Family Movie Night

Our new favorite family activity lately is Family Movie Night.  So far we have shared the following fun movies with our kids:  Kung Foo Panda 2, The Secret of NIMH, and tonight An American Tail.

Such a great movie!  And I had almost forgotten how many historical accuracies it contained.  Hubby kept pausing the movie in the beginning several scenes to explain to the kids the historical context of the film. 

The girls also really enjoyed recognizing the Statue of Liberty (we had a lesson on it a few months ago) and noticed that it hadn't tarnished to green yet.

Eagle Lesson Plan part 2

We followed through with the idea I had the other day to study some poems about eagles.  And I'm glad we did, because it went really well.

The first one we looked at was The Bald Eagle by Don R. Wilkins.  I read it out loud and then I asked the girls to identify who the narrator was (the eagle!)  Then we made a short list of a few things they learned about eagles from the poem.  I was quite impressed when Primus was able to identify that the victory song spoken of in stanza 3 was in response to catching his prey.

Then we read From an Eagle's View by Stacy Smith.  After they listened to me read it, the girls came up with a list of things that an eagle would be able to see from his view point high in the sky.

Next we studied The Eagle by Alfred Tennyson.  He used a lot of really good vocabulary so Primus and I went through line by line and deciphered what he was saying.  Again I was pleasantly surprised when Primus was able to tell me that "The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls" meant that the water down below was flowing. 

Finally, each of the girls drew on 12X18 construction paper a large picture of an eagle.  Then they glued feathers on for a very colorful bird.



 

Plans for the rest of the school year...

For a variety of reasons, I have not been very motivated to do school lately.  Our official last day of school is May 18th, which means we have less than a month to go.  That works out to only 2 weeks before the move, and 1 week after.  So, my point is, we're not going to be doing anything very spectacular between now and the end. 

Also, I predict that we won't accomplish anything unless I write down a plan.  So here it is.  (Most of this is specific to Primus because Secundus is still 3.  At this point she mostly just plays and does what she wants unless she wants to be included with any science or art projects.)

1) Continue our morning routine:
-Prayer
-Scripture Memorization
-Journal (2 sentence response to a prompt)
-Daily Language Review, grade 1
-1 page from Building Spelling Skills, grade 2
-1 page of handwriting practice

2) Language Arts:
-Lots of reading
-Some lessons from a new workbook we got: How to Write a Story

3) Science: We are done with our official curriculum so I was going to just not even worry about it anymore.  But then the girls asked today if we were going to do any science.  So I guess I better come up with something.  Here's my only initial ideas:
-Exploration with our new bucket balance
-Once we finally get into the new house, they can spend the week exploring in the dirt and the trees while I empty boxes

4) Art:
-Sponge painting with our new Build-A-Kid Sponge Painters
-Spin art.  Super fun and easy and not too messy.  We're using the finished masterpieces as stationary.
-Playdough
-Fingerprint art

5) Math:  I've decided that I don't want to continue with any of Primus' Modern Curriculum Press lessons until she has her addition and subtraction facts memorized.
-Math Wrap Ups
-Flash cards
-Ghost Blasters 2 game

6) Lifeskills:
-Packing boxes
-Deep cleaning

Eagle/Great Seal Lesson Plan

1)  Today we started with a discussion of the first political cartoon in America:

It was drawn by Benjamin Franklin to encourage the colonies to unite.  It was based on a legend that a snake that was cut apart would come back to life if all the pieces were joined back together before sundown. 

2)  Next, we watched the video "Ride the High Places."  It's about 10 minutes and is beautiful, awe-inspiring footage of bald eagles.  The narration is about the inspirational qualities of these magnificent beasts and how one should apply those qualities to themselves.

3)  Then we reviewed the things we learned from the video and came up with a list of admirable qualities of bald eagles, ideas of why the founding fathers chose it as our national bird, and what it could be symbolic of. 

4)  We looked at a picture of the Great Seal of the United States and discussed what all of the elements of it are symbolic of. 

5)  We talked about the motto, "E Pluribus Unum."  It means "Out of many, one."  We made connections between this and the Join or Die sentiment.

6)  The girls cut-and-pasted together this grid-map puzzle that was in my National Symbols workbook.

7) Finally, I gave the girls this worksheet where they had to draw a picture of each symbol and define what it stands for. 

