MOOre on Cows

So what was our science experiment yesterday? Well, I put some whipping cream in a jar, spent a whole lot of time (and hopefully a whole lot of calories!) shaking it up...

and what did we get?! Butter!

Of course, we had to do a taste test. It passed.

Then today, despite having this going on outside,

the kids and I braved the weather and headed to the library for Story Time. The roads were horrible, and that was just the in-town roads, driving the 7 blocks to the library. In fact, I almost got stuck in our driveway, so we almost didn't make it to the library. I can't imagine what the country roads look like today! All the kids dressed up in costumes for Story Time, and my daughter, being the true girl that she is, tried on 3 different outfits before deciding on what she wanted to wear. See, I'm not one to go out and buy a $35 Halloween costume for my kids (because Halloween just isn't that big of a deal to me), so instead, we tend to dig through our box of dress-up clothes, add a little creativity, and see where that takes us.

My point in all this is that our entire morning was spent getting ready for, and actually trying to get to, the library. No school was accomplished at all this morning. By the time we got home from the library, it was lunchtime. So here is where we pick up on our lesson theme.

We had a dairy lunch today, to go along with our cow lesson - grilled cheese sandwiches, what my kids like to call "cheese chips" (a.k.a. Doritos), yogurt, and milk.

We made our cow-shaped badges with our words to remember written on them: "God's Word helps me grow."

We read "The Story of Ferdinand" by Munro Leaf and discussed how Ferdinand was different from the other bulls, and the ways that we are unique compared to others. Madison then illustrated the story and I love how her pictures turned out!

We also read "Farm Alphabet Book" by Jane Miller which describes a different feature of a farm for each letter of the alphabet.
We completed a cow dot-to dot as well.
(Dot to dot page from www.makinglearningfun.com)

We have a couple more things to try accomplish later today after naps, but since they are more general items and don't really follow our theme (i.e. practicing numbers, handwriting, reading Bob books), I'm not going to post them. So I guess this about does it for C/Cows! Next up, horses!

The Downside to Homeschooling

When there's an October blizzard going on outside...


and you can't even see out your kitchen windows...

when your poor Autumn flowers get buried in a snow drift...

you really don't have an excuse to cancel school for a "Snow Day". You're going to be cooped up in the house anyway, so why not continue with (school) business as usual, right?! :-)

Cow-abunga!

Lesson 13 teaches about the letter C and cows. We read the verses from 1 Peter 2:2-3, which says,

"Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good."

Just like milk helps us grow to be strong and healthy individuals, we remember that "God's Word helps me grow".

I'm actually still waiting on a few books from our library to use for this lesson, and I should be able to pick those up tomorrow. We were able, however, to do a few activities today to get a start on the lesson.

During math time, we played a dice game where the kids rolled the dice, counted how many dots there were, then either placed the correct number of pom-poms on the cow (what Noah decided to do), or colored in the correct number of circles (what Madison decided to do).

(cow math sheet from www.makinglearningfun.com)

We made these cute cow masks for an art project. If I were to make a suggestion to others who would be interested in making these, it would be to either glue the pieces onto cardboard, or laminate the masks. Using just construction paper like the directions said, we found that they are pretty flimsy and don't want to stand up straight. The top of the cow keeps wanting to flip over. I even tried gluing sticks to the back side of them hoping that would help, but it really didn't. They are cute to look at, but to be honest, I just don't see them withstanding my children's imaginative play for very long!
(cow mask idea from www. makinglearningfun.com)

To go along with our letter "C" theme, we read "The Mixed-Up Chameleon" by Eric Carle. This book taught a great lesson in being thankful for how God made us, and how we shouldn't always be wishing that we could be like someone else. After talking quite a bit about that lesson, we made our foam lowercase "c" into a chameleon.
(idea from http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2010/06/now-i-know-my-abcs-c-is-for-chameleon.html)

For our snack, after reading "The Mixed-Up Chameleon", we picked out 3 flavors of yogurt (which also happens to go along with the cow/milk/dairy theme!), then we mixed them up.
(I came across this idea online somewhere, but now I can't seem to find the site! My apologies!)

For science time, we read the book "Cows Have Calves" by Lynn Stone, which gave us some information about dairy calves. We also plan on doing a science project this evening after Daddy gets home from work, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what that is!

Down on the Farm

Our goat lesson, as well as the next two lessons we will be doing, have a farm theme to them. Since my husband just so happens to be an ag lender at a bank, I'm trying to get him to set up a visit to one of his client's farms to go along with these lessons. Hopefully that will work out because I know the kids would love it!

For our snack today, I made chickens out of hard boiled eggs, cheese, ham, and bacon bits.

Both these books were great, but I especially liked the first one - "Farming" by Gail Gibbons. It described a farm and the various farm activities that take place during each season of the year.

