The Bird Unit!

We started a bird unit about three and half weeks ago and it's still going strong! My daughter is completely captivated by them! We filled up a bird feeder that my mom had given us and hung it outside the dining room window and have watched a male and female cardinal eat there several times a day. It's been lots of fun! I am going to post our pics and some of the lesson plans that I made for this unit so I hope you enjoy them! I have had to wing it for the last two weeks and have found many wonderful sources online. Another favorite for studying birds has been http://www.enature.com/! I made 20 or so three part cards for her to study and memorize so that she would recognize birds in our area! She has loved these! I got the pics from enature.com and the descriptions as well!


Bible- Proverbs 27:8 and The Ravens feed Elijah
http://children.calvarychapel.com/site/curriculum.htm
http://www.mssscrafts.com/crafts/collages/fedbyravens.htm
She did a need collage using various materials to assemble the scene for the Bible story.

Geography- We love Mr. Nussbaum's stuff on birds! http://www.mrnussbaum.com/

Science- Burgess Book of Birds is a wonderful resource! We read about cardinals and started a cardinal lapbook page in our nature journals! We got these great lapbook printables at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ and she colored one of the egg cards the color of a cardinal's egg. She wrote little facts on the other eggs.

Craft- Bagel Birdfeeders which consisted of a half a bagel, some peanutbutter and some bird seed, neatly displayed on a white ribbon!

Snack Time- People Feeders which consisted of half a bagel, cream cheese and trail mix with sunflower seeds! Surprisingly, these were a big hit!

Bible- Manna and Quail- Calvary chapel curriculum site

Geography- A state a day sheets from http://www.holdthatthought.com/

Science- Burgess Bird Book and The Flying Lesson (library book 3rd grade reader)

Read Aloud- Started My Side of the Mountain! All my kids have enjoyed this book. It is written by Jean Craighead George and is a trilogy about a young boy who runs away to the catskills mountains to live off the land and find his grandfather's old homeplace. Sam takes a baby peregrine falcon from its nest and raises it! This book is truly a living book! Chidlren learn much about wildlife, survival in the wild, animals and nature! They also learn that there truly is, no place like home! Mrs. George wrote many books that are wonderful reads, but this is our favorite!

This is severly OT, but I sat down to eat dinner with my family (there are 6 of us) and I suddenly had a profound appreciation for paper plates! I love not having to do dishes on busy nights! The way I look at it, I save money on hot water to run the dishwasher, I save my hands and I don't have to use dish washing detergent. We had French's Fried onion crusted chicken! The recipe's on the back of the canister! It was great with scalloped potatoes, jello salad (compliments of my daughter) and steamed broccoli!

Workbox Wednesday

Well, I'm still here! It's been a while, but with school, a household, a family of 6, a new Border Collie Puppy,.....well.... you get it. I have discovered workboxes (Thank you Sue Patrick!) My two youngest children literally cry when we don't do them! My 1st grader who loves geography, told me one day that she didn't think she could do her geography. When I asked why, she said, " It's just..... I just can't wait to see what's in my other boxes!" These things are the best thing since sliced bread! They're easy, they're organized and you can cover every subject, everyday with no hassle. I love them!!!!!!! This is my Workbox Wednesday post. Hope you can glean something from it...

This is a neat little fruit loop graph I printed from somewhere? The three year old had fun with it and then ate all the loops!

This FABULOUS little printable came from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ under the workbox section! She loves tracing the letters. I laminated them and she uses her finger and then a dry erase marker! They coordinate with the Handwriting Without Tears Program! That's the only program to use for handwriting.... IMO!

This is the snack drawer! They love this drawer!

This was one of those $.60 little clear plastic suncatcher's from Walmart and the paints to go with it.

This is the 7 yr old's HWOT notebook and some little cards I made up with spelling activities on them. Right now, she is working on capitalization rules so the first card says "Always capitalize the names of people. Write the names of 10 people that you know."

This is her Montessori bead bars and a worksheet.

