Doing Dinosaurs

For the past two days we have been doing a study on D for dinosaurs. It wasn't an easy one to do, in my opinion, because so much information out there about dinosaurs doesn't line up with our Christian views. We did do some fun activities though, and the kids really enjoyed the unit overall.

Madison did some dinosaur addition using our dinosaur toys as visual aids.
(worksheet provided by www.tlsbooks.com)

I created this Dino Bones Math File Folder Game for Madison. She had to count the number of spots on each dinosaur and then write that number on them. Then for each bone equation, she had to count out the correct number of sticks to find the sum. She then had to match the sum with the correct dinosaur that had the number written on it.

There is also a subtraction version on it on the other side of the file folder that we haven't worked on yet.

(The idea for the file folder game came from http://filefolderfun.com/SubjectDinosaurs.html, but I did modify it a little)

We did a few more math worksheets - one set Madison had to determine what the missing number in the sequence was; the other worksheet she had to count the number of spots on the dinosaur and write that number in the lines.
(worksheets from www.makinglearningfun.com and www.tlsbooks.com)

We talked a little bit about extinction and fossils, then we created our own dinosaur fossil picture using pasta.

We glued sand to the picture as well to make it look like our fossils were being dug up in the dirt.
(idea from http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/Dinosaur-Bones.html)

It's really not easy finding books about dinosaurs that line up with our Christian views! Our curriculum suggested one book called "What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs" by John Morris and Ken Ham, but I was unable to get it. I did find some info by Ken Ham online that I just read to the kids regarding when dinosaurs were really created (during Day 6 of creation with all the other land animals!). I checked out a few other books from the library and just skipped over the pages that I didn't agree with. One such book was "Dinosaur More!" by Henrietta Stickland. It had some interesting facts in it regarding specific dinosaurs (how big they got, what they ate, etc.) and I let the kids pick out a couple for us to read about. They both wanted the Stegosaurus. I then had them draw a picture of the Stegosaurus (see photo below).

We also made our foam lowercase "d" into a dinosaur.

Madison's Stegosaurus picture and another picture of a dinosaur hiding behind a house. We read the book "Danny and the Dinosaur" by Syd Hoff. In that book, the dinosaur and Danny play hide and seek. So I had the kids draw a picture of where they thought a dinosaur would be able to hide if they played hide and seek with one.

Our dinosaur lunch consisted of bagels for the bodies, strawberries for the plates and the heads, carrots for the necks, raisins for the legs, and broccoli for the trees that our dinosaurs were eating.

(idea from http://www.preschooleducation.com/cdinosaur.shtml)

U: Part Two

We started the unit on "Us" last Friday, and we just finished it up today. We've been talking about our 5 senses all week and you can catch the post on the first 3 senses we worked on here.

Yesterday we worked on the "sight" sense and I'm not going to lie - we had a rough day in school. We started and stopped our school day 3 times, and after we finally got going, I spent more time dealing with meltdowns, tantrums, time-outs, and bad attitudes, than I did actual teaching. We managed to accomplish a little schoolwork (emphasis on little), but needless to say, I didn't get any pictures from our lesson on sight. We did do one sight activity where I collected 10 items and allowed the kids to look at them and try to memorize them. And then they had to close their eyes and turn around while I took one item away. They had to try guess which item was missing. It proved to be quite difficult for them, but I'm not sure if it was because it was actually difficult for them, or because of the attitudes we were dealing with. We did the activity a few times, but I could just tell that the enthusiasm wasn't there. So after trudging our way through a little more schoolwork, I just decided to call it a day.

So anyway, today was a new day. Before we began our school day, the kids and I talked and we all agreed that we wanted to have a good day at school, with good attitudes. And so we began. And it went MUCH better! Thank the Lord!

We worked on our "taste" sense today and with that, had a lesson on the Food Groups. I found a number of great printable worksheets on http://www.nourishinteractive.com/hco/free_printables#food_pyramid.

We went through The Food Pyramid and discussed what all the groups consisted of.


Then we built our own food pyramid using toy food. Madison and Noah had to tell me which food group each item went into, then we put them altogether into a pyramid shape.

(Worksheets from http://www.tlsbooks.com/kindergartenworksheets.htm)

(Worksheet from http://www.nourishinteractive.com/hco/free_printables#food_pyramid)


We actually have a nice, warm day today, so after lunch we went out and used a few of our senses playing in the great outdoors.

And that concludes the lesson on "Us".

Uniquely U

This week has been lessons on our 5 senses and the letter U. We have been learning about Us, and how God made us unique and wonderful.

We'll still be doing the 5 senses through the rest of this week, but I thought I'd show you what we have done so far.

The first sense we talked about was Touch. We read a variety of books on touch including a Touch and Feel book on tractors, and "What Happens When You Touch and Feel?" by Joy Richardson.

