This coming week we will be continuing our study on birds, but we will be focusing in on the EAGLE! There is so much to learn about this wonderful bird! So many things that I did not even know! (did you know the eagle's nest might be 6 feet in diameter?)
I have noticed that there are not too many children's books out there on eagles! But, I found a few...here are the ones we will be using next week!
Activities, lessons & craftts
**most of our work this week will be on the lapbook as well as finishing up the bird facts and activities we didn't finish from last week! There are just SO many wonderful bird things to do and learn!
*watch this LIVE EAGLE CAM -- this is super exciting! Right now there are several babies in the nest, the girls and I just watched them being fed.
*Isaiah 40:31 will be our Bible lesson and copywork for the week.
*still looking for the perfect eagle craft...any ideas for me?
Isaiah 40:31 ~ Those who HOPE in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like EAGLES, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.
I think this counts as our FIRST, official lapbook! This is the first time each girl has made her own and we have spent the week learning the different things about butterflies found in this lapbook. I admit, I was a bit skeptical about whether or not the girls would actually learn anything from doing school this way! I knew they would love the cutting, pasting and pretty pictures...but would they learn the information? But, my doubts were diminished as the girls told me facts about caterpillars and butterflies that I had never heard before! And today, they showed Nana their lapbooks and told her all about how caterpillars have 16 legs, they have no nose, they breathe through holes on their backs, butterflies have a proboscis - which is like a straw to drink nectar! These are their words, not mine! I am officially a new lapbook FAN! In the past I have printed off parts of lapbooks and we have put them in our school notebook. I am sure we will still continue to use both methods.
Most of these lapbook components came from homeschool share- remember the site I'm always telling you about with FREE literature based unit studies? Well, they also have a bunch of free lapbooks! Now all we need is a better printer!
Here are some pictures from the butterfly lapbooks we have worked on this week!
Our unit this coming week is all about BIRDS! Once again, there are some great books out there!
Books
Activities, lessons and crafts
*Here are a few online activities related to birds - an online coloring page, a bird watching live cam, and more.
*We will be doing several of the lapbook componentsfrom a unit based on the book When Agnes Caws on HSS.
*Look at these different types of bird feeders! Which one should we try this week? I would like to try a new one, I think!
*We will spend 1 day reading and learning just about eagles. If the girls seem interested, we will dig deeper into the eagles subject. Here is an entire lapbook just about eagles!
*Take a look at this mom's blog...it is a FABULOUS lesson on learning about why birds have different shaped beaks! I love it! I want to do something like this one day with the girls. I think this is a wonderful hands on lesson; I'm excited to try it!
*This same mom also did a lesson with her children on making birds nests! They collected items from outside and tried to build a nest themselves! This showed them how difficult it is to actually make a nest...and what a wonderful Creator we have to make all of these intricate animals! (and look at those yummy bird nest treats!)
*Down the street at my SIL's house, there is a nest that we took a peek of last year...and there is a new momma robin there this year! There are 3 little blue eggs in the nest and they are starting to hatch! I would like to get down there and let the kids look at that as long as the momma bird doesn't chirp at us too loudly! The nest is in a bush, so it is right about eye level for me, and I lift the kids up to look in there. Awesome!
*Did you sing the Butterfly Song when you were a child? I DID!! I love that song! And I found a website where you can listen and sing along! Oh the memories! Click on this website, and then scroll down a bit to listen to the Butterfly Song.
*Make caterpillars and butterflies with playdough. Maybe we could even show the life cycle with playdough?
*A few years ago we "acted out" the lifecycle of the butterfly. I think we will do this again! First you curl up in a ball to be the egg. Second, you slither on the ground like a caterpillar. Then, you curl up in a ball like a cocoon - you can even cover up with a blanket. Then, you emerge from the blanket and fly around like a butterfly!
*This site has some fabulous printables! Probably for the little bit older crowd, you can label the parts of the caterpillar and butterfly, note the differences between a butterfly and moth. There are also 2 really neat stories comparing our spiritual walk and salvation to the life of a butterfly. Check them out HERE and HERE.
*HERE are lots of pretty butterfly coloring pages to choose from!
This coming week we are going to be studying plants.
Once again, some fabulous books out there for our week with plants! Here are the books we will be reading:
Here are the activities, crafts and lessons we will be doing:
*We will be doing a few of the lessons from the HSS unit on The Gardener bySarah Stewart. (especially the letter writing lesson and the planting of a flower in a teacup - how pretty!)
