Nov. 12, 2009 - Writing games

We are taking a break the rest of this month from our "normal" language arts and playing some writing games.  The cranberry poems was our first break.  Yesterday, I had them make a list of 3 wishes they would make if they found a real wishing well.  That didn't turn out like I expected (Pokemon becoming real, being an NFL player...)  Today, we played a fun game that a friend of mine did with her 2nd grader and it was fun (for me and both boys.)  We took turns writing part of a story - the catch is, we can only write as many words as we roll on a die.  It was tough not to finish a sentence, or see a sentence we started not finish the way we had planned.  Here are our creations.  I will put my words in italics so you can see who wrote what.  (I gave them the titles.)

Alex's story "When I Was in the Woods"

I took a walk in the woods.  I saw a big, juicy, fat, delicious, scrumptious, awesome, apple.  It had a salamander in it.  I wanted it.  I picked the apple to cut.  But I saved the salamander.  "I will keep you in a box."  I said.  And we went on home.  The end.

Nicolas's story "The Day a Monster Visited Us"

One day, a green dog was on a bike.  He rode to my house.  He loved me but a monster came.  The monster thought my dog looked bad, really bad.  "A pickle?"  "NO!"  "A cat?"  The dog barked.  "A male?"  "rrrr"  "A dog?"  "Yes."  The monster was hungry so was the dog.  He barked.  I fed the monster.  He barked.  The dog ate corn...

They have both asked if we can do this again next time.  Maybe I can get them to stop arguing long enough to do one all together.  :)

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Nov. 12, 2009 - Cranberry Fun

We read Cranberry Thanksgiving at co-op on Monday.  In the book, the grandmother makes a judgment about 2 people based on their appearances.  The one that was clean cut, smelled good and dressed nicely she thought highly of.  She did not like the one that smelled like clams, had a long beard and did not dress the way she preferred.  It turned out that the clean cut man tried to steal her secret cranberry bread recipe and the man she didn't like stopped him. 

For one activity, the children chose a gift from several placed on a table.  All but one gift was wrapped nicely with a bow and pretty paper.  One gift was wrapped messy with newspaper.  They children opened their gifts to find trash in the nicely wrapped ones.  One child chose the messy gift, but inside was enough candy for everyone.

The lesson was that we cannot judge people from their appearances.  We need to look at what is inside, just the way God does.

The other lesson was about cranberries.  We learned that cranberries float.  That's how they are harvested in bogs.  The bogs are flooded and the cranberries come to the top.  They also bounce.  A cranberry has to bounce at least 4 inches when dropped from 12 inches to be kept and bagged as a whole cranberry.  We experimented with that.  Not many of the cranberries we tried bounced that high, but it was an interesting lesson.

So this week, at home, we have focused on cranberries.  Tuesday, the boys each wrote a poem about cranberries.  We used a fill in the blank format to create these.

Nicolas's:

As little as a cranberry.
As hard as a cranberry.
An apple is not as tiny as a cranberry.
A plum is not as round as a cranberry.
A grape is as small as a cranberry.
Nothing in the world is as sour as a cranberry.

Alex's:

As small as a cranberry.
As red as a cranberry.
As hard as a cranberry.
As sour as a cranberry.
As light as a cranberry.
An apple is not as red as a cranberry.
An orange is not as hard as a cranberry.
A peach is not as sour as a cranberry.
A banana is not as light as a cranberry.
A plum is not as small as a cranberry.
A grape is as small as a cranberry.
Nothing in the world is as sour as a cranberry.

Last night for supper, we had Cranberry Pork Roast and Cranberry-Apple Crisp for dessert.

Today we are going to have Cranberry tea to drink after lunch.

Tomorrow we are going to use the rest of our cranberries along with some popcorn and string them as treats for our birds outside. 

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Oct. 30, 2009 - Human Body - Day 11

Digestion and taste.

We finished up our lapbook of the human body today.  We talked about how our food gets broken down in our mouth by our teeth and saliva, then goes to the stomach for further break down.  Then we followed the path through the small and large intestines and out of the body.

Large version for our wall.  And a small version for our lapbooks.