We created a farm animal book. Each page had the sentence "In the barn there was a _____" and Madison wrote in the name of the animal that she had colored and glued to the paper. The book had a cow, a pig, a horse, a chicken, a duck, and a goat.
(the barn and animals templates were from www.abcteach.com)

Madison completed an ABC dot-to-dot picture of a duck, a matching worksheet where she had to match the baby farm animal to the adult farm animal, and a Barnyard Color worksheet where she had to follow the directions and color each item in the picture the color that was specified.
(www.makinglearningfun.com)
(http://www.alphabet-soup.net/farm/farmmatch.html)
(http://www.tlsbooks.com/barnyardcolors.pdf)

First Letter on the Farm worksheet
(http://www.tlsbooks.com/firstletteronthefarm.pdf)

Label the Farm Animal worksheet - great practice in handwriting!
(http://www.tlsbooks.com/labelthepicturefarmanimals.pdf)

G: Goats, Gumpy, and Goose

We just finished up week #8 in homeschooling, and along with that, we just finished up Lesson 12 in the "My Father's World" curriculum we are using. That means we are nearly halfway through our book. I'm not sure what our plan is once we finish the book, because I can pretty much guarantee that we'll be done with it long before the end of the school year! But I guess I'll just cross that bridge when I get there.

Anyway, Lesson 12 dealt with the letter G, goats, and other farm-related topics. We started off by talking about how back in Old Testaments times, people used goats (as well as other animals) as sacrifices when they sinned. We also talked about how we no longer need to sacrifice animals because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. Our words to remember for this lesson were "Jesus died for my sins".

We made goat badges with those words on them.

One of the books we read was "Mr. Gumpy's Outing" by John Burningham. It is a story about Mr. Gumpy and how he has an eventful boat ride with children, a rabbit, a cat, a dog, a pig, a sheep, some chickens, a calf, and a goat.

While we read the story, we acted it out using some toys as the characters.

We also read "G is for Goat" by Patricia Polacco and "Goats on the Farm" by Mari C. Schuh. Both provided information about goats in a fun, easy-to-understand manner.

Another book we read was "Duck & Goose" by Tad Hills, and we made our foam lowercase "g" into a goose.
(idea from http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2010/07/now-i-know-my-abcs-g-is-for-goose.html)

I'm going to do a separate blog post about the other farm-related activities and lessons that we did. They didn't start with the letter "G" though, so I decided not to include them in this post. :-)

Insects: Part 3

With this unit, we have been learning about the concept of working hard. The kids watched "The Little Red Hen" video on the computer, and we talked about how she was a hard worker while all her friends were pretty lazy. To go along with this we read and discussed 1 Thessalonians 3:10b, which says, "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

(the link for the video is http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/little-red-hen/0b87715497d95dcae61c0b87715497d95dcae61c-285891559791?q=the%20story%20of%20the%20little%20red%20hen)

I know the idea sunk in because this morning, Madison decided to make every one's bed and sweep the kitchen floor, all without being prompted to. I said to her, "Wow! You sure are a busy worker bee today!" And her response to me was, "Yes, so I get to eat!" I had to chuckle at that!

We read "The Life Cycle of a Honeybee" by Bobbie Kalman and looked at a chart of the life cycle.

During snack time, I read "Honey in a Hive" by Anne Rockwell to the kids, which tells how bees make honey. While I read, the kids munched on crackers with honey.

We read "Inchworm and a Half" by Elinor J. Pinczes and made our lowercase "i" into an inchworm.
(I modified the inchworm craft a little, but the initial idea came from http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2010/08/now-i-know-my-abcs-i-is-for-inchworm.html)

"Inchworm and a Half" tells a story using some very basic fractions. Madison, being a visual learner, needed some help in trying to understand the concept of 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4, so I cut up a pipe cleaner to demonstrate the fractions. I showed her our own fraction "worms" as we read the book.

Madison did a bumblebee tracing worksheet (from www.makinglearningfun.com) and an insect pattern worksheet (from www.tlsbooks.com).

For a fun art project, Madison did a fingerprint insect picture. She made bees, a butterfly, a couple dragonflies, several ladybugs, ants, grasshoppers, and even some stinkbugs. All were made with her own fingerprints!
(idea from http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2009/05/preschool-corner-finger-painted-insects.html)

Insects: Part 2

We're still working on our Insect unit, and have finished up learning about ladybugs (who, unlike their name suggests, actually aren't a bug by the real definition! Insect, yes. Bug, no.)

We read the book "Ladybugs" by Margaret Hall and talked a little bit about the life cycle of a ladybug. The kids cut out little cards that had each life cycle stage on them and practiced putting them in the correct order.
(the life cycle sheets were from www.enchantedlearning.com)

We read "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle and made a ladybug clock from paper plates. This was the front of the clock.
(the idea from the clock came from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/grouchy_ladybug.php)

And here is the back view

When we read through "The Grouchy Ladybug", we moved our ladybug clock to the same times shown on each page.

We made an accordion-style insect book titled "How Many Insects?"
(www.kizclub.com)

Along with the insect book, Madison worked on a Ladybug Addition worksheet.
(math worksheet from www.makinglearningfun.com)

We painted rocks to look like...

ladybugs

We made an insect trap and kept outside overnight. We buried this jar so that it was even with the ground, put pieces of apple and some crackers with honey on them in it, then loosely covered it with a piece of cardboard. This morning when we checked it, we found 4 spiders in it. Madison's response was, "But they aren't insects!" Oh well. We tried.

We'll be concluding our Insect unit with a study on bees. Stay tuned!