I: Interesting Insects

We are beginning a unit on insects and today talked a little bit about ants. We talked about how ants are not lazy, but instead, are very hard workers. We read the Bible verses Proverbs 6:6-9, talked about how we also need to be hard workers, and we learned our words to remember: "I am a wise child, so I work hard".

A great informational book about ants is "Ant Cities" by Arthur Dorros. It talked about various kinds of ants and the jobs they do in order to keep their ant cities alive.

We also read a cute fictional book called "Ant and Honey Bee What a Pair!" by Megan McDonald, a short books titled "Can an Ant Carry Me?" by Meg Greve, and another great informational book called "Bugs Are Insects" by Anne Rockwell.

One interesting fact that we read about in the "Bugs Are Insects" book was that all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. Did you know that?! I sure didn't. I thought the word "bug" and "insect" could be used interchangeably, but that's just not so. So it isn't just the kids who are learning new things in these lessons we're doing!


We discussed briefly the life cycle of an ant, and we also talked about how to determine if something is an insect by counting its legs (6 of them) and the parts of its body (3 of those).


After having our Ants on a Log snack, in the shape of an "I", for Insects of course...

...we headed outside to go on an insect hunt. I gave each child a container and we caught various bugs in them and observed them for a few minutes before letting them go again. We found all kinds of insects..


ants...

bumblebees...

Monarch butterflies...

other kinds of moths and butterflies...


and even some other name-unknown insects...

I had the chance to explain to the kids the concept of camouflage because of this insect that looked just like the tree trunk.

We even saw a couple of these big arachnids hanging out in their webs, and discussed how they are not insects because they actually have 2 parts to their body, and 8 legs.
(I'll admit it, I find these creature to be pretty gross, but my kids sure enjoyed observing them, so that's what matters most!)

More on insects next week!

Fire Station Field Trip

We recently went to a fire station open house where they were having a bunch of activities for the kids to participate in. I thought it was the perfect field trip to accompany our lesson on fire safety.

The kids were able to hold a real fire hose and practice putting out a fake fire...


we got to a have a ride in a real firetruck...

and Madison even got to sit in the front and pull the horn...


Some other activities not pictured are:

• saw a demonstration of what could happen if you get in a car accident and you weren't wearing your seat belt
• met Smokey the Bear
• they got to practice what to do if there was a fire in the house - there was a room that filled up with theatrical smoke and the kids had practice crawling on the floor and escaping out the window
• had their pictures taken on a firetruck
• got to try on a fireman's gear

It was a great, free outing that was not only fun, but educational as well!

Fire Safety and Prevention

October is Fire Prevention Month, and I thought it would be a good idea to take a break from our regular curriculum for the day and do a lesson on fire safety. We talked about the smoke detectors and also about what to do if there is ever a fire in the house - our escape routes and our meeting place outside. We talked about Stop, Drop, and Roll and how we should NEVER play with matches or lighters.

I found a number of fun fire-themed activities online to do with the kids and feel like they now have a good understanding of fire safety. Hopefully we will never encounter the need to put our lessons into practice, but as the old adage goes, "better safe than sorry"!

Yesterday at our library's story hour, they read books and talked about fire safety. Then they made this dalmatian by dipping their thumbs into black paint.

For our snack, we constructed houses out of pretzels, then sprinkled on shredded cheese for the fire. The kids had fun putting out the fire by eating it!

The kids wore their fire hats while coloring some pages.

I found this great YouTube video called Fire Truck by Ivan Ulz. It's a sing and read storybook and my kids loved it so much, we watched it 3 times. It was a fun video, but now the song has been stuck in our heads all day.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emv-Yn6g1r4)

I found this idea online to demonstrate Stop, Drop, and Roll, but I can't remember what site the idea came from. I cut strips of red paper and taped them to the back of the kids' clothes. The strips of paper also had a piece of tape rolled and attached to the outside of it as well. The kids had to Stop, Drop, and Roll in order to put the "fire" that was on their clothing out.

Madison looks at her results - the fire was removed from her clothing. See the "fire" pieces on the floor?

Noah gives it a try

and also has success!

I found this great fire safety booklet online and printed it off. The kids and I went through each of the pages and discussed the topics presented. I would recommend this for a simple, kid-friendly way to approach fire safety!
(found on http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fr/download/firesafetycoloringbook2004.pdf)

We read a couple books about firetrucks

A sight word activity - I printed off pictures of houses and flames that had various sight words printed on them. In order for Madison to "put out the fire", she had to read the words and remove the flame from the house.
(activity from http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/FireSightWordActivity.htm)

Noah was so intrigued with the activity...

...that he wanted to try it too. He got to remove the flame after repeating the sight word after me.

I found a clip art picture online of the interior of a house and printed it. Then I put drops of red and orange paint on the picture and had the kids spread the paint using a straw. It was a good lesson in teaching them how quickly and easily real fire can spread throughout the house.

Firetruck dot to dot
(worksheet from www.abcteach.com)

A trace and color firefighter page. Madison not only traced the firefighter, but she also added a hose, a burning building, and a firetruck to her picture.
(activity found on http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/FiremanTraceandColor.htm)

Fireman Domino Math
(worksheet from http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/FiremanDominoMathFun.htm)

A number-word match activity. Madison matched the number on the firetruck to the correct number word on the fire station.
(activity from http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/FireNumberWordMatch.htm)

A couple other things we did to follow the fire theme was all of us wore red shirts today, and we also had a "red lunch" consisting of hot dogs with red ketchup, leftover red chili, chips and red salsa, red apples, and red punch to drink.