*What do plants needs? We will be doing the favorite plant experiment of all time...planting seeds in different pots and putting 1 pot in light and one in the dark - what happens? Then we will water 1 and not water another - what happens? I think the girls will really enjoy this experiment and we will learn a lot too!
*We have started our tabletop garden and are drawing pictures in our notebook at each stage of growth. I had mentioned that we did something similar to this last year. So, this year, we are adding a few new dimensions. This year we are drawing our veggies/plants in our nature journal, measuring the growth and recording that as well.
*We are going to be planting our sunflower house seeds this week! Yipee!
*The girls are enjoying the flower picture cards - we have played memory with them, as well as learning how to pronounce some of the difficult flower names. We have spotted several of these flowers on our street!
*I think we may also press fresh flowers into contact paper to make a pretty wall hanging. The girls love collecting different wild flowers (and weeds) from our yard and this will give us something pretty to do with them! First, we will flatten them with a big, heavy book. And then we will press them into the contact paper.
*I will introduce the parts of a plant and parts of a flower, using these cards.
*we will be adding several pages to our nature journal - parts of a seed, parts of a plant, etc.
I found a you tube video of someone singing Inch by Inch - The Garden Song. If you notice, it is listed as a book up above. I found it at the library, and then I found this video. So, we will listen to this at some point as well.
With Spring around the corner...I am planning a month of spring and nature based unit studies for us! I'm so excited! I'm going to give a brief overview of those units...stay tuned because I will be posting book titles and more details as I review all the books I've reserved from the library! I am not listing any of the crafts yet...still trying to narrow it down!
Spring
*we will touch briefly on the 4 seasons, discuss what happens in each
*learning what plants/flowers butterflies like and trying to plant at least one of these!
*learn about the different types of butterflies -- I would love to find a printable set of cards (similar to the montessori materials site) that has a different type of butterfly on each card - I haven't found any yet - does anyone see any online anywhere?
Birds
*I'm hoping to print off a freebie lapbook I got on birds - it is really good! (I think it is one of those I downloaded and saved, so I don't have a link to pass on, sorry!)
*learn about and label the body parts of a bird using these cards from montessori materials
*review what makes a bird a bird
Plants
*start a tabletop garden, which I have been admiring over HERE, we did something a little similar last year, I want to do it a little more in depth this year, making notes in our nature journal as well! Oh and notice the freebie download for the tabletop garden notebooking page as well! (on the righthand sidebar)
*draw and label in our nature journals the parts of a seed, plant, etc.
*work on parts of the unit study based on The Gardener from HSS
*print off the flower cards and help girls learn the names of the most common flowers (from HSS)
*learn the parts of a flower using these cards, again, from montessori materials
We had an exciting day today! We got to make butter with Jacob and Mattie! We all got to take turns shaking the cream in a jar...and eventually we had real butter! We were all very fascinated with this and so excited to see it turn into butter! After putting our butter in the fridge for a little while...we had some on our yummy toast for lunch! What a perfect pioneer lesson!
Looking at a real churn!
Necessary ingredients
Taking turns SHAKING!
It's working!
Tasting the buttermilk that formed.
We put our butter into little duckie molds!
And then we ate lunch with yummy cinnamon raisin bread that Aunt Lissa made and our yummy butter! Mmmmmm! I think we ate a whole loaf between us!
For the rest of the month of January we will be learning about pioneers in our home! There is just a WEALTH of information out there on this subject -- books, discussions, activities, crafts, recipes, etc. The individual lessons I will be taking from the FIAR manuals and the HSS units that are listed below.
Here are the books and activities I've chosen for us to do with our pioneer unit!
*Play with Lincoln Logs - we don't have these at our house yet, so I bought some to give to the kids for this unit! I think they will love them!
*Make corn husk dolls (if you google directions you will find some fairly simple ones online)
*Make butter by shaking cream in a babyfood jar
*Make beeswax candles
*Make a log cabin by gluing pretzel sticks onto a cardboard house frame
*I was also hoping to get the girls bonnets, but I have not ordered any yet
*make cornbread for dinner one night
*find all the quilts in our home and look in detail at them - notice patterns, discuss who made them, why they are special to us
*use pattern blocks to make our own quilt patterns
*watch Little House shows, I also have the Little House Christmas dvd for us to watch -- of course we will be noting differences in our lives compared to theirs
We're headed to Alaska! And Nana is doing school with the kiddos! So, I planned some activities, lessons and books to read about Alaska! I hope they have a fun week learning about this COLD place! I will also be adding in some fun SNOW crafts and books!
