks. Someone else shared the fact that elephants can abort their own fetuses up to 1 month before delivery.

 

Game Time

Coffee and Uno anyone?

One morning while enjoying my Starbucks iced Capp that my wonderful husband brought home for me. My children asked to play Uno, so at 7:30 in the morning I sat on the floor with my kids and played Spongbob Uno.

 

Another game we played this week was Isolation, it is  a real fun 2 player strategy game, you can read about it here on board Game Geek,.speaking of Board Games as a  fellow homeschool mom/dad reading this you should know of this awesome website. You can look up any game and find out  all about it by hard core gamers that like a challenge not these silly little chance type games that teach children no critical thinking and strategy skills.I LOVE LOVE LOVE this website. It has saved me a ton of money by reading reviews

 

 

I Am reading

I have FINALLY finished reading through the 50 Shades series. It was okay not as good as I expected, but I did expect more story and less.....ah em... other stuff.

I am now reading

It's a fantasy based teen novel that I picked up at the grocery store one night. So far it's pretty good.

 

I’m cooking

Lots of Oatmeal and oatmeal based foods to go along with the Five In a Row book Wee Gillis that we were rowing this week.

 

Fun crime scene photo to share.

Look at all the dead bodies in my driveway. The kids have been having fun doing chalk outlines in our driveway lately. I told Falcon that they used to do chalk outlines of people when they died to try and solve homicides. He wanted to know why and how it helped so he went inside to google it. All he came back with was that they do not do chalk outlines anymore because it would contaminate the scene. So they take pictures now.

 

FIAR - Wee Gillis

We worked on the story Wee Gillis from Five in A Row Vol.2 I didn't think I would like this book but I actually had so much fun with it we rowed it for 2 weeks instead of just 1. We had so many extension activities to go with it and just not enough time in each day so we just kept going. By the end of our 2 weeks of rowing robin was reading the story to me! Even after 2 weeks there were a lot of activities that i did not get to that I had planned. I wanted to do a whole lesson on kilt's and do more with the little boys on sheep.  It's funny that sometimes the FIAR books I think I will dislike the most I end up really enjoying and the books I think I will love I end up not caring for!

 

 

 

 

 Our Scottish castle towers, these were so fun to make and the kids just LOVE them. I think we will be making more soon. We did have problems with the ramparts breaking off easily during the drying process. The castle tower idea came from this book, it is a great book full of really neat art projects.

 Robin's tower.

Action shot of Owl using a toilet paper tube to make brick impressions instead of Lego's.

 Finding Scotland.

 We watched Cities of the Underworld the first episode was all about Scotland and how the city was built with all these neat hidden streets and passageways that  are still currently under most of Scotland. Falcon watched the rest of the episodes throughout the week with me, they were very interesting.We also read about Edinburgh Castle.

 Robin is watching a short play where 2 men are playing bagpipes to win the girls attention, she really enjoyed that and watched it several times.

We studied traditional clothing in Scotland and Robin drew a few of her own designs in her daily journal.

Doing some worksheets on lungs and filling up a balloon to demonstrate how lungs expand and fill with air when we breathe. When Papabird came home from work Robin was so excited to get her pink balloon and give him a demonstration on how lungs work with a very detailed explanation.

In the van all week we have been watching Mist : Sheep Dog Tales there are about 6 or so DVD's out, we watched the 4 our library had. The kids really enjoyed watching them and learning all about sheep herding and life on a farm through a sheep dog's perspective. In one of the videos they talk about Scotland and being in the Highlands and Lowlands. Robin was excited to hear that because that's what Wee Gillis was about.

We also watched  this movie. It had lots of beautiful scenery of Scotland's  highlands and lowlands.

FIAR- Three Names

We enjoyed some lemonade and gluten free cookies just like they did in the story.
We made coconut macroons and chocolate chip cookies from Elana's Pantry.

I was having a hard time explaining to Robin how an outhouse worked so I figured why not build one. So we took our studies outside (another reason I LOVE homeschooling) We dug a hole (during this time we talked about root cellars, as well and felt how cold the earth was when we got deeper and deeper into the soil.) then placed a toilet paper tube down into the dirt just leaving a bit out of the soil.

 We packed the soil all around it for stability.

 Next we used a piece of cardboard to place over the hole we made so you could sit down on it. ( well if you were that little) Robin's Barbie doll  used this restroom later in the afternoon. Barbie didn't want picture of that posted online though!

