Winter Unit Studies

Once again, to use the blog as a home for resources, I'm going to list studies that I come across so that I don't have to go hunting for them later on.

Candace at His Mercy is New has a winter study on penguins as well as a winter nature study.



[More to be added]

FIAR Week 8 & 9 - Owl Moon & Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

I have so much catching up to do. Well, the first twelve weeks of FIAR are now over. And we're now into the next twelve weeks with new teachers. It was a great first semester. So that I don't totally forget what we did, here's a brief summary.

For Owl Moon, the highlight was the owl pellets. I had to get over the weebie jeebies but it was very cool. We also learned about the phases of the moon and I talked a bit about gravity, demonstrating it with a falling hat and all. Then I took a little experiment from Apologia Astronomy about how the earth and the moon revolve and rotate, and had the kids demonstrate by "spinning" about. I'm sure there was more but those were the big things.

Another Celebrated Dancing Bear was another fun book. We had a lot of fun kicking up our legs and doing the Russian dance to a song that I had downloaded. To learn about the days of the weeks, I made a linear timeline for a visual and we sang some songs, one to the tune of "The Adams Family" and another to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". The kids really enjoyed the songs.

I've missed out a book and we were away for the last couple books, so that's all the catching up for now.

[Edit
For Owl Moon, here's a list of books we read at home:
When The Moon Is High
When Moon Fell Down
Kitten's First Full Moon

Oh, I forgot. We made "moon cookies" in class from The Moon Might Be Milk.
Here's the recipe:

Gran's Sugar Moon Cookies

2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking power
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla

Flatten the separated cookie dough with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar to make it sparkly, like the moon. Yummy! The kids really enjoyed this!

Art Projects

I have a lot to catch up on, but that's for another time.
I found some very neat blog entries on the topic of art and artists that I wanted to keep track of.
So for now, I thought I'd link them here before I lose them or forget about them.

Melissa at The Sparrow's Nest has a series of art projects using the book "Nature's Paintbox".

Candace at His Mercy is New studies Van Gogh.

Cindy at Our Journey Westward studied Mary Cassat for January.


[I'll add to the list as I remember or find more.]