This is what Primus wrote:

Eagle: Freedum

Olive Branch: Pec (peace)

Arrows: Wor (war)

13 Stars: 13 callnes (colonies)

E Pluribus Unum: be united

Here's a couple good resources that my father found for me.  We didn't get much chance to study any of it today, but we may extend our study into tomorrow.  I'm definitely intrigued by the eagle poems.  We haven't done any poetry lessons this year so maybe this is a good place to start.

www.baldeagleinfo.com

http://www.baldeagleinfo.com/eagle/poems.html

http://www.lbl.org/pdf/2012LBLEagleFactSheet.pdf

And here's some books I found at the library that have some good pictures:

The Bald Eagle Returns by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent

Soaring with the Wind by Gail Gibbons

Eagles by Tom Warhol and Chris Reiter

 

Finally, I'd like to add a great big, "Mission Accomplished!"  I didn't even have to worry about Primus being fooled by that "bald eagle vs turkey" nonsense.  She's too smart for that.  After we were done watching the video and we were discussing it (number 3 above), I asked her, "What's so special about the eagle?  Why didn't they choose the turkey instead?"

Her immediate response was, "Cause turkeys are lazy!  All they do is walk around and eat stuff."

Me: "But didn't Benjamin Franklin say that the eagle was the lazy one?"

She decided that good-old Ben was pretty silly for thinking that because the bald eagles in the video we saw sure didn't seem lazy. 

Ha, ha!  I love it!  I promise that I didn't coach her on that!  She remembered the bald eagle vs turkey lesson all on her own and was able to apply her new knowledge to what we had learned before. 

Bald Eagle vs Turkey

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin thought that our National bird should have been the turkey instead of the bald eagle?  Apparently he saw the turkey as a symbol of courage because they attacked British soldiers during the Revolution.  On the other hand, he thought that the bald eagle was lazy because it is known to steal fish from other birds.

Interesting fact, huh?  Fun footnote to history, yes?

Would you be surprised, then if the above information was the focus of a lesson on the Bald Eagle as a National Symbol?  I certainly was! 

I pulled my National Symbols (by Splash! Publications-for grades 1-3) workbook off the shelf today to plan a lesson on the Great Seal.  It gave an explanation of what all of the symbols on the Great Seal mean (olive branch=peace, arrows=strength, etc) but it didn't say what the eagle symbolized.  So I flipped back to a previous lesson about the Bald Eagle to remind myself what it said.  I was shocked to realize that the only useful information it said is that it was chosen as a symbol of freedom. 

In this "Bald Eagle" lesson (it is very simple, two pages, large print, double spaced) it contains 15 lines about the Great Seal and 15 lines about the turkey as I summarized above.  Only 14 lines were about the bald eagle!  And everything that it says is focused around describing the eagle's appearance and what it eats. 

Seriously?  There was no absolutely no explanation as to why the founding fathers chose it as a national symbol.  It said nothing about how confident, majestic, powerful, or awe-inspiring bald eagles are. 

Clearly, the focus of the lesson was on why the founding fathers were idiots for choosing it and why they should have chosen the turkey instead.  Even the little 4 question review test is a joke.  Here are the questions:

1. The bald eagle is our national A)flower B)bird C)tree
2. Talons are A)wings B)turtles C)claws
3. Benjamin Franklin thought the bald eagle was A)strong B)ugly C)lazy
4. Do you agree with Benjamin Franklin?  Explain the reason for your answer.

The workbook also includes a little card game to reinforce knowledge about the turkey and bald eagle (basically just phrases taken directly from the lesson.)

Could the anti-"American Exceptionalism" attitude be any more obvious??  I thought I bought this book to teach my daughters what the symbols of our nation stood for?  I didn't buy it to teach them that our founding fathers were fools. 

And you know the saddest part?  When I taught the girls this lesson a couple months ago, I didn't even realize the problem.  Well, I'm going to correct that tomorrow.  Before I teach them about the Great Seal, I'm going to teach them about what an amazing animal the great Bald Eagle is.  Maybe I can find a copy of the video, "Ride the High Places."  I watched that about a million times when I was a kid at every Eagle Court of Honor I attended (my family is big into Boy Scouts.)

Look Mom, it's "Ametrica!"

Secundus said the above statement to me as she proudly held up her geo board.  She had put rubber bands all the way around, making a square, and then put another rubber band down the center diagonally.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  It sounded like she said "America" so I thought she was saying she made a flag. 

But then a little later she said the same thing after filling both sides of the balance. 

Then it hit me: she was saying "Symmetrical!" 

Obviously, Secundus has a speech problem.  The thing her speech therapist is especially working on with her right now is having "s" at the beginning of words.  When I finally understood, I was super proud that she had remembered our symmetry lesson.

Rotate!