For one of our activities, I put a variety of items into a bag and had each child reach into the bag and try figure out what the item was just by feeling it. Some of the items included a hairy scrunchy, a wire dish scrubber, a battery, a block, lip gloss, a spoon, a beater, a ruler, an orange, a small ball, a silk leaf, and a tape dispenser.


After the kids figured out what all the items were, I then had them put socks on their hands and try the activity again. We discussed how it was much harder to feel the items with socks on our hands.

We did a similar activity for our Sound sense. I blindfolded the kids and then made a variety of sounds for them to guess. Some of the sounds included crumpling paper, zipping a zipper, jingling change, dropping a spoon, opening and shutting a book, and closing a door.

For another activity, the kids painted self-portraits. (Cousin Sydnee was visiting one day and participated in Kindergarten with us!)

Yesterday we learned about all our senses the fun way...baking! We made banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and zucchini bread. We talked about how we were using our senses and we discovered that our favorite sense that day was the sense of taste! Mmmm!

For the lesson on the smell sense, I blindfolded the kids and they had to try guess a variety of items just by smelling them. I had them smell apple sauce, black pepper, a candle, lemon juice, cinnamon, Nate's cologne, an onion, and some lotion. The kids were able to guess all the items and thought the activity was so fun that they went and found some items for me guess (one of which, was a dirty sock!).

We also discussed which items were good-smelling, and which items were bad-smelling. The unanimous verdict on the worst smell was the onion!

I found this worksheet where the kids had to sort the different smells and determine if they were smells they liked or smells they didn't like. It was fun seeing what they thought smelled good or not so good!
(Found on http://www.firstschoolyears.com/science/ourselves/ourselves.htm)

I found worksheets for all the senses on http://www.tlsbooks.com/kindergartenworksheets.htm. Madison, who normally doesn't care much for worksheets, has really enjoyed doing these and has asked to even do more of them!

I know the book shown is about the "seeing" sense (which we haven't done yet), but I returned the other books to the library already, and wanted to show you what the books look like that we have been using to learn more about our senses. Joy Richardson has several of them, and they have been great resources! Not only do they present the information in a kid-friendly way, but they also contain fun activities to do to reinforce the concepts.

As I mentioned, we have been talking quite a bit about how God created us unique, so we turned our foam lowercase "u" into a unique person!

We also created smelling flowers using paper, muffin cups, pom-poms, and a good-smelling body spray.

(Idea from http://www.twigglemagazine.com/March-activities/scented-flowers-craft.html)

More on the senses to come!

Persevering and T

We've been working on the letter T and have been talking about perseverance. We read the story of "The Hare and the Tortoise" and discussed it; we talked about the meaning of perseverance and ways that we may have to persevere in our lives; and we made turtle-shaped badges that said, "I don't quit. I persevere".

We also read the Bible story of Nehemiah and how he had to persevere in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, even when he met opposition. After reading the story, the kids drew a Nehemiah face on styrofoam cups (because Nehemiah was a cupbearer!) and we retold the story using the cups and some other props. There was a cup with a sad-faced Nehemiah (for when he went to talk to the king about feeling sad about the ruined city), a cup for a happy-faced Nehemiah (for when he was told he could go help rebuild) and some building blocks were the rubble.

The kids then had to build their own walls using the blocks.



It was a good lesson on perseverance because not only were they learning about the Bible story, but the walls they were building didn't always want to keep standing up, so they had to continue working on them!

We had a train snack using two types of crackers, cheese, pretzels, summer sausage, and bananas.

The fun thing about pretzels is that they can also be used for creating words - like MAT and FAN.

Roll and Color Turtle game - She rolled two dice and added up the sum of them. What ever number the sum was, she had to color that number on her turtle picture. This game started off to be pretty fun, but then we got down to only the numbers 4 and 12, and she just couldn't seem to roll those numbers! So then we added in extra dice to get to the number 12, and in order to reach number 4, both she and I were rolling a pair of dice. We finally got them, but it took us quite awhile!
(www.makinglearningfun.com)

Train Domino Addition - she picked a random domino piece from a few that I had selected ahead of time, and she had to count the dots on each side and write that number in the train car boxes. Then she had to add up the total sum of the dots and write that number in the engine box. I made sure that none of the sums went above the number 14, since that's the highest number we have worked on so far.
(www.makinglearningfun.com)

Counting by Tens Train
We used Q-tips dipped in paint to dab 10 dots above each train car. This project ended up being more messy than I would have liked, but that's a paint project for you!
(www.makinglearningfun.com)

A story about perseverance and our lowercase "t" train

And of course, there was the ultimate lesson in perseverance...

Not fully mastered yet, but definitely a good start on it!

T is for Telling The Truth

After 2.5 weeks of, in my book, success in the schooling realm, I knew it was only a matter of time before today hit. I know we are doing the right thing by homeschooling our children, but today I found myself wishing I could have just sent them both off to public school for the day.

