The Fall Catch-All

It would be an understatement to say I have been extremely busy these last few months. Along with homeschooling, I finished my Bachelor's degree, we moved to a new home, and I have been training for a half-marathon. Whew! The first couple of weeks my camera disappeared and half the time I forgot to take pictures.

So here is my Fall Catch-All post about everything (mostly) that we've been up to this season (things are beginning to calm down now, so I'll be posting more regularly)

Fall/Cranberry Thanksgiving Unit Study

Fall words~

Fall books~

Beyond Turkey by Debbie Herman and Ann Koffsky illustrated a fair depiction of the Mayflower's journey to North America, the Pilgrims' settlement and their feast with the Wampanoag Indians.

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without reading Wende and Harry Devlin's beautiful book, Cranberry Thanksgiving.

We love the Magic Tree House series, and Thanksgiving on Thursday did not disappoint. The book is filled with Mary Pope Osbourne's research of the Pilgrims' settlement, lifestyle and clothing. It also fairly represents their relationship with the Wampanoag Indians, making no hesitation to admit Squanto's enslavement prior to the first Thanksgiving.

Fall Fun~

Reenacting the first Thanksgiving and building a Pilgrim house

Playing the "Sailing on the Mayflower" game

We also watched a Charlie Brown cartoon: The Mayflower Voyagers Netflix streaming. Here's a slip on Youtube:

 

Autumnal Apple Treats (Honeycrisp apples doused with lemon juice, slathered with peanut butter and topped with autumn granola mix and cinnamon. 

Field Trip Friday (the Fire Station!)~

We toured the local fire station with about 70 children and parents from Aidyn's home-based charter school. My camera wasn't cooperating with the lack of light in the building so I only have a few photos. The kids checked out the fire engines and fire truck and opened each and every compartment. They toured the living quarters (kitchen, bedrooms, living room, etc.) and peeked down the firefighter pole door. Aidyn said his favorite part was looking at how far down the drop was and wished he could have slid down.

What the Camera Didn't Capture:

~a beautiful and relaxed Thanksgiving holiday

~our Thanksgiving Tree we made with branches and fabric leaves (w/ words of gratitude we wrote on them)

~a beyond messy house

~a stressed out mother/wife/student/runner/worker

Storm in the Night/Weather Mini-Unit Study

We read the beautifully illustrated story, Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz (illustrations by Pat Cummings). This is the perfect cuddle-up-and-read book, especially during a storm.

We recorded the temperature from places all over the world. First, we would find them on the globe and then look them up on weather.com. 

After learning the basic water cycle, we made a cloud in a bottle!

Then rain in a bottle! (links at the bottom of post)

We read about rainbows and different types of clouds and painted our own with white paint and cotton balls.

We also worked on winter words, and Aidyn learned to spell some tricky words, including "icicle"! 

Wish I had more pictures to share!

Forecast for the Future~

I am in the middle of a huge undertaking, but we're only in the pre-planning/dreaming stages. We are heavily considering making a trip to Walt Disney World in January 2015 (we'll need a year to save for it!). This will be a first-time experience for the whole family and the furthest east any of us has ever traveled.

As we have done in the past for Disneyland, I am planning a long unit study on Walt Disney World, which includes four parks and many, many different learning opportunities. Of course, most of the unit study will have little to do with the actual parks and will touch on themes within the parks, but I would like to include some stuff about Walt Disney.

I asked Aidyn which park he wants to focus on first, giving him a quick rundown of what each entails. He chose Disney's Hollywood Studios, which will have us learning about:

• the history of animation
• the history of film
• early Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s
• early film and television stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Lucille Ball,
• classic films such as The Wizard of Oz and Singing in the Rain
• sci-fi flicks of the 1950s
• stage shows
• and more!

In the meantime, we will be playing a little catch-up, reading holiday books, and enjoying the winter break together.

We're weeks away from a family vacation, at the end of which I will be running a half-marathon in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (as a tribute to my late father). 

I am still actively fundraising for the charity, so if you are interested in donating, please visit my page: Paula's Donation Page.

Links for the unit studies above:

Both Cranberry Thanksgiving and Storm in the Night are FIAR books.

Free Cranberry Thanksgiving Lapbook/Printables

Free weather unit study printables (including cloud/rain in a bottle experiment)

Pilgrim and Eastern Native American Figures

Sail on the Mayflower Game

Stellaluna (Bats) Unit Study

I'm behind on my posts but trying to catch up!

Post-Halloween, Aidyn and I learned all about bats with a Stellaluna unit study.

