The Duchess Bakes a Cake - Science

On Friday we made bread dough to see the rising effect of the yeast.

The Duchess Bakes a Cake - Catapult

This week we are reading The Duchess Bakes a Cake by Virginia Kahl. There are lots of great vocabulary words and new concepts in this story that we are exploring this week. Today we used plastic spoons to catapult mini M&Ms into each others' mouths. We also viewed videos on www.youtube.com of home made catapults and human catapults. :-)

That's What Leprechauns Do - Lapbook

Here are some photos of our finished lapbook for this week's book That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting. I got all the components for this lapbook from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/

That's What Leprechauns Do - Science

Today we used a flashlight, a piece of black construction paper, tape, scissors, and a clear glass of water to separate light into the colors of the rainbow. We found instructions on how to do this here. I was happy to be able to get a picture of our result to show you:

That's What Leprechauns Do - Math

This week we are reading That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting. I've found lots of activities to go along with this book at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ and we will be putting together a lapbook this week to go with this story. Today we did a fun little math activity to go along with the leprechaun theme. We graphed the marshmallows that we found in a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal. First, we lined up the marshmallows according to kind like this:

Then, in order to make the graph suitable to keep in our lapbook, we drew each kind of marshmallow at the bottom of our graph and colored the appropriate number of boxes for each kind. Last, G wrote in how many of each kind we found in the bowl.

A New Coat for Anna

This week we are reading A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert. Today we took our measurements like the tailor in the story and compared G's measurements against mine. Then we went out for a nature walk to collect different colored items for dying yarn. We collected grass and leaves for green, we found one dandelion for yellow, we found some unidentified berries for orange, and we used a teabag we found in the kitchen for brown. Here's a picture of our yarn soaking in the hot colored water:

Here are our results:

Top to bottom: Dandelion, grass, berries, tea. The yarn running vertically is the undyed yarn. We concluded that of the materials we used, the tea worked the best.

Owl Moon

This week we are reading Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Our go-along activity for yesterday was to make a food chain. After reading more about owls, I had G tell me what owls eat (and surprisingly, yes, some do eat rabbits!), then what rabbits eat, and we made our own mini food chain.

Afterward, G wanted to draw a picture of an owl:

How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World

This week's Five in a Row book was How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. It was a fun book about traveling to several different world locations to gather ingredients for baking an apple pie. Some of the activities we did to go along with the story were:

1. We looked at a book about Italy, introduced G to some of the major Italian landmarks, and found Italy on the world map.

2. We did the same for France and then built our own Eiffel towers out of popsicle sticks. Daddy was the perfect leader for this project!

3. We found Sri Lanka on the world map.

4. We looked at a book about Jamaica (paying special attention to pictures of sugar cane plants).

5. We found Vermont on the US map.

6. We read a great science book called How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maestro.

7. We did a science project: Evaporating the water out of salt water and finding out what was left (salt crystals). G even enjoyed a taste test.
8. We made an apple pie and discussed measurements and fractions as we prepared the pie for baking.

This Week's Theme: Cranberry Thanksgiving

Our Five in a Row book this week was Cranberry Thanksgiving by Harry Devlin. It was a fun holiday book with lots of great activities to go along. Some of the activities we did this week to go with the story were:

1) We tried fresh, whole cranberries and dried cranberries for a snack.

2) We talked about nicknames.

3) Our Bible verse for the week was "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7 It went perfectly with the way the grandmother in the story judges Mr. Whiskers by the way he looks.

4) One of the illustrations is done in silhouette, so we talked about what a silhouette is and made

our own silhouettes using a bright light and G's easel paper. We also took a photo using the

silhouette technique.

5) For science, we did a project to find out how an alkaline ingredient like baking soda would react with an acidic ingredient like yogurt, lemon juice or vinegar. We found that it makes bubbles of carbon dioxide, and that's what makes a cake rise when baking.

6) We made Grandmother's famous Cranberry Bread. The recipe was at the end of the book.

Lentil

This week's Five in a Row title was Lentil by Robert McCloskey. Since one of the characters in the book was Colonel Carter, we took the opportunity to talk a little bit about Veteran's Day. Some of the activities we did to go along with the book were:

1) Baking cookies for a US soldier currently serving in Iraq.

2) Writing a "Happy Veteran's Day" note to a friend of ours who is serving in the Army and has been deployed to Iraq twice.

3) Introduction to the Pledge of Allegiance.

4) Experimenting with the lip puckering power of a lemon.

5) We talked about musical instruments, counting quarter, half and whole notes, and practiced clapping in time to music. The new quarter starts next week, and we will start learning the piano, so these music activities were the perfect lead-in for that.

The Glorious Flight

This week we are reading The Glorious Flight for our FIAR book. We are also reading about the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart. All this learning about famous people in the world of flight is leading up to our trip to the museum of flight this weekend. I think G is going to LOVE it!

Jugglers

Today we made these juggling balls to go with our FIAR book. We filled balloons with rice, then cut off the neck of another balloon and stuffed the first balloon inside upside down to secure it. We then practiced our juggling skills...Daddy proved himself the Juggling King!

Stylized Trees and a bit of Korean

This week we are reading The Clown of God for our FIAR book, and we made stylized trees like the ones in the illustrations out of play-doh.

We also made a model of a little juggling man. :-)

Totally unrelated, but later we ate dinner at a terriyaki place, and the woman who works there taught us how to say thank you in Korean: (com sah mi dah).

Week 2: Storm in the Night

This week's FIAR book was Storm in the Night. We talked about storms and clouds, and oddly enough, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky all week. They will roll in soon enough, and when they do we will be there scoping them out and identifying them by type. We also reviewed onomatopoeia, discussed story setting, and talked about what grandparents were like as children. We even made our own cloud for science!

Our Bible story for this week was the fall of man. We learned that Adam and Eve brought sin into the world when they disobeyed God.

Week 1: A Pair of Red Clogs

This week we read A Pair of Red Clogs for our Five in a Row book, so we took the opportunity to learn a bit about Japan. We did lots of fun activities to go along with the book:
1. We found Japan on the world map
2. We colored the Japanese flag and added it to our flags of the world banner
3. We read about Japanese culture
4. We learned to count to 10 in Japanese
5. We read Haiku poetry
6. We did some origami
7. We read about sumo wrestling and had our own sumo wrestling match
8. We ate at a Japanese steak house and visited with Japanese people and saw real kimonos
9. We visited Uncle Loren who showed us his bonsai trees
10. We listened to Japanese music

Here is a photo of what G and Grandma made during origami time:

For Bible time this week, we read the story of creation and our memory verse was Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

In science, we did a couple of nature walks in different areas and found plant life like blackberry vines, huckleberry bushes and ivy. We also saw animal life such as birds, a snake, grasshoppers, squirrels and rabbits. A walk by a local lake turned up lots of empty snail shells.

We also worked with phonics, history, Spanish, math, and handwriting, and we had a fun day at the park with our homeschool group too! We had a fun first week of kindergarten!!