Today we received our latest order from Lakeshore.  Of course the kids all were excited to play with the new stuff.  And I could see that it would quickly turn into a battle.  So I came up with a great idea!

Each child was given one activity to do. 

1. New bucket-balance with teddy bear counters.

 2. New playdough with mold in the lid.

3. Old favorite: Geo board.

Then I turned on an almost 4 minute fun kids' song and let them explore with their assigned toy.  When the song was over we would announce, "Rotate!"  Then they gladly passed their toy around the table and then the song begun again. 

I had to have them rotate after only one song because Tertius' attention span is so short and he was anxious to play with everything.  We ended up rotating 9 times (so they each got to play with each toy 3 times) before they all decided they just wanted to play with playdough. 

It was a great success!  I am so impressed that they all (even the baby!) went along with it so well.  There was absolutely no fighting over what they were given to start with or what order things were rotated.  We'll have to do this kind of thing more in the future and maybe I can work them up to longer time in between rotations.

Impromptu Grocery Store Field Trip

To support our study of the parts of plants, I took the girls with me to the grocery store so we could buy some celery (to observe how stems work) and lima beans (so we could get them to sprout roots). 
While there we also strolled around the produce section and talked about root vegetables. 

Then we tracked down one of the produce guys and asked if they had any empty apple boxes we could have.  (I love those sturdy apple boxes for storage!)  Usually they will just run to the back, grab a couple, and bring them back out to us.  But this time the guy invited us to the back to get them and he gave us an impromptu tour!

He showed the girls how all the goods are on pallets and on shelves until they're ready to go out in the store.  And then he took us to the produce cooler.  Secundus' favorite part is when he showed us how the big box crusher works.  Primus' favorite part was when we saw the huge box the watermelons come in.

We ended our awesome field trip at the bakery for free cookies.  Probably the coolest trip to the grocery store ever!

Bunny Treats

I found this first project on Pinterest.  It was super easy for the kids to put together.

1. Dip Oreos in melted white chocolate.  I love to use Almond Bark. 

2. Add a small candy for a nose and black sprinkles for the eyes.  (The only thing I had for the nose was M&M's, but the link I found on Pinterest suggested jelly beans.) 

3. For the ears, cut a marshmallow in half on the diagonal.  Dip in colored sugar.

The ears aren't attached to the head, but it would probably be pretty easy to glue them together using a dab of melted chocolate. 

Also, did you know it was super easy to make colored sugar?  I don't know why I was convinced that it would be so difficult!  Seriously, just put some sugar in a jar, add some food coloring, and shake until all colored.  If you're worried about it being moist, just spread it out on some aluminum foil and let dry for a couple hours.

And here's the bunny cake we made.  You're supposed to bake two 9 inch round cakes and cut one of them into 2 ears and a bowtie.  But when I took it out of the pan, it totally fell apart.  So I ended up piecing together ears and tie from pieces of that cake plus some pieces left over from a lightsaber birthday cake I made on Saturday. 

Sometimes I don't give my oldest enough credit or opportunity to shine.  I really tried to step back as much as I was comfortable with this project.  Here are some things that a 6 year old is capable of doing to make a bunny cake:

1. Grease the pans.
2. Read the directions on the box.
3. Pour the ingredients in the bowl.
4. Crack the eggs and put in bowl.
5. Use the hand mixer with assistance.
6. Set the timer.
7. Test cooked cake for done-ness.
8. Frost cake.
9. Add chocolate chip eyes.
10. Decorate bowtie.
11. Pipe on color in ears, with assistance.
12. Add whiskers made of Twizzler Pull-and-Peel.

More Spring Break Fun

Last week we did a small unit study of The Little Red Hen (Thank you, Evan Moor!)  So this week we made banana bread.  I re-wrote the recipe so it was big enough and simple enough for her to read and understand with minimum guidance from me.

And then a friend of mine taught the girls how to make French bread.  I'll have to get the recipe from her because it was pretty easy.

This week the girls also helped me make a pinata.  It's supposed to look like the Death Star.  It was a big job so they only helped with the first layer of paper mache.  I mixed up the flour and water paste in one of the kids' spill-proof paint cups and it worked perfectly!  Hardly any mess!  One of them would paint a stripe of glue, and then the other would place the newspaper strip.

Another project we did this week was of course, boiling and dying eggs.  I walked Primus through all the steps of boiling the eggs and then we all dyed them together.

So glad I pulled Secundus out!

I pulled Secundus out of preschool at Christmas time.  Go here to read about why I enrolled and then disenrolled her. 

