Lizard Skin

We've seen lots of snakes skins at the Reptile
Centre, but hadn't ever seen a lizard skin. Our
readings about reptiles talked about how lizards
shed their skins whole. Today we were excited
to find a nearly complete lizard skin (about 6
inches/15cm long) floating in the water.

It's so great when nature reinforces our home
learning!! Yes, LD wanted to take it home and yes
(of course) I let him. Sometimes I'm more excited
than the kids! Just call me nature-Mama!!

Active Math Games: 1 The Math Snail

This week I'm moving away from the theme time table
and am focussing on some active math games instead (I
only have so much energy to get things organized and set
to go!).

The kids were beside themselves to get outside to see
what I was up to with the chalk last night! This is a math
snail. LD is doing the addition problems.

DD is practicing either saying the number (in light pink,
it's very difficult to see the pink numbers in the photo but
they're on the left side of each square) or telling me what
number comes next.

Active Math Games: 2 -- Left and Right

This is good for coordination and for practicing
the concept of left and right. The kids have to
cross one foot across the other.

Active Math Games: 3 -- Math Splat!

I drew circles and placed numbers up on the
outside wall. The kids had to dip a sponge in
water and splat a number.

LD worked on the 13 number family. If he
got a 7 for example, he had to figure out which
number makes 13 (answer=6). This is the
first time he's done the 13 family, so there's
a sheet for him to look at for help.

Once again DD worked on "comes after." So
if her sponge hit 3 she had to tell me the next
number (4).

The kids had a BLAST with this and we did
math problems with this for at least a half-hour
straight. If LD got me with the sponge he had
to answer THREE problems!!


























P.S. This doubled as time for me to pull some weeds!

Active Math Games: 4 -- Contact Paper Math

This week our living room carpet has been dectorated
with math problems (we don't have a separate homeschool
room or area). LD's doing the space themed addition
problems. DD is doing "what number comes next."
And ED can't ever be left out, so she get to jump on "1,2,3!"

I did this earlier in the year (with different problems) and it
really helped cement in some of LD's addition facts. It was
easy to say "go jump on the problems" before you put on
your shoes (or whatever). They lasted well for a week and
looked ratty after that.

The contact paper doesn't leave any residue behind when
you remove it from the carpet.

Vertebrates: Birds (3-part cards and bird videos)

Here are the bird cards I made (link to download is on the sidebar). There are smaller photos as well, but I wound up not using them (oh well), but they do tell you where these birds are located.

Anyway, I chose these particular birds because I selected some short (3 to 8 minute long) videos from you-tube that I chose to show the kids.

Today after sorting the five vertebrate groups (substituting these new bird cards for the others) we watched the following bird videos. I started with the galah and lyrebird (of Australia) today because they are familiar to the kids. We see galahs daily and we've read a wonderful series that includes a lyrebird as one of the characters:

Galah (this is just a 30 second clip of galahs walking around and perched in trees, but remember we see them daily!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcA17Hn2NZk

Humming Bird (set to Mozart): This video shows a hummingbird sitting on eggs, the eggs hatching and the hummingbird caring for its young. It was a little over 8 minutes long, but even ED watched it through to the end. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHo2Ch_SPbo

Lyrebird is a wonderful immitator. In this David Attenborough video you hear the lybird not only immitating other birds such as the kookaburra, but also a camera clicking, a chainsaw and a car alarm! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

Finally, we watched a parrot talking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSXSOEiv3N0&feature=related just because if was funny to hear a bird singing and seeming to talk to its owner.

----------------
Here's what I picked out for another day this week (probably not tomorrow because we have a lot going on, but for Wednesday or Thurdsay):

Rainforest Birds:

Toucan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ExbebXMw1M

Eagle vs. the Chevrotain (African Rainforest): This is an exciting video from National Geographic showing an eagle hunting a small rainforest mammal called a chevrotain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GQbT2ljxs&feature=related

Costa Rica Birds: This in another National Geographic video which talks about how coffee plantations are taking over rainforest areas of Costa Rica and the dangers this poses for birds species. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs_NSL4XMYM

Flamingo and the massive volcanoes of the Andes Mountains: This is a BBC video that shows beautiful clips of the volcanoes of the Andes Mountains, its harsh environment and the beautiful flamingos that breed there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owsfdh4gxyc

The Homeschool Hop: 10 Random Questions

Time for a bit of fun this week. Just copy the 10 questions below and enter your answers after each one of them for this week's blog hop.

