wednesday

How's that for a creative and descriptive post title?? Sorry... I've got nothing today! :-)

This is my favorite scene from today....
Clara was on a reading rampage today! She even took quizzes on several of the books that she read on Book Adventure.

After lunch we worked on Hawaii stuff again.

To begin we started with this fabulous book...
The Last Princess
Such an incredible story of a very courageous young woman who fought to save her island kingdom. History of the state of Hawaii that I'm sure I had never heard before. The kids were enthralled as I read it aloud. Gorgeous illustrations. It led us to some really interesting discussions over dinner tonight.

After that book, we moved on to reading about fish...
Hello, Fish!
This was a fun, light book that made for a good introduction to life in a coral reef. We frequently referenced the Hawaiian Reef Fish ID Chart that I had downloaded and printed from the Snorkel Maui site. Beautiful little chart if you need a chart of Hawaiian fish for any reason.

After that we moved on to learning about what makes a fish a fish...
What is a Fish?
This book is information heavy so we're taking it slow and reading a section or two a day.

After our introduction to fish, the kids moved on to playing with our new Parts of a Fish nomenclature cards...
I purchased them from Montessori for Everyone and you can find them here.

All in all... it was a very good day! :-)

(we even had a little bonus lesson in small appliance repair as our vacuum died today and the kids and I opened it up to see if we could figure out the problem! LOL!)

a trip to the field

Ugh... our internet went out last night after I typed this so I had to wait until this morning to post...

Today we were asked to join another homeschooling family for a trip to the Field Museum. I love the Field, but today was extra special... we were going to go and see the Mythic Creatures exhibit! It was fabulous! I have to admit, I didn't know what to expect but we really, really enjoyed it. I honestly wouldn't mind going back again and maybe doing the audio tour.

So, since photography wasn't allowed within the Mythic Creatures exhibit, I'll share these instead...

Sue...
Hanging out waiting for our friends...

After Mythic Creatures, a trip through the Ancient Egypt exhibit and a snack, we headed upstairs to see the Pacific Islands section to go with our study of Hawaii...
(this is the Hawaiian Island section of a tile map that was on the floor at the entrance to the exhibit)

Okay... so it was dark in there and I just didn't take any pictures in there either. But it had a great display showing how the islands were (and are being) formed. Cool stuff!
Afterwards the kids wanted to play a bit so we went across the street to a little play structure that's there... we honestly about never got them on the bus to go home! (pics of that are on my other blog)

new unit study - Hawaii!!

Now that we're back from spring break we're making the leap from studying Alaska to studying Hawaii! We're headed there in about three weeks so I thought this would be a fun way to prepare for our trip.

Here's the book we read today to get an overview of the state (and for me to see which subjects caught their eye for further study)...
A is for Aloha
Thankfully, what caught their eye was exactly what I thought would... marine life and volcanoes. I had planned on those subjects for our science for the next few weeks.

After reading the book, we made a map. This time (unlike our map of Alaska), I turned the creation of the map over to the kids. We weren't marking out an exact trail like we were for the Iditarod course so if it wasn't perfect, it would be okay.

So here, the discussions begin...
after everything was drawn and labeled... they moved on to coloring...
The finished map...
I thought it turned our really nice! They worked so seriously on it for most of the afternoon.

The map they copied from came from the Hawaii State Quarter Lesson Plan for Grades K-1 on the U.S. Mint Kids site. We're not actually going to be using that lesson plan since it is more about transportation instead of the State of Hawaii. We'll be using the Grades 2-3 lesson plan instead.

Then this afternoon I went to the library and went a little crazy. I really should NOT bring Clara's big tote bag when I go the library because I tend to fill it. And although it seems reasonable enough to carry out of the library... a couple blocks later on our trek home, the weight really begins to become quite noticeable! LOL! I can't wait to go through the books tomorrow... we have books on sea turtles (something the kids picked up from the book we read today), coral reefs, sharks, dolphins, whales and volcanoes! Fun stuff!