We have an awesome Teachers/Parents Resource room at our local library and they had a wonderful Tic-Tac-Toe Time game that we have been doing! The 7 yr old loves it! She also loves the Logic Links. I got those at Amazon on the recommendation of Erica at http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/ She has awesome printables that I use alot as well! If you have a child who is 2-5, then check out her Letter of the Week Curriculum! It's wonderful!

This was a little phonics spinner that I found in my old supplies. There were several of them . She spends the spinner and then writes all the words that she can think of that end or start with that particular blend. It also helps me see what she can spell and what she needs to work on.

This great little coloring book came from http://www.answersingenesis.com/! There is one for all the different animal kingdoms. It has stickers too! The blue bag contains all the montessori three part cards that I made for her on birds of North America! She is really in to birds right now and we've been studying them and doing projects for 3 weeks!

This is something that I found on Amazon and they're basically little wooden blocks with magnets on the bottom. I printed off and laminated a sheet of graph paper to fit the blocks and they enjoy making designs with them. The blocks also came with a little booklet of pattern ideas so I laminated them and cut them apart and put one in her box with the blocks, a cookie sheet and the graph paper. She then duplicates it. I've learned that you can laminate anything !

Okay, here's a HUGE plug for Sparklebox.com (http://www.sparklebox.com/) THey have TONS of great printables on everything! They have a prek-1st site and then another site that is called K2 that goes up to about 4th grade! Check them out! This is a playdough mat for the 3 yr old! There are #s on the card and she puts that many playdough dots on the bug! They have all sorts of these. Just print them all off!

This was fun! http://www.kizclub.com/ We are studying the letters a-e and I printed these from kizclub and laminated them and strung a string in the door way and bought some of those tiny, craft clothespins and then told her she needed tohang out her laundry. I would call out a letter and she would hang it on the line! She was so proud of herself when she was through!

I love http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/ ! They have these wonderful little alphabet tubs that can be used for all sorts of stuff. The 3 yr old uses them for learning sounds and letters and the above picture is one of their tubs that I just dumped in a drawer for the 7 year old. I also put a notepad and pen and she has to spell all the objects in the drawer. I check them at the end of the day to see how she did or note any words that could become spelling words.

This is my 7 yr old's beloved geography folder! We use printables from http://www.holdthatthought.com/ and we use books from the library on each state. She does a state a day.

These are our Montessori continent boxes! I only have three of the seven for now. A relative is making them from plastic canvas and we've been sooooo excited about them! We're doing a continent a year. She is learning all the bodies of water, bays, gulfs, countries and states of North America, this year. We are learning about the different people, animals, food and clothing of this continent as well! These boxes are made from plastic canvas that is scotch guarded. The inside is made of strong, foam core type boarding and they are big enough to hold a 9x12 folder. They're 5 inches deep and can hold LOTS of stuff! We really enjoy these!

Growing up......

This is my baby.... sigh...... So grown up looking. Where does the time go?

Fairies...

Have you ever wished for one of those cleaning fairies to pay you a visit? Well, I have! when I came down stairs to cook dinner, I found two of them in my pantry! The six year old thrives on order and structure. She told me that it needed cleaning out and organizing and that she and her sister were gonna do it!

Thank you A!

More Montessori Activities

Science ExperiThis was the coolest experiment we've done all year! Here's what you need: baking soda, dropper, small bowl of white vinegar, shallow tray and a piece of white paper.

First, you sprinkle the four primary colors of drink mix on a tray.

Then, you cover it with a light layer of baking soda...

Then, have the child suck up some of the vinegar in the dropper and slowly drip drops of it onto the tray.



AMAZING! This was soooo fun to watch!


Then, she got a piece of paper and layed it over the top of the fizzing bubbles....her smile was worth it all! Sheer happiness!






SPACE!.......

Well, this is the product of the picture below. I still haven't figured out how to to get the pictures up here in the order I want, so this post may not make sense, but hopefully it'll spark some creativty for ya! LOL As you will see furthur down, we have been studying the planets. We also talked about how the astronaunts eat and drink in space. Tang has too much sugar, so we opted for the whole foods approach.