We got a later than normal start to our day and I just couldn't seem to find my groove with the lessons. Things just weren't flowing, creativity was lacking, frustrations were running high, and it's cold and rainy outside. I also figured out the reason as to why elderly folks tend to repeat themselves so often. It's because they spent so many of their years raising children. The broken record syndrome seems to be upon me.

And so, I did what any good homeschooling mother would do. I put both kids down for naps and I found that bag of Dove chocolates from our Nest lesson.

Coincidentally, today's lesson dealt with perseverance...

We'll try that one again tomorrow.

Next: N

Yesterday and today, we have been learning all about the letter N, nests, and Noah's ark. We have learned that "God takes good care of me" by providing for us and protecting us, just like a mother bird does for her baby birds in the nest.

We made nest-shaped badges with our words to remember written on them: God takes good care of me.

Today we read the story of Noah and the ark, and how God took good care of Noah's family and all the animals on the ark. We then created an ark picture using pom-poms, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, stickers, and animal crackers. If you look closely, you'll even see that the dove sticker has a tiny little leaf glued to it's mouth, representing the olive branch from the Bible passage.

A lesson wouldn't be complete without a fun themed snack to go with it! For our nest theme, we enjoyed eating "Dove" nests, made from pretzels, chocolate syrup, and Dove chocolates for the eggs. Not exactly the most healthy snack, but mmmmm!

My kids are kind of on a book-making kick right now, so after reading "A House Is a House for Me" by Mary Ann Hoberman, which is a fun and creative book describing all kinds of different houses (i.e. a jar is a house for jam, and mitten is a house for a hand), we came up with some house ideas of our own and made them into a house-shaped book.

Noah's Book

A shell is a house for a turtle

A hill is a house for an ant

A lake is a house for a fish

A tree is a house for apples

Madison's Book

A hive is a house for a bee

A lake is a house for a fish

A cloud is a house for the rain

A tent is a house for a camper

In keeping with the home theme, we created these little hanging houses from craft sticks and construction paper. (idea from www.makelearningfun.com)

We spent some time talking about how birds make their nests and the types of materials they use. So we tried out our own nest-building skills. I emphasized the point that it's amazing how birds only use their beaks and their feet for building their nests, while we were able to use our hands and shovels for building our nest.

Our completed nest!

Right after building our nest, we were enjoying some free time in the beautiful sunshine, and this bird happened to fly by and perch directly above us on a low tree branch. The kids excitedly called up to it, "Hi little bird! We made a nest for you!" The bird didn't seem interested in our nest, however.

We read "Annie and Snowball and the Cozy Nest" by Cynthia Rylant and made our foam lowercase "n" nest. (idea from http://totallytots.blogspot.com/)

The kids also did a dot to dot page, creating the uppercase "N" and lowercase "n"

(found on http://www.printactivities.com/Theme-Printables/Alphabet-Letter-Printables.html)

A: All About Apples

The past couple days have been spent learning about the letter A and apples. I found that there are so many apple-themed activities out there to do. We probably could have stayed on the apple theme for weeks doing all of them!

We talked about the Fruits of the Spirit, and how "If I live in Jesus, I will have much fruit." We discussed what that meant and how we can demonstrate those fruits in our lives. We then made our own Fruits of the Spirit tree. We glued on brown paper for the trunk, traced the kid's hands on green paper and glued on for the leaves, and cut out and glued on little red circles for our 9 Fruits of the Spirit. I thought they turned out pretty cute!


I found this great counting game on mama-jenn.blogspot.com called, "Worms in my Apples". I cut out 10 apples from red construction paper, punched a different number of holes in each one, cut little "worms" from green pipe cleaners, then laminated the whole thing onto a file folder. Madison got to practice writing her numbers 0-9 with a dry erase marker, and both kids had fun adding the correct amount of worms to each apple.

For our Science/snack time yesterday, we made homemade applesauce. It was so yummy! It tasted just like apple pie filling.

During Math today, Noah put the Connect 4 pieces into the big grid, while Madison did a coloring grid. One page had coordinates on it using numbers 1-9 and letters A-K. Each space at the specific coordinate had to be colored a certain color to make one big picture. What was the final picture?...

You guessed it - an apple!
(I found the apple grid pages along with some fun apple-shaped dot to dot pages that we did, on www.makinglearningfun.com)

We picked a couple of apples off our own apple tree and taste-tested them. They were still a bit sour and tart, so we decided to make them into applesauce again, which turned out pretty yummy again!

We played a game of Alphabet Go Fish, using both uppercase and lowercase letter cards. Madison whalloped me by winning with 17 pairs to my 9!

We read a great book called, "How Do Apples Grow?" by Betsey Maestro, which talked about the various seasons and stages an apple tree goes through in order to produce apples. Madison made her own apple-shaped book and illustrated the four seasons of an apple tree.

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall

We read "The Story of Johnny Appleseed" and made our lower case "a" into - what else?! - an apple, of course.

(the foam letter craft idea came from http://totallytots.homestead.com/NowIKnowMyABCslowercase.html)