Nuts About Nature - Winter

If you don't know yet, Melissa at In the Sparrow's Nest has
started a wonderful nature series exploring winter and spring. I am very behind but we finally completed Week #2! Between colds and toddlers and what not, it took us a while. Melissa has done such a wonderful job. If we do nothing else but follow her outline of topics, using library books, I think we will have learned a lot.

So using her outline for Week #2, we read a lot of books from the library and we made a chart on our board. As we read about an animal, we put a picture of it in the appropriate column.






And here our some books we used from the library.


Why Do Some Animals Hibernate?

Who Lives In The Snow?



Animals Hibernating: How Animals Survive Extreme Conditions


Explore Winter! 25 Great Ways to Learn About Winter





Some easier picture books

Winter

Let's Look at Winter


What Happens In Winter?



Lewis Cardinal's First Winter


Thank you, Melissa!

Reading List 2009

I have so many reading lists: Sonlight, Veritas Press, Ambleside,... among others. I don't want the boys to miss out on all the good books. So I have all these lists strewn about my desk and somewhere in my mind. But sometimes, too much of a good thing leads to nothing, which has been the case in our household (well, we have a toddler as well, and reading out loud is.... well, you know what I mean). So, instead of trying to go through one list at a time, or trying to compile my own complete list, I've decided to pick books from here and there that would interest B (or whatever we have on hand). And I'm going to attempt to list them here for future reference. So, here goes. I will add to the list as we read through the books.

2009 Reading List (B - 2nd grade)


Read-A-Louds (Read-a-louds for both B and S)

Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie (current)



Assigned Reading

The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Ben and Me
Wind in the Willows


Free Reading (He reads so much, but I'm going to list here only the ones that I want him to read, the ones that I put in his basket.)

Secret Agents Four
Balto and The Great Race
Third Grade Detectives #2 (The Puzzle of the Pretty Pink Hankerchief)
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Baby Island
The Trumpet of the Swan
Owls in the Family
Barry the Bravest Saint Bernard
Tall Tails: Wingin' It with the Wright Brothers
The Big Balloon Race
Dolphin Adventure, A True Story
Capyboppy
Stuart Little

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.]

The Year of Miss Agnes

What a great little book. I started this as a read-a-loud but just finished it myself. I think it should be a must read for every homeschool mom! Miss Agnes is inspiring. I think Charlotte Mason would be proud of Miss Agnes. Through Miss Agnes, the children "woke up to see the world around [them], and way beyond them" (p111). And the love of learning burned strongly in them. Miss Agnes played opera and read Robin Hood to them. She made a wall timeline and would pretend play, going back in time through a time machine to test them. Miss Agnes did not use written tests. She also did not like the "Dick and Jane" readers, so she made little books for each child, about the child. She encouraged the love of learning, and encouraged each child in his or her gifting/passion, whether it be sign language, science, music or printing, airplanes, making people feel happy, to running the house and dancing. She affirmed each child and made them feel good about themselves and each other.

It starts off a little slowly and uses "stupid" a couple times, and the use of poor grammar from the kids gets a little irritating sometimes, but the book gives an intimate look into the village life on the Alaskan frontier. Miss Agnes is absolutely inspirational in her one room schoolhouse. And the book is also full of practical teaching ideas and tips. What a great little book!

FIAR Week #7 - Papa Piccolo

This was a fun week ! A lot of work though. We started out with our review as usual (I'll have to take a picture of our boards and post them some time). We colored the Italian flag and did some map work. For art, we used watercolor paints to paint a picture of the grand canal in the style of the book, and we glued a cutout of a gondola as well. For snack, we ate spaghetti while listening to opera. Several said " I don't like it", refering to the opera. Then the fun part was painting these little dogs and cats I found at Walmart. They were told to name their pets, and at the end of class, we had an adoption ceremony. They held up their right hands and pledged to take care of their pet, and were rewarded with a certificate. We made little boxes filled with tissue paper for them to take their pets home in. The kids were really excited. Except Superman. He didn't like how his puppy turned out, so he didn't want to bring it home he said. Sigh.

We also read:
















But didn't have time to get to The Gondolier of Venice. It's a cute book with a good story line about the city of Venice sinking. But the ending is not satisfying, in my opinion.

At home we also read Gabriella's Song.















I really enjoyed reading (and singing some parts) this book to the boys. It's a beautiful book about the city of music. This one was satisfying.


There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal!













Superman likeed this book above the others. It's a more modern book with comical, watercolor pictures. It's not as descriptive in writing or in art of Venice, but S seemed to enjoy this book. He asked for it again as soon as I read it. On a side note, it's authored by the grandson of the Bemelmans (of Madeline).

[edit: After a second read, I like it better. It's a fun and exciting book. It does make mention of the historic buildings and bridges, and there's a lot of Italian interspersed through out the book. A fun page was where the tourists makes exclamations in their own language. However, I did not like the inference made that it is boring to hang out with your parents, and the author uses "stupid" and "dumb" once. Oh, an interesting thing about this book is you learn the sea animals that live in the Grand Canal.]

Zoe Sophia's Scrapbook: An Adventure in Venice was another book I checked out from the Library but we ended up not reading that one. It looked interesting (it's in a diary format) but was a little too lengthy and descriptive for my 5 year old, I think.

















And of course, we've been listening to Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery a lot this week.