I have never regretted the decision to pull her out!  We have a couple friends who are still enrolled in that class and the mom occasionally tells me things about it that make me glad I got out as soon as I did! 
The latest update she told me is that adults in the classroom are not allowed to compel (or even encourage) any of the children to apologize when they have done anything wrong (hit another child, for example.)  What the what??  This is what is wrong with our society!  I'm gonna stop now before I get started because this could easily turn into a rambling rant.

The other tidbit she told me is that if the kids are supposed to be sitting at the table during their small-group time to practice writing the letter A, for example, you cannot tell them that they have to sit.  If they want to get up and goof around and not participate in the task at hand, that's fine.  Half of the class is 4 year olds going to Kindergarten next fall.  How is this class preparing them for Kindergarten???

Apparently this teacher (I don't know if it is the district policy) is under the impression that children are capable of raising and teaching themselves.  That is definitely NOT where my child belongs.

Empty Tomb Rolls

Big Thanks again to Catholic Icing for the recipe to this great teaching tool!  When me and the girls made these, they weren't very pretty so I didn't get any pictures.  Plus, they were so yummy that we inhaled them down fast!  So anyway, go over to Catholic Icing to check out what they look like and how to make them. 

Basically, what you do is dip a marshmallow in melted butter and then cinnamon and sugar.  And then you wrap it in a crescent roll.  When you bake it, the marshmallow melts, leaving the roll empty (just like Christ's tomb!)

Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree

My kids love this song!

That said, the idea for this craft came from a good friend of mine who has decades of experience teaching preschool and doing daycare and tutoring of all ages.  She has so many great ideas! 

This was perfect for us because we are starting a science unit on Plants so this gave me the opportunity to point out the trunk, branches, and blossoms of a fruit tree.  Plus, we still had some extra, un-buttered, popped corn from our family movie night.

Primus did the one on the left.  She was able to draw her own trunk and branches on blue construction paper after I showed her on Secundus' paper.  The popcorn is simply glued on with white school glue.  I like to pour a bit in a small cup and then the kids use popsicle sticks to spread the glue where it needs to be.  

Flower Monoprint

Go over to Homeschool Classroom to see instructions for this fun painting technique.  Basically, you paint on wax paper and then transfer your picture to regular paper.  

Symmetry Lesson and Butterfly Crafts

Primus learned about symmetry last week.  So this week I decided to review the concept and extend it to something most girls love, butterflies!

We reviewed what symmetrical shapes are and what it means to be symmetrical by using a geo board.  Following are two crafts that we did to emphasize that butterfly wings are symmetrical.

First, we glued pre-cut construction paper shapes on big paper butterflies.  You get a gold star if you notice the place where Secundus forgot to put one shape.

Next, we made these cute snacks to share with our playgroup friends.  As you can see, we used snack-size ziplocks, clothespins, and a bit of pipe cleaner.  Each "wing" has the same amount and colors of fruit loops and fruit snacks.

Birds' Nests Rice Crispy Treats

What's Easter without Rice Crispy Treats in the shape of birds' nests? 

The girls didn't really like the stickiness of the treats or the greasy feeling of the butter on their hands (to keep the treats from sticking to their hands).  So after making one nest each, they decided it was their job to just place the jelly bean eggs and marshmellow birds in the nests.  

Empty Tomb Doughnut Treat

Since this week is officially Spring Break (we are enrolled with South Sutter Charter School), we are taking time to have some fun.  But I didn't want to really take a true, complete break from school.  So instead we are just going a bit easier on the academics and filling the rest of our time with fun spring and Easter themed crafts and goodies.  So stay tuned!  In the next few days I'm going to be posting lots of pictures of the fun things we're doing. 

First up, we discussed the Crucifixion and Resurrection.  And as we did, we made these empty tombs with doughnuts.  I got the instructions from Catholic Icing.  The only difference between mine and hers is that I used regular sized Oreos and chocolate cake doughnuts instead of the mini ones.



Microwave Popcorn

Here's how to pop popcorn in your microwave without buying those (relatively) expensive and (arguably) unhealthy microwave-popcorn-packages.  It's super easy and just as yummy:

1. Place 1/2 cup popcorn kernels in a paper lunch sack.  (Do NOT add any oil.  Trust me.)
2. Fold over the top of the bag a few times.
3. Microwave on high for about 4 minutes.  (I read somewhere else that all you need is 1.5 minutes.  But with my microwave, I ended up doing 4 min 30 sec.  Just experiment a couple times.)
4. When done, pour popped corn into a big bowl. 
5. Use a condiment squeeze bottle to drizzle melted butter over popcorn.
6. Continue to drizzle butter, stir, and salt to taste.