I can't wait to see all of your answers.

1. What time is it right now? 5:20pm, I'm making dinner

2. What are you wearing? my soccer uniform

3. What is your mood? great, I have an evening out (soccer followed by "Rhythms of Ireland" clog-dancing performance.  Hubby has the kids.)

4. What is one thing your children learned today? the 13s math families,

5. What did you (or are having) for dinner? laksa (for adults), chicken and spaghetti (basic ingredients of the laksa for the kids)

6. What's one book you are currently reading? The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell (about Alfred the Great of England)

7. What behaviour (in people) is the most common but also the rudest? not truly listening

8. What can you see out of your nearest window right now? a beautiful oleander bush

9. What are you currently praying for? Patience and strength to deal with a move around the world in a couple of months after 12 years here in this same town (especially leaving dear, dear friends).

10. What is your favourite hot beverage?  Bengal Spice Tea


The Home School Hop # 6
Join us every week and find other inspirational home school blogs . Have fun hopping from blog to blog and increase your blog followers . Hosted by Kylie @ Our Worldwide Classroom . blogspot . com

Invertebrates/Vertebrates; The Five Vertebrate Groups

The kids separated things into invertebrate and
vertebrate cards.

Then we talked about the five vertebrate groups.
I made the labels you see below. I printed the
fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles from
Montessori Materials. I used the reptile cards I made up because the
reptile cards available at montessori materials
are much smaller (They were made by someone
else.).


By the way, we're going to be sorting the vertebrate
groups again next week.  LD has expressed an interest
in birds (he made his own bird feeder and we went
on a bird watching trek last week). Anyway, I have
some you-tube videos to show LD this next week
and made bird cards that go with those videos.  The
cards are at the right and I'll share those video links
when I'm at the other computer at some point. 

UPDATE: In the years since I wrote this post, I created our own set of Vertebrate-Invertebrate cards. They are available at my new location, homeschoolden.com and are FREE to download!!: Montessori Cards Vertebrate-Invertebrate Groups and the 5 Vertebrate Groups.

I also made some World Animal Cards and showed how I used those at this post: Animals Around the World: Montessori 3-Part Cards

ANIMAL UNIT: Vertebrates - Invertebrates  We also have a new packet that we did when we studied vertebrates and invertebrates in more depth. You can find out more about our Animal Packet here (at our new location, homeschoolden.com):

It includes activities about the five vertebrate groups:

And also has various activities about invertebrate groups, spiders vs. insects, etc.

You might want to check out our one-minute video:

Homeschool Den Minute: Video Episode 1
Homeschool Science in Early Elementary

The links to these resources are here: Homeschool Science in Early Elementary (K-2) 

 

http://homeschoolden.com/2016/03/29/homeschool-science-early-elementary-k-2/

Math Resource List (K-2)

I wrote up a list of math resources I've come across some time back. This is an old posting, but worth a look for math resources (websites, games, activities) you might not have come across. My kids are young, so these websites are generally for K-2.

Math Resources List Part I -- Addition, hundreds board, skip counting

Math Resources List Part II -- Time, Place Value, Money Activities, Multiplication

Leave a comment if you know of more great math resources out there. Also if you could share some active (get-up-and-move) math games that have worked with your kids, I'd be grateful! I have a bunch of games set to go, but would love to add a couple fresh games in.

A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool

I wrote up a detailed post about our homeschool routine (I hesitate to even call it a schedule).  I took notes all day so I could show what a real homeschool day looks like here at the homeschool den. The link is in the right sidebar or click here.