Wowed by Water

We were gone for several days, so that's why you maybe noticed a lack in blog posts here. We returned home late Monday night, and yesterday was spent catching up on all those things one has to catch up when she has been away from the house for an extended period of time. But we're now back to our regularly scheduled events and we just finished up our unit on W: Water.

Here are a few highlights from our lessons:

We first talked about how "Jesus gives my spirit living water to drink" and I did my best to explain what that means. We read the story from John 4:6-14 in which Jesus tells a woman that He has living water to give her. It's not an easy concept for a 5 year old and an almost 3 year old, but I think they came away with a basic understanding of what that meant.

We learned about water as a liquid and how it doesn't matter what container it is in, it will always change its shape to match the container's shape.

We also learned about water as a solid and a gas. We did a variety of experiments to demonstrate these properties.
Not pictured: we took two ice cubes, placed one in a bowl in the refrigerator and the other one we placed in a bowl out in the sunshine. We first observed how the solid water maintained its shape in the bowl, unlike the liquid state. We then observed how long it took for each ice cube to become liquid.

For our water-as-a-gas demonstration, we watched how water evaporates when it boils. We watched all of the water evaporate out of our pan and discussed how it became water vapor in the air.

Each day we charted other items that fit into the categories of "Liquid", "Solid", and "Gas".

A final property of water that we discussed was the ability for some things to dissolve in water. I demonstrated this by showing how salt, when mixed into water, seems to disappear. Oil, on the other hand, when poured into water, remains separate no matter how much you try to stir it up.

I also decided to do a basic study on the Earth's water cycle. I know the vocabulary for this is a bit large for a kindergartner's brain, and my husband even remarked how he thought it was great that I was teaching our 5 year old words like "evaporation" and "condensation", but I was surprised at how well Madison actually went along with it. She was practicing her new word, "condensation" all day yesterday!
The kids colored pages and made them into a book, and we also did a couple experiments to go along with it (see above for the evaporation experiment).
(The pages for the water cycle book came from http://www.kidzone.ws/water/index.html)

To demonstrate condensation, I heated up some water and poured into a clear water bottle. I then covered the bottle opening with an ice cube. We could really see the condensation forming on the inside of the bottle. Now, according to a book I had, we were also supposed to see "fog" inside the bottle, but I just couldn't seem to get that to work for us. We tried the experiment several times, altering it slightly each time, and we could never get the fog effect. Not a big deal though, we just moved on.

This is a great nonfiction book that is packed with information about water and bath time. It had many water experiments and activities to try, one being the "fog attempt", described above.

We read "Make Way for Ducklings" by Robert McCloskey and talked about why water is important to animals like ducks. We also did a Math worksheet called "How Many Ducks in the Pond?"
(worksheet from http://www.tlsbooks.com/ducksinpond2.pdf)

We read "Little Walrus Warning" by Carol Young and made our foam letter "w" into a walrus.
(idea from http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2010/05/now-i-know-my-abcs-w-is-for-walrus.html)

W: Lessons on Water

We've been working on"W" and water lessons for the past few days, and I'll be posting pictures from those lessons sometime next week. But in the meantime, I thought I'd show you how we are learning about water in a fun, hands-on way for the next couple days...

Onto "O" Objects

We just finished up learning about the letter "O". Yesterday was another rough day, so I'm beginning to wonder if I need to ban Thursdays from our school week. Last Thursday was a rough day and if I'm not mistaken, the week before that as well. What is it about Thursdays?!

Anyway, we managed to accomplish some things, but I feel like overall, this unit lack creativity on my part. Would you believe that I didn't even do a themed snack! The nerve! :-)

Onto our "O" objects...

We made octopus badges with our words to remember written on them: "Even the octopus praises the Lord", based on the Bible verses Psalm 104:24-25, Psalm 69:34, and Psalm 148:7. The octopuses were created by tracing the kids' hands (minus the thumbs).

We read the book "My Very Own Octopus" by Bernard Most, and then created our octopus foam letter "o".

The kids then drew pictures of what they would do if they had their very own octopus for a pet. Both of them said the octopus would help them clean their rooms. Can you tell that we have issues around here with cleaning up bedrooms?!

Remember the "The Butterfly Song"? I loved singing it as a kid! We sang that song and then created paper plate octopuses to go along with the verse "If I were an octopus, I'd thank you Lord for my good looks."

I thought they turned out to look more like jellyfish, but the kids loved their fine-looking octopuses, so that's good enough for me.
(craft idea from http://www.dltk-bible.com/butterflysong/octopus.htm)

Going along with the sea creature theme, we read the book, "A House for Hermit Crab" by Eric Carle. After discussing the book the kids illustrated their own Hermit Crab picture.

Madison worked on this Crabby Math worksheet.
(worksheet from www.tlsbooks.com)

A few other "o" things not captured digitally were: learning about the oceans - I printed off an outline of the world and we labeled the 7 oceans and talked a little bit about them; we named off a few opposites; and we talked about the octagon shape.

And to close...

This was probably the high point of the day yesterday. They weren't bickering, no one was standing in the time-out corner, I wasn't wanting to pull my hair out...they were just sitting next to one another, looking at books. Ah, peace.