Kitchen Geography: Teaching landforms the fun way!

We are sharing a fun way we used to review all the different types of Landforms Miss K is learning about in Geography and Science this year. This project is a twist on the typical clay model. We made a Landform cake!

The base is a sweet Scone Dough. The kids used it like play dough. Following a picture from a favorite Science book, Miss K shaped an island complete with a peninsula, coastlines, bay, and a gulf.  Using the last of the dough they made hills, rivers, canyon, plateaus and a mountain.

After baking and cooling our island was ready to decorate. The 'paint' was powedered sugar and water and food coloring. Mixing up the correct colors were trial and error but it was a good art lesson in itself!

This is the finished product. At this point the  kids were begging to eat it. However I was a mean mama and asked them to label it first.

If you want a tasty way for your kids to learn Geography (and a sweet treat to go with your coffee) give this project a try too!

Exploring The Chesapeake Bay with Iva Honeysuckle

The July Poppins Book Nook theme was all about Oceans and Beaches. I must apologize for the very late post.  We had an unscheduled break because of a last minute change in Curriculum. Blogging took a back seat to lesson planning and getting supplies together.

We wrapped up our summer by reading Iva Honeysuckle Meets Her Match .This title is the second Iva Honeysuckle book by Candice Ransom and illustrated by Heather Ross.

The book!

Summer at home is no place for an explorer like Iva! Thankfully her family has decided to take a vacation at Stingray point!  The beach doesn't seem too exciting until she hears the legend of 'Chessie'. Iva decides to prove the existence of Chesapeake Bay's very own Sea Monster. It will take all her determination and problem solving skills to solve this mystery AND get through the challenges of  vacationing with family and new friends.

What we thought!

Miss K (7) and I took turns reading this book aloud and really enjoyed it. It was a good mixture of mystery, adventure and American history. The relationships between Iva and her family were realistic and offered a chance for us to talk about sibling rivalry and better ways to solve disagreements. We are pleased to have another fun series to follow!

The Activity!

This month Miss K came up with her own activity to go with our book. We had been reading about Chesapeake bay while reading the book. Miss K was inspired to make a travel brochure from what she had learnt. I am amazed at how much information she has retained about the Chesapeake Bay estuary because of making her brochure. It has also turned into a series she calls 'Furry Friends discover'.  Her premise is that while we are not looking our Cat and Puppy travel to different parts of the world and report on the fun things they see. So far she has made 3 different brochures and a postcard by hand. The next one she wants to make on the PC.

I have found some other resources we want to use:
Read Write Think has a Postcard Creator tool for all ages
Basic 3 fold brochure template
4 Fold brochure template

There were so many great ideas for the July Poppins book Nook! Please check out the following blogs that joined in.

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - 3 Dinosaurs - Monsters Ed - Chestnut Grove Academy - Growing in God's Grace - Royal Little Lambs - Life with Moore Babies - Teach Beside Me - The Usual Mayhem - Mum Central - Fantastic Fun and Learning - Kathys Cluttered Mind - Toddler Approved - Growing Book by Book - Adventures in Mommydom - B-Inspired Mama - The Fairy and The Frog - Edventures with Kids - Learning and Growing the Piwi way - A Gluten Free Journey - No Doubt Learning - Preschool Powol Packets - To The Moon and Back - Our Craft ~N~ Things - Fresh Farm Adventures - Are We There Yet?

An InLinkz Link-up

The history of the Philippines (with Chocolate)

Last week we began a unit about Chocolate. We took the road less traveled and used it as an opportunity to learn about Cacao farming and it’s place in Philippines history. For those new to our blog: you can read about our family's heritage here.

Our inspiration was a bar of Askinosie chocolate. On the front of this uniquely package chocolate is big text stating that it was sourced from Davao, Philippines. At the time I wasn’t aware that Chocolate was one of the country's exports.  After a quick web search I learnt that the Davao region grew 70-80% of the 10,000 Tons of cacao the Philippines produced last year (source).

 

It took a bit of research but it evolved into a  perfect opportunity for Miss K to learn about the history of the Philippines. I wrote out the key events in the Country's history, and the history of Cacao. There was also a lot of information on recent initiatives to increase production of Cacao beans and support of Davao farmers. Miss K cut out all the events and ordered them by date. What started out as a two foot long time line, end up measuring nearly 8 feet!  