Easter Egg Hunt!

I just randomly decided to visit the CurrClick site this morning and discovered that they were having an Easter Egg hunt! I think it said that there were 41 eggs hidden on their site with discounts up to 75% off certain titles PLUS 7 of those are for free products! I think I've found four free products so far... two of them I downloaded as they go along with what we plan on studying next year. So, approximately $22.00 in free products so far! I should have been keeping track of how many I've found but I'm thinking I've only found about half of the eggs so far. I've got to start my day.... but I'll be back there to hunt again later!

the northern lights

This afternoon we started a little study of the northern lights.

As a light start to this study, we read this book...Aurora: A Tale of the Northern Lights by Mindy Dwyer

It was a nice, light whimsical story... however, this is the author's story, not a regional folk tale. It was a great story with beautiful illustrations though. The kids both seemed to enjoy it.

We also looked at the photos is this book from the library...
Aurora: The Mysterious Northern Lights by Candace Savage

I checked this book out solely for the photographs but there is a lot of good information in there also. I wasn't planning on it, but we read several sections as we browsed our way through the book. I might have to pull it out again and see what else might be fun to read aloud.

Then we come to this book...
Arctic Lights, Arctic Nights by Debbie Miller

When I requested this one from the library, I was expecting a book on the Northern Lights. I was disappointed at first to see that the Northern Lights were only mentioned once in the whole book. But then, I really took a look at the book....
This is a story about how drastically the amount of daylight changes in Fairbanks, Alaska, near the Arctic Circle. Since Alex had just covered graphing in his last math book, I saw a potential project as I looked through the book. First of all... we looked up Fairbanks and the Arctic Circle on our map of Alaska. Then, using my graph paper I mentioned in my previous post, I had Alex plot out the sunrise and sunset times.

After that, Alex and Clara connected the dots and colored the graph to reflect the amount of daylight versus night...
(the book runs from Summer Solstice to Summer Solstice)

The kids really enjoyed this and I think we may make bar graphs with the high and low temperatures next!

fun find today...

Okay... so it's not terrible exciting but if you need some graph paper in a pinch (we're getting ready to start a graphing project and I realized I didn't have any graph paper) this site is a very exciting find...

Free Online Graph Paper Generator

I was able to choose my paper size, line weight, square size and number of rows and columns to make my own custom graph paper for the project we're working on today!

Apparently, some days, it takes very little to make me happy! :-)

a good book and blubber

How's that for a post title? LOL!

After lunch we worked on our Alaska/Iditarod study again. This is our last week of this unit study. Next week we go to Missouri for Spring Break and when we return we'll be studying Hawaii (fun! I just picked up some books at the library today!).

So, today we talked about what keeps some arctic animals warm in such cold temperatures. To illustrate the usefulness of a layer of blubber, we made a blubber/crisco mitten. It was pretty fun for the kids to see the difference their layer of blubber made.

Here's Alex trying out the hand with the mitten... (the sink was full of ice water - I ended up dumping our entire tray of ice from the ice maker in there)


This is Alex pulling his unmittened hand out before it froze :-)
(if you're wondering why Clara is holding a bag of rubber bands in the photo above... well, your guess is as good as mine)

Clara takes a turn...
I guess these are out of sequence because we actually read this book first and we even actually read it right before we took a break for lunch...
Togo by Robert J. Blake
I have to say that this was by far one of my favorite books we read during our Iditarod study. This one I definitely had to stop a few times to compose myself before I could continue reading. I really enjoy finding good picture books with good solid information. Not fluffy simplified books where bad things are really glossed over. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a graphic, disturbing book... but it sure doesn't gloss over the hardships they went through either. It seemed to be the perfect mix for my two... enough detail for them to appreciate what it took for the teams to get to Nome but not so much that it upset them.

I think tomorrow we'll study the Northern Lights!