Stellaluna (by Janell Cannon) is a sweet story about a baby bat who loses her mother and lands among a family of birds. Stellaluna learns to adapt to her new life as a "baby bird" by eating insects, doing her best to perch upright, and sleeping during the night. When Stellaluna reunites with her own kind, she learns how wonderful it really is to be a bat!

Aidyn loved this story and the touching illustrations of Stellaluna's vulnerable eyes and her wacky face when she tries flying like a bird.

Reading:

We snuggled on the couch every day and read this story. After the first reading, we learned new vocabulary words with a set of cards I printed from a Stellaluna unit study on homeschoolshare.com.

Aidyn acted out each word as I read the definition, and we read back to see how Cannon used the word in her story. Then we played Vocabulary Bingo to practice the words.

The next day, Aidyn reviewed the vocabulary cards and chose a favorite word (clutched) and wrote his own sentence with it.

During the rest of the week, we read other bat-themed books like Bats at the Library and Bats at the Ballgame (both by Brian Lies), Bats (a nonfiction book by Gail Gibbons), Baby Bat's Lullaby (by Jacquelyn Mitchard) and Little Lost Bat (a sad little story by Sandra Markle). Aidyn independently read an easy reader called Batbaby Finds a Home (by Robert M. Quakenbush).

Science:

We were fascinated by bats' keen sense of smell after watching some YouTube videos about bats. Inspired by Delightful Learning, I set Aidyn up for a Batbaby Scent Experiment. I scented about six or seven cotton balls with different aromas and showed him his "baby" and let him sniff the scent. I then blindfolded him and let him try to find his lost baby.

He carefully smelled each baby until he found his own!

This scent activity delighted him. We also talked about echolocation, and he impersonated a bat navigating the night sky using echolocation.

He also watched the cartoon version of Stellaluna on YouTube.

Fun Food:

On the first day, I made Aidyn a bat PB&J sandwich with fresh fruit.

Later in the week, I made  him a watermelon bat and an orange bat.

Writing:

Each day after reading vocabulary cards, Aidyn wrote sentences with his favorite words. We also brainstormed some bat facts, and he wrote about his favorite fact and illustrated it.

Pretend Play:

Prompted by his own imagination, Aidyn donned his Spider-Man bath towel and pretended to be a bat. He called himself a "bean bat," a species he made up apparently. He flew around the house and used echolocation and his sharp sense of smell to collect beans. Throughout the day, he provided me with bean bat stats--their diets of fruit and meat, their habitats, their personality and the fact that they shifted from nocturnal to diurnal creatures depending on if they stayed with humans or not. He also said they were gliders, not flyers, and demonstrated said ability all over the house.

We thoroughly enjoyed our little bat unit study! We're still reading Roald Dahl books, and just finished George's Marvelous Medicine. Aidyn is still honing his reading skills and loving math and ukulele practice.

Here's Aidyn playing the opening music of Super Mario Bros.

We have begun a fall/Cranberry Thanksgiving unit study. Last year we covered Cranberry Thanksgiving and had so much fun we want to do it again. Check back soon to see what we do!

Adventureland: Indiana Jones and India Unit Study

With the excitement over finally reaching the required height for the Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye ride at Disneyland, Aidyn has been intrigued by the adventurous archaeologist and his harrowing journeys.

He has seen all three of the original Indiana Jones movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade.

*Disclaimer: The Indiana Jones series range from to PG-13 to PG ratings, and some scenes are not "appropriate" for younger viewers;therefore, I make no claims that all children should or could watch them; however, we have always had dialogue with our son about fiction/non-fiction and special effects, and when we provide context to something, Aidyn is usually capable of understanding it well enough to not be afraid/sensitive.*

He loved all three but The Temple of Doom in particular. We began reading the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom chapter book, but the language was a little out of reach for Aidyn, so we switched our unit study to India, the country in which Indy has his adventures in the film. To be fair, the movie could generate some flat stereotypes about India and its people, so I sought to find relatable books and stories from India to introduce us to its character.

(The book Monsoon is upside-down so it looks like Noosnow! Haha!)

The Road to Mumbai by Ruth Jeyaveeran follows two companions, Shoba and her monkey, Fuzzy, as they travel to a wedding in Mumbai. In trying to find the wedding, they pass many inhabitants of India, including a camel named Ismael, a boy named Anil who sells coconut water along the roadside, silent monks, and women in beautiful saris, among others. This story is a sweet presentation of India's rich and colorful culture. Aidyn particularly liked the way the monkey was trying to sneakily discourage everyone from crashing the wedding.

After reading The Road to Mumbai, we found Mumbai on our wall map and traced their journey on the map provided at the back of the book.