Our mission team leaves Dec. 28th...so my goal was to have this unit planned, printed and ready to go by Christmas! It looks like I have met my goal! Yipee! I hope this will be useful to someone else along the way!
Books to Read
2 of the books I have chosen for the kids to read with Nana this week are FIAR selections.
Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews is a sweet story set in an Inuit village in northern Canada. (but it's close enough to alaska and the story will help get us in the right atmosphere!)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a poem written by Robert Frost. Susan Jeffers did the illustrations for this book. We "rowed" this book last year and it was one of my favorites! The pictures are SO beautiful! If you check out this book, be sure to find the animals "hiding" in the snow!
And of course we can't forget about Peter and his Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. This book is actually a Before Five in a Row title.
This is a neat book entitled Building an Igloo by Ulli Steltzer. This is a book with lots of real pictures of 2 men building an igloo! The pictures are fabulous! And the story tells you step by step how they do this! Pretty amazing!
A delightful book called Snow Bear by Jean Craighead George is a story of a young eskimo who finds a baby polar bear to play with...but before long, the protective parents of each step in. This is really a great story! I think we will read this the day we learn about polar bears.
The book, Arctic Lights - Arctic Nights is a fabulous book to read about this region of the world! This book describes a different animal from this region on each page, as well as the amount of daylight for each day throughout the year, and how this affects the animals.
And one more book I will share with you. Baby in a Basket is a book I learned about from a unit found on the homeschool share site! This is a true story of a baby that survived the Alaskan wilderness and was eventually rescued.
HERE is the unit on homeschool share for this book!
Crafts and Activities
*find Alaska on the map, tape the story disk from Very Last First Time on map
*I printed off a map of the US that has Alaska in the right place up top, they will find Alaska and color it in.
*I also printed off an Alaskan flag which they will color as well.
*build an igloo with sugar cubes - I searched online for instructions to do this project and it actually looks a little more difficult than I had first thought. I'm not sure if they will get to this or not...or my other idea is to get the sugar cubes and let them just play with them, building, but not necessarily putting "glue" on them to stick.
*I printed off a fact sheet on polar bears from www.learningpage.com (go to theme sheets, zoo theme, click on polar bear) they will read this and learn something new about polar bears. Also, I printed off just the picture of a polar bear from this same site and they will cut it out, glue it onto black construction paper and glue white cotton balls onto the polar bear. Possibly, they will paint a snow scene using q-tips and white paint.
*I printed the eskimo figure off of THIS site (click on craft template), the kids will color it, cut it out and glue it onto construction paper. Then, they will glue cotton around the hat and wrists of the coat.
*build an edible snowman with the large marshmellows. Stack 3 of top of each other, add pretzel sticks for arms. Break the pretzels into smaller pieces for eyes, nose, etc. Or you could get creative and add little chocolate chips for the eyes.
*Last year we painted using the large marshmellows...these turned out SO cute!! Here is a picture from last year's art! I think they would love to do this craft again!
This week we have been learning more about the story, ballet and history of The Nutcracker. The girls have LOVED learning more about this story! Here are some things we have done this week!
We read several versions of the classic tale, noting several differences in the different books. Even the name of the main character was different in a few of the books!
I checked out a video of a ballet performance from Russia of the Nutcracker. The video was over 70 minutes long and I thought they would get bored with it quickly! However, Hannah just LOVED watching the ballet! She begged to watch it again after we watched it once! She knew all the characters and knew what was going on despite no words being said in the ballet! She really got into the character's roles and was aware of all the little details!
We also learned more about the country of Russia this week.
We also began listening to the classical kids story of Tchaikovsky as well as lots of his music, both online and on cd. Today the girls begged to put on their ballet leotards and skirts so that they could dance to Tchaikovsky's music in the kitchen. So sweet! They have surprised me by recognizing certain pieces from the Nutcracker, and especially a few that they are working on for their upcoming ballet recital!
We also decorated dancing ballerinas by giving them sparkly outfits for their performance. Notice the pretty buns on the ballerinas hair.
And finally, I gave each of the kids a toy nutcracker to play with this week. They all loved this, even Emily, who was not cooperating for pictures today!
![What Makes a Bird a Bird [School & Library Binding] By Garelick, May](http://images.alibris.com/isbn/9781572550087.gif)
* 