Finally we cut a door in a orange juice container and cut the bottom off as well to place over the top of the toilet.

Now she totally understand how an outhouse works! It was a very quick and crude example of how an outhouse works but pretty clever ( if I do say so myself) to whip up in 5 minutes using stuff I had sitting in our craft box.

Our black lab keeping Robin company near what she uses as a desk when we do school work.

He was not laying on her feet like Three names did to Grandfather though, but if it was winter time he may have.

This is our neighbors foster pup, a Golden retriever just like Three names. She is training this dog to be a service dog, The pup visits us everyday as part of his training to get well accustomed to children and many distractions. We read Magic Tree House fact Tracker Dog Hero's we talked about how Three names wasn't a service dog but was defiantly a helper dog to the Grandfather. He Would have never let him get lost on the Prairie.

We went for a walk through a Prairie, we also practiced spelling words on a slate just like Grandfather.

We visited a one room school house back in June and Robin remembered all about it. The School was just like the one grandfather went to. We went back through  the pictures and went back out to visit the school house again.

Notice the tin lunch pail and slates on the steps?

Just like Grandfather's schoolhouse, you can just see the outhouse's through the back door.

I had a hard time finding a set of marbles ( I guess kids really don't play these type of games anymore) I did find some in the dollar section of Toys R Us. After a walk in the park with some friends I got out the marbles that I had brought with me.

The older kids had so much fun playing with them.

The littles were having a good time as well just sorting them and rolling them into the circle.

The kids have been playing marbles all week and even coming up with their own new ways to play!

We also  read many additional books  about Prairies, Horses, and dogs.

FIAR - Storm In The Night.

We read the Five In A Row book Storm In The Night

Some other books we read to go along with the story. I was happy that mother nature gave us a few thunder and lighting storms so we could observe the weather we were reading about first hand.

This was not a favorite of Robin's, she said it was long and boring.

I cut out of people of all ages so she could sort them into 3 groups on 3 of our circle time rugs.

1.Older than Mommy
2.Mommy's age
3.Younger than Mommy

She did very well except for 1 picture that she put in the Mommy pile. It was a very old Woman (much older than me) with dark hair and lots of wrinkles. The dark hair made her think it belonged in the middle age group (Eek I am middle aged then!)but upon closer examination you could see the many wrinkles on her face.

We also talked about the differences in the age groups and if they could all do the same things, or if they might need specialty products like dentures.

My Dad has dentures and when he came over he popped them out for the kids to see and they were shocked, they did not know he had fake teeth. He then explained that if you don't take good care of your teeth this would happen to you.
Pictures Robin and Owl did of clouds and lightning after reading that story.



We made Storm Smoothies, the kids liked watching the cyclone in the blender.

Just a mix of Spinach, blueberries, Plain Yogurt and bananas
We also ate clouds (Whipped cream) and raindrops (blueberries)

Raindrop limbo

 

I used a suspension rod and hung raindrops from it, the kids had so much fun playing under the raindrops.

More Mushroom Hunting

Worked on a on a quick symmetry project

Some symmetrical works they did.

Nature studies
We went on a mushroom hunt this week through the forest again This week we came prepared  with a  backpack full of mushroom identification books  paper, clipboards, pencils and towels  to  sit on.  Our neighbors joined us this time  and her kids seemed to really enjoys spotting all the types of mushroom. She was even amazed by all the different types of mushrooms we found.

 A favorite of the kids was this little dark orange mushroom they called it a  Cheetos  mushroom, we never did identify it.

 Robin hunting for mushrooms

 The boys checking out the sites down a ravine.

 This is a chicken mushroom and totally edible..

 When you break it apart it looks  just like cooked chicken!

 I love the happy little slug hanging out on the mushroom.

 

Sketching the mushroom with a slug on it.

 

 

 

I am using Story of The World for history with Robin. This week we learned all about Archaeology and the kids went on a dig in out back yard and we examined our artifacts carefully to see what we could learn about the people who left these items behind. I buried various items in the dirt for them to dig up, they had fun all week long burying them and digging them back up.

 

Falcon has been reading about evolution and wrote a 2 page report on the life and discoveries of Charles Darwin.

Reading room

I am Still trying to get through 50 Shades of Grey.

Falcon is reading:
Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Robin is reading:
Dingos at Dinnertime and American Girl Marie- Grace Cecile books.