Monsoon by Uma Krishnaswami plops readers right into the hot, dusty and windy climate of India as a young girl and her family wait with anticipation for the monsoon rains. Even though she fears the monsoon rains will cause a flood, she eventually understands the importance of both the dry season and the torrential downpour of rain. She learns to have patience, to trust her Nani's experience, and to read the skies for signs of the monsoon. This gorgeously illustrated story is a vivid portrayal of the climate in India, which differs from ours in California.

I was a bit wary at first of reading The Story of Little Black Sambo, a "banned" book, to Aidyn as it has a controversial history, but after picking up this Christopher Bing-illustrated version, with its beautiful and magical artwork, I knew I could not pass it up. We're so glad we didn't! The Story of Little Black Sambo, also known as The Story of Little Babaji, is a fable about a boy who trades his grand pieces of clothing and umbrella to the Bengal tigers who threaten to eat him. Eventually, the tigers, who concern themselves with fighting over which is the grandest for having such clothes, erupt in anger and stubbornness, allowing Sambo to not only escape but to profit from his quick thinking.

After reading the story, we talked about fiction vs. non-fiction and the fanciful elements that make the story magical.

What I loved about the illustrations were the collage-type artwork preceding and following the story. The antique postcards, journals, and maps contain the feel of Adventureland, a piecing together of old relics, maps to adventures, and personal diaries of explorers.

For more factual information about India, we read India (Globe-Trotters Club) and learned about the geography of India (their two major rivers and tall mountain peaks), how India "crashed" into Asia millions of years ago (forming the Himalayas), the modes of transportation in India as well as Ganesh, the Hindu god of wealth and wisdom who keeps travelers safe, family life in India, how they dress, how and when they do school, and how to use our fingers to count the way they do.

 To learn more about the dangerous wildlife, we watched Deadly Dozen: India on Netflix. Here is a clip about Bengal tigers from the same show:

Inspired by the big cats in this episode and the ones illustrated in The Story of Little Black Sambo, we each drew a tiger. Here's Aidyn's:

Aidyn also watched an episode of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones in which he and his parents visit India and he befriends a kind Indian boy who teaches him to play cricket.

We also did a couple of brainstorms as we learned more and more about India.

Before moving on from India, Aidyn placed their flag on our world map.

 Aidyn also watched one of our favorite short films, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

And yesterday, as a wonderful capstone to our India unit study, we watched Life of Pi. What a remarkable film. As soon as the credits rolled, Aidyn asked to see it again. Here is a trailer below:

And now we're off to The Jungle Cruise to learn about different animals and their habitats (including the savanna and rainforest biomes). Check back next week!

Prehistory and The First Dog

This week, we traveled back in time. Way back in time.

We spent a week learning about prehistoric man (and woman, and child, and even dog!) through books, videos, projects, and play-acting.

Throughout the week, we rowed The First Dog by Jan Brett. Brett is an amazing writer and illustrator so, despite this book not being available on homeschoolshare.com, it was super easy to row it.

The story is about a cave boy named Kip who finds Paleowolf following him around, sniffing and whining for his leftover Wooly Rhino Rib and  getting him out of trouble with the other dangerous animals. It's not until Paleowolf saves Kip from the Saber-Tooth Cat that he realizes that he and Paleowolf would make excellent companions.

Day #1: Art

On early Monday morning, I made a cave behind our living room couch. I cut apart paper bags, crinkled them, smoothed them out and makeshift-wallpapered them. When Aidyn woke up, he climbed around in his cave, and that is where we read our book for the first time.

 

Afterward, we cracked open Cave Paintings to Picasso,  a children's book about art. I read about the cave art discovered in Lascaux, France by four boys and their dog. As I read, Aidyn colored a picture of cave art for our timeline.

On Monday, we also watched Walking with Cavemen, a spectacular show about early man, starting with Australopithecus afarensis.

Of course, the episodes garnered many questions.
Why did they live in trees?
Why did they have so much hair?
How did they change?
How long did it take us to change like that?

He was particularly irritated that it did not show a clear metamorphosis, that it just jumped from one species to another. We consulted The Best Book of Early People to see a clearer progression of our march through time.

Day #2: Math and Science

While reading The First Dog on the second day, we counted the different illustrations of wolves, mammoths, and sabor-tooth cats. Afterward, we counted the bone beads and arrowheads we had picked up at The Bone Room In Berkeley and made patterns and letter shapes.

Aidyn also watched an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy on evolution. Here's part one of the episode we watched:

We kept up the dialogue about cave people and read Mammoth by Patrick O'Brien.

We learned all about mammoths and that they were one of the last prehistoric creatures to die off!