We continued our discussion of the 5 senses with taste.  We looked at our taste buds and where our tongue tastes bitter, salty, sour and sweet.

Interesting facts about digestion.

You can only see the reflection of the pencil markings, what we labeled on the tongue.  In the back is the bitter, then on the sides beginning in the middle is the sour then the salty in front of that.  The sweet is in the very front tip.

We read a scholastic book about Healthy Eating and talked about the food pyramid.  I found this food pyramid online that we printed on cardstock, put it together and filled it with a healthy snack (Honey Nut Cheerios.)

They had the back side of the last page blank and we were done with what I had planned, so I decided to have them copy the first part of Jeremiah 1:5 for the final page.  I think it summed up the entire study well.  "Before I formed you in your mother's body, I chose you.  Before you were born I set you apart to serve Me." (New International Reader's Version)

(Sorry the pictures are hard to see, pencil doesn't photgraph well with my camera.)

And finally, the cover:

I did not have a unit study planned for next week, and even though our lapbooks are done, I still have a few things from the library that we have not had a chance to look at.  So, next week we will be finishing up the study with 2 books - Living with Blindness and Living with Deafness.  I also have a DVD I checked out that talks a little about cells and genetics.  We won't watch the entire thing but will hit these 2 topics. 

So our Human Body unit study will end up being 12 days long.  We didn't go into much detail with anything.  There is so much more in Blood and Guts that they could learn.  Then next time it gets pulled out will probably be for individual study later in their studies.

Thanks for following our journey. 

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Oct. 29, 2009 - Human Body - Day 10

Hearing.  It's amazing how sounds passes through the ear canal to the eardrum to the 3 small bones to the cochlea and how our brains can translate that vibration into words or sounds.  We didn't do any experiments with hearing today, but here are the books we added to our lapbook.

Can You Hear Me Now? states amazing facts about our ears.  We read in the Usborne book what decibals different sounds are.  Then we made this accordion book showing the different parts of the ear.

I wanted to make sure we had covered all 5 senses in this study (skin-touch, eyes-sight, ears-hearing).  I didn't have anything planned for smell.  There isn't much to study about the nose except that there are smell receptors that send messages to the brain about what we smell.  I did, however, find an experiment to try about how our tastes are affected by our smell.  I cut into small pieces some potato and some apple.  The boys plugged their noses and tasted the potato.  Because the texture is about the same in both, they shouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the two.  (I tried it before they did, and I could taste the difference, but decided to let them try it anyway.)  They both made a face and exclaimed "What is this?!?"  Then I let them try the apple.  That also they could taste, but it left a better taste in their mouth.  :)

We went ahead and started the taste sense today with a study of teeth.

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Oct. 28, 2009 - Human Body - Day 9

Today was dissection day!!  If you have a weak stomach, you might want to pass on the pictures.  It wasn't as bad as I thought.  Nicolas (our gaggy one) could not watch while we were cutting, but once the piece was there to look at, he was fine.  We bought a cow's eye to dissect.  This helped us (me included!) tremendously to understand how our eyes are put together.  Still don't completely understand HOW it works, but at least we know what the inside of the eyeball really looks like.  Diagrams just can't effectively show us.  When the dissection was complete, it made it MUCH easier to fill out the diagram of the eye that we added to our lapbook.  Okay, now for the pictures.

The greyish material around the edges are the tissue and muscles.  If you look in the middle at the black X - that is the optic nerve.

So we began by cutting the tissue and muscle off from the schlera (the white of the eye.)  The coloring has changed because it's dead. :)

Next we cut the cornea from the eyeball.  This revealed the iris (the dark in the middle).  The hole in the middle of the iris is the pupil.  We were able to see that the iris can get bigger and smaller to let in more light.

The next step was cutting the eyeball in half.  This revealed a jelly like substance that fills the inside of the eye.  The left half is the front of the eye and the right is the back.  You can see the optic nerve still.

We popped the lens out.  This works as a magnifier.  We are able to see that in the word "hello" printed on a piece of paper.  You can see the 'e' and part of the 'l' is quite larger than the 'o'.  The lens was hard and like a marble, but in a live eye, it is soft.

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