Fall Fun

We had a great week of fall fun, especially with the weather being so beautiful!  

There were a few 70 degree days of trampoline fun with leaves!

Making our centerpieces: painted pumpkins, little acorn men (we can switch hats :) )  and a beautiful Saint Bouquet for our celebration of All Saints next week.

And a fun field trip to Port Farms  - always a favorite :) It was so nice out we were actually sweating!

Playing in the corn sandbox

 the corn maze

 I could barely pull the little ones away from Bessie the cow.  Water actually came out of the udders! I think they were practicing....we just got our cow back from the neighbor's bull and are hoping to be milking her soon!  They're pros now :)

Now we're preparing for our annual All Saints party...we can't wait!

I love science!

It's official...I love science! I could have cared less about it back when I was in school and now I'm fascinated by it.  I remember my mom always saying the same thing about herself.  Whenever we'd go to a museum growing up, she'd always want to stop and read everything....and we'd just want to keep walking.  Well, I guess maybe I'm officially grown up because now I'm so interested in all of it...science, history...  I love it!  I love being a homeschool momma. I feel like I'm going to know so much after years of homeschooling.  I can't believe what I've learned so far and our oldest is only in 2nd grade!

So this year we're using Real Science Odyssey - Earth and Space.  A whole year dedicated to earth and space.  Their curriculum is so hands on - it's all labs and so much fun!  I always look a week or two ahead and see what their recommended books for the lesson are and search the Erie County library database and put them on hold.  How wonderful that the library will do that for you and all for free! They send them from libraries all around and I just pick them up here - awesome!  The books really help them get a handle on the information even better!

Here are some pictures of our two labs this week.

For our first lab, we were studying 'what's inside the earth?'.  We had to make a pizza, which was the earth sliced in half.  The white cheese was the mantle, the yellow cheese (which would have worked better if I had cheddar, I only had colby jack) was the outer core and the tomato was the inner core.  Yum, Yum.  Then we filled out our corresponding lab sheets.

Comparing it to our Ms. Frizzle book ' Inside the Earth'...

Our second lab was about rocks and minerals.  Dad nor I could even remember the difference between them.  Just a little cheese helped us to :)

The top three circles (I found some cheddar cheese by then!) were the minerals (pure substances) and the bottom three were the rocks (minerals mixed together)!  Love it!  The littles just wanted to eat the minerals and rocks :)

..and this was him this morning writing in his nature journal. This morning we watched the combine cutting the soybeans across the street...so that's what his entry was about.

And that's our science week!

Our first lapbooks!

We finished our first lapbooks of the year probably about a month ago, but I'm finally getting to blog about it now!  My oldest chose 'Wild Dogs' and I chose "The Grouchy Ladybug" for my preschooler.  

Homeschool Share  has tons of free lapbooks on everything you can imagine! 

So, I only took pics of my younger son doing his lapbook - it was his first one and he loved it! I totally suggest doing these.  They always feel such an accomplishment looking at them over and over and showing them to the grandparents!

We read "The Grouchy Ladybug" MANY times.  I had him do one of the mini books every day or so.  Here he is putting together his mini book comparing it to the real book...working on telling time and retelling of the book.

The directions for this lapbook had so many other fun ideas....foods to make, extra time telling activities, math games, etc.  We didn't get to all of them, but the ones we did, we really enjoyed.  

 Here's some Montessori 3 part cards that I got for free from Montessori Print Shop that I thought would go along perfectly!

  Here we are matching the uppercase to the lowercase. 

Matching the number of spots to the correct number. (and yes I vaccumed after taking this picture and seeing how dirty my rug was!)

There were a few activities to learn about insects...he did very well.

He had a cute little helper this day labeling the parts of the ladybug!

Fun activity they suggested to 'see' the actual size of a whale versus a ladybug!  We measured 45 ft and unrolled toilet paper for the what....the ladybug was a little rock!  We laughed at the little ladybug saying "Hey you, wanna fight" to the big whale and saying "you're not big enough"!

And after all of the mini books are finished, we assembled it in a lapbook (some file folders folded and stapled certain ways to make a book).  You can find videos on making them on youtube.

Little man had to join in with his own "be be ba ba" (that his language for bug) cards. 

Retelling the book with his own cards...

And finally here's the only picture I have of my 2nd graders Wild Dogs lapbook...

it was the smallest one he's made so far, but he really enjoyed it too!

They started their new lapbooks this week.  Oldest chose "Eagles" and I chose "The Human Body" for the younger - it's going to be a big one.  We've already enjoyed doing a bunch of activities and little books for both of them.  Today we picked up a bunch of books from the library on the topics...I'll let you know when those are finished!

Continent study - Australia

This year I decided to study a continent every month during the school year.  One wall in the dining room has been set aside as our continent wall:

As we get more things for the continents, I will add them (this time I added all the flags after this picture was taken to the wall).  The top purple box is my continent box. Since this is our first year, we just have some basic items, but I'm hoping to add cool things from that country when I'm able in the future.  I'm sure we'll use these boxes for many years.  So...what's in the box...

 I printed out a bunch of items from www.montessoriprintshop.com, including 3 part cards for landmarks, instruments, and animals.  There's a tutorial somewhere on there on how to use their 3 part cards.  I also bought and printed their geography folder for Australia.  The map on top is from a game we have called Where in the World.  

The bottom shelf in the top picture has all of our library books that I got out on Australia.  The blue box next to it is everyone's favorite.  It's our continent sensory bin.

I put a bunch of beans, measuring cups, spoons, flags and the Australian Land Down Under Toob animals.

This got MANY hours of play by everyone!

We did one or two activities every week (5 weeks total).  Here we are the first week coloring the continent.  The second week we added pictures of animals on our picture.  The third we added the one and only saint (well, Blessed Mary MacKillop) onto our picture and talked about her life.

We did a few lessons with our 3 part cards.  They really liked these.  The animals was the only one the preschooler liked...he matched the animals from the toob to the cards. 

Here's doing the landmark cards

He decided his favorite part of Australia was the Great Barrier Reef...so we explored it more!  We watched You Tube videos on it, painted it and then he wrote his first essay on it and drew a picture :) It turned out very well.

When learning our instruments, we watched some videos on didgeridoos.  You must watch these.  They are so neat.  Three summers ago we were blessed to have a man who learned from the Aboriginees come to our little local library and play for us.  

Of course we also had to watch some extra Wild Kratt videos on Australian animals and make boomerangs!

For our final Australian treat, we made Pavlova for dessert one evening. It was super tasty!

That's all for our Australian month!  We started Antarctica today and will let you know about it next month!