We also read a chapter or two from The Magic Tree House: Sunset of the Sabretooth  each day.

Day #3: Language Arts/Poetry

On Day 3 of reading The First Dog, I asked Aidyn to keep an ear out for descriptive words. I gave him some examples, and he was able to locate others pretty quickly. We discussed the power of description, how it can help us visualize sights, scents, sounds, tastes, and feelings. We compared the two sentences:

I have some food.
I have a big bowl of steaming, hot, buttery popcorn.

He was eating a bowl of celebratory ice cream at the time so he went into a full-on description of its yummy goodness. Then we read two poems about color, "What is Pink?" by Christina Rosetti and "What is Orange?" by Mary O'Neill. After discussing them, we talked about the color brown and what it looks and feels like. The result was this dictated poem:

Brown looks like beans, a roof, worm food, and caramel.
Brown sounds like dust.
Brown feels like dirt and mud.
Brown smells like mud and poop.
Brown tastes like dirt and the "worms in mud" that my Mama makes.

Inspired by Bill Nye, we also conducted a light science experiment. In his episode, Bill Nye explained that some plants have adapted to survive practically any condition. Moss is one of those die-hard plants. We found some moss growing near our home. As instructed, we tossed some clumps of moss in the blender with some milk and liquified the poor thing.

Aidyn, adding the milk.

Apparently it is hilarious to disintegrate moss and taunt it to survive.

 

After, we poured it outside. And now we play the waiting game to see if moss has, in fact, evolved to survive any kind of harsh treatment.

 

Day #4: light animal study

On the fourth day of reading The First Dog, Aidyn made a wolf mask and colored a wolf picture for a mini-book. He roamed in his cave and play-acted as a hungry paleowolf.

 

 

Later in the day, we played History Bingo, with cave people-related words and phrases in the boxes and pulled questions from a hat. Types of questions included: What did scientists name the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton they found? Early people used this type of plant as a wick for stone lamps. Homo habilis was the first to use stones as what?

 

 

In our freetime, we also watched a couple episodes of the Walking with Beasts series, particularly the one on Australopithecus and sabretooth cat. We also watched Clan of the Cave Bear twice, though I kept alert to fast-forward through certain scenes.

 

We also ate "cave food." I made roasted mini-mammoth legs (chicken drumsticks) and wild turkey soup (a mix of celery, carrots, onion, turkey, broth and wild rice).

 

We had such a blast learning about early people and prehistoric beasts! I could have probably stayed with the subject for another week, but he's bugging to move on to Egypt.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Unit Study

For the first week of homeschool, we started with a gentle unit study of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault (same duo who wrote one of our favorites, The Ghost Eye Tree) and illustrated by Lois Ehlert who has illustrated and written many beautiful children's stories.

 

 

We rowed the book for five days. At the start of each day, I would read it and we would focus on a specific aspect of the book.

 

 

Day 1: Rhyme and Palm Tree Art

 

 

On Day One, we found the rhymes in the story and made up new ones. Then Aidyn painted a "forearm and palm" tree.

 

 

 





Day Two: Math

On the second day, we counted the letters in our names to see who had the most letters and who had the least letters.

Day Three: Patterns and Kitchen Fun

On the third day, we made an ABC pattern on the board and created ABC Kabobs. Prior to the lesson, I chopped up apples, bananas, and cantaloupes. Aidyn strung the fruit pieces in ABC order and devoured them happily.

Stringing away.

Speaking of food, we also snacked on these beauties:

Pudding cup base, smashed graham cracker sand, Pirouette mint wafer trunk, and Fruit Roll-Up leaves.

Cashew butter graham cracker sandwiches and Granny Smith apple leaves.


Day Four: Music and Collage Art

On the fourth day, we listened to a musical version of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

We also watched some videos about Lois Ehlert's art. It garnered many "oooo"s and "awww"s from Aidyn.

We then set out on a nature walk to gather supplies for our own collages. When we got back, we made these:

 

Aidyn's Yellow Man.

 

 

Mama's Ocean Scene.

 



Day Five: The Science of Coconut-Smashing

To the beat of Hawaiian music, we whacked open a coconut.

After the nail failed to do much, we switched to the chisel.

 

 Pouring out a little bit of coconut water.
In order to completely crack open the hard shell, we had to wrap the coconut in a towel and demolish it with a hammer. Aidyn proudly assumed that task.

 

This has to be the winning shot.

Afterward, we scraped our teeth on coconut meat and shredded some up for later.

We had a blast with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and while Aidyn was a little sad during our "last" reading of it, I'm sure we'll come back and read it again.

Many of these ideas came from Homeschool Share.