We have various ways we keep our homeschool materials organized.  We use workboxes for most of our academic things (math, math games, various 3-part card activities (ie. Montessori type activities), handwriting, geography maps and activities, basic readers (Bob Books, Animal Antics), phonics games and that kind of thing.  We also have had a theme time table in the past couple of weeks that I've been changing daily (see link on the right sidebar or pictures below).  That said, I am definitely not a follow such-and-such curriculum to a T.  We pull materials from all over; I have a wide range of resources and teaching materials from days-gone-by (not to mention trips to the library where we borrow 20-40 books at a time!).

Anyway, probably the only one interested in the finer details of dishes, laundry and bouncing from kid-to-kid, activity-to-activity is me (in years to come) and the grandparents, but have a looksy if you're interested!!

Theme Time: Human Body

I set out some activities related to the human
body on Thursday, but we didn't get to them
until Friday.

On Thursday, we went to a wonderful show about
dinosaurs. It's a show based at the museum in
Sydney but they brought it here for a couple of days.
Essentially it was a puppet show with dinosaurs.
LD and DD both got to go on stage -- and LD was
also in the ultimate act--being "eaten" by an allosaur
(his head was fully in the puppet's mouth! The puppet
was 10 or 12 feet tall!)

Anyway here are some of the activities the kids did
related to the human body.

1) They put some body puzzles together.
2) They listened and had to match the wooden shakers.
3-4) And, they had to identify matching smells. I had
vinegar, peppermint, oyster sauce and vanilla on cotton
balls. They were blindfolded and tried to find the matches.

Theme Time: Human Body

In this activity we talked about various handicaps
and physical disabilities. Then we talked about
arthritis and how difficult it would be to be in
pain and have swollen joints and so forth. I then
taped Popsicle sticks to their fingers and they
tried to see if they could pick things up with
their fingers immobilized.

The last picture is of the inside of a pomegranate.
We had never had one before and tried it at
lunch. LD really liked it!

Princess Counting

I printed off princess bookmarks from here. (I
actually used the j-peg image so I could print
two sets (16 bookmarks total) on one page, but you
can also get the larger bookmarks in a pdf file there.
(It took several tries, but I did manage to view the
pdf file, just so you know.) I put a dot sticker on
the bottom with the numerals 1-19. I pulled out
our beads and DD has really enjoyed working
with them!! (She's working on the felt board
I made that folds up compact when not in use.)

Below is a wooden scrap booking set that I
saw when I went to a big craft store down South
last November. We've been meaning to pull
out the paints for DD to decorate it; we finally
did for the princess theme table. After the
paint was dry she and ED played with it a lot!

Theme Time: Princess

With two girls, we have lots of princess things
around. Since it really appeals to the girls, I see
no reason not to tap into their interests. So from bugs,
frogs and the outdoors one day--to princesses the next!

At any rate, the princess theme was a big hit
especially the wooden castle which DD painted
and the princess numbers/beads. We did lots of
building, puzzle making, read lots of princess books
and things like that.

Reptiles 3-part card; Pin-map activity

We've been reading lots of books on snakes,
chameleons, lizards and various reptiles. We
recently visited the Reptile Centre and yesterday
visited the Desert Park which has a great selection
of reptiles too. Did you know that you can easily
tell a legless lizard from a snake? Lizards have
ear slits and snakes don't. Though, with the snakes
we have here, I'm not sure I ever want to go close
to inspect for ear slits unless there's a nice thick
pane of glass between me and the snake!!






























This is an activity I made up to go along with the
talks we've been having about reptiles. It has a
selection of reptiles from around the world in various
biomes (rainforest, desert and tropical savanna).

I made both bigger 3-part type reptile cards
and smaller pin pieces of those same reptiles.

The first day, we just looked at the cards and
put them under the country flags and appropriate
biome cards (see the top picture).

Since I put the country name on the cards, I
made up little country flags for those countries
I mentioned. I helped him place the flags on the
world map before he put in the small reptile pin pieces.

He worked with seven reptile pin pieces and said
that it was challenging, so this is an activity
better suited for young elementary kids. (LD can
read very well.) If you have young kids you could
use the small pictures simply to match to the larger
reptile pictures instead.

The links to the free reptile cards (both the 3-part cards
and the pin map pieces) are on the right sidebar.