This is 2 year old little A juicing oranges! Who knew it could be so fun!


The snack for the day was "Moon Cheese" complete with craters and asteroid crackers.

Here, we used a medicine dropper base and several layers of clay to discuss what core sampling is and how they use this to find out what is in the center of the earth.

These are awesome little K-2 grade readers that I got from the library. They have just enough information and not a lot of technical facts that can give a 1st grader, brain fog.

This is a new activity that I came up with to help my 6 year old learn the difference between odd and even. You need, a pair of dice, a paper with odd and even printed at the top, a little spoonful of Nutella or other dip, and a bowl of mixed nuts.

Have the child roll the die or dice and guess at whether the number rolled is odd or even, then...

have them take out that many nuts and test their answer. Have them divide the nuts evenly between the two of you. If they are even then the child writes the number in the even column, if the number is odd, it goes in the odd column. Then, you can dip your nuts in the nutella and eat them!

Can you say frustrated? She insisted on dumping all the wooden color cards out of the montessori sorting box and then when I asked her to pick a certain color she got overwhelmed and this is what we got. Needless to say, I put all but about 3 different colors out on the mat and that helped. It's very important to minimize the frustration a child may feel when presented with a task, especially a new one.

If you're squeamish in the least, you might wanna skip this post. The above picture, ended up being our science lesson the other day. It's a dung beetle as best as I could tell. My 6 year old discovered it while watching our chickens. She kept coming to the garden and telling me that the dirt and sticks by the chicken coop, were moving all by themselves. Upon further investigation we discovered these little critters and her and her sister watched them for about 30 minutes. She refused to draw them in her nature journal though. Little A kept yelling, " Doog Beevils!"

This is my 11 year old below. I found her down by the basement door with this.....It may only look like a piece of purple cloth, but ....

she dyed it herself....

with squished blackberries. When stuff like this starts appearing around the house, I know she's been reading again. She and her older sister were born in the wrong time period. They would proabably be much happier in say..... the 17 or 1800s! Oohhh the pictures I could post.

Montessori's mortar and pestle idea, what else can I say? My 2 year old loves it, my 6 year old loves! Little A prepared the snack for the day. She crushed the vanilla wafers in the bowl...

peeled the banana...

cut the banana (in odd shaped chunks, I might add...

dipped the banana pieces in the crumbs...

stuck in a frilly toothpick...

and did it all with a smile! Move over Rachel Ray! Who'd have thought something so simple would ticle a child so much? They were quite tasty, too!

This is Big A doing her magnetic or non magnetic activity and no, she is not attached to a wall by her rear end. That's just the angle that the picture was taken. I used my canning lid magnetic wand and just made two columns on a piece of paper and she tested each object in the bowl and deposited them in the proper category.

This was lots of fun for little A. I bought a $4 box of pink plastic jewels of different shapes and sizes, from Walmart and a pair of tongs. It took her a few minutes to figure out how to hold them, but she finaaly figured out what worked best. She transferred all the jewels to the jars and then realized that the big ones took up too much space, so she dumped them out, replaced the smaller ones and then looked at me. I asked her if there was somewhere else she could put big ones that were left and she scanned the room and brought back a little cup. She quickly filled it and then smiled at me with approval! It's amazing how much learning can take place with such simple activities. With this one activity, she worked on gross motor skills, problem solving, reasoning and spatial concepts.

This is my cheap solution to the montessori "Pink Tower" toy. Walmart sells these for 8 bucks. The kid put the tower up, on the first try! Saved myself $17 and she mastered that skill in a day

The 6 year old got the paper version of the pink tower and she, too, got it right, the first time.
Sometime homemade is just .....better. Not to mention, less expensive. The two hundred dollars I spent on Montessori Materials was spent on math and language stuff. I think I'll be happy. I got these from the http://montessoriprintshop.com $4. I just printed and laminated them.