We learnt a lot and Piwi Daddy was surprised at how much Miss K had absorbed about the same same subject that he had been bored by in school. To be honest I, too, would have a better grasp on world history if the subject of chocolate had been involved. 

As we were reading about the processing of cacao beans we came across tablea tsokalate. This is a traditional chocolate drink made by dissolving tablets made from ground cacao beans in water or milk. There are people all over the web raving about this rich foamy drink!
Our favorite was this virtual Experience making tablea in Palo 

Apparently Askinosie chocolate imports handmade Tablea, as a way of raising money for it's Davao charities. Now Miss K wants to try Tablea and learn more about the Farms in Davao....

Update!
Here is our attempt at grinding down cacoa beans to make our own Tablea

Books we used for this project:

French Unit study

Source

Miss K worked hard on her French unit last week. The unit was based around a literature link from the Learning through Literature curriculum. It focused on Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans.  During the literature study we were surprised to learn that this story was first published in 1939 and that it even had an official web site and fan club . 

The 3D notebooking pages included:

Geography mini books are from homeschool share. Nat Geo Kids is our go to for research. The photos and videos on there are great! 

Intro to French: After an introduction to Spanish last year Miss K enjoyed hearing french spoken and recorded the common greetings (printables also from Homeschool share). It also prompted a comparison to the Tagalog (Filipino) she hears Daddy speak and we are slowly learning.

Fashion Design: After reading a kids fashion design book I was reviewing this week Miss K was even inspired to create what she called 'french fashion'. She also wanted me to point out that the model in the design below is carrying a poodle dog carrier and not just an ordinary handbag ;-)

 

The Monet Art study was one of the favorites things we did this week. The mini books we made ourselves. I posted all the fun here. 

Another popular part of our 'tour' of France was sampling some French foods. Miss K made Pain au chocolat all by herself. She wrapped up some chocolate chips in crescent roll dough (from Immaculate Baking). They looked pretty close to the real thing! They disappeared pretty fast too!

the brand of rolls we used..

Monet Art study

This week Miss K is working on a France unit Study. For LA we use Learning Language Arts Through Literature . Each week-long lesson works with an except from children's literature or a specific book. I had saved the Madeline 'literature link' for this unit study. It was also a great opportunity to study Monet.

We began our study by looking at a timeline of Monet's art.  It was a great way to learn about his life and the creation of impressionism. I had made up an art study lapbook for Miss K to use.

It included mini books to record information about Monet's life and impressionism. There are also mini books for 8 paintings. In these Miss K is able to record what she saw and background information. We are looking at two pieces of Monet art each day this week.

We started with Water lilies, 1914.

Miss K used Oil pastels to create her Lillie pad leaves and flowers. She worked on the shapes of the leaves and shaded them with greens and pinks like she observed in Monet's painting. Blue water colors were painted around the leaves and she chose to paint over the flowers and other shading. Finally she wet the paper with her brush with water to change to create a water effect.

She worked so hard and made a beautiful piece of art....

Mini Piwi also did Pre K Monet

Some useful books I found:

Piwi Explorers: China

Our first country in Asia to explore was China. It was a busy week packed with also sorts of topics in the history and geography of this huge country. We made art projects, studied the Giant Panda and visited a Chinese restaurant to wrap up the unit.

Coloring the flag are researching the meanings of the stars and colors

Map of China and geographical statistics,

Making a Chinese New year dragon from teacher file box

Postcard from Ancient China from Teacher file box

Practising calligraphy, Mini books on growing rice and food in china

Chinese inventions and types of houses in China. Miss K used google (with supervision) to research these topics.

Giant Panda conservation and adaptations

Giant panda animal report

Shared With:

Piwi Explorers: Asia

This year we are using Galloping the Globe as a framework for Geography and History. It is a unit study

approach which is organized by continent. We are taking between 1-2 weeks to go through the activities for each country. I have a plan laid out for a week, but if Miss K takes extra interest in an area of study then we will take extra time to learn more. For example she really loved researching the early exploration timelines so instead of just the planned explorer timeline I also helped her find the images to create one of what early maps looked like through the centuries.

Our first continent is Asia. We began with a Map of Asia which can be colored as we 'visit' each country.

Map is from Galloping the globe text

and a map showing different animals in each region. Mini Piwi also insisted on completing the booklet of Asian Animals....

These pages are from teacher file box.com

Our first stop in our exploration of Asia is China.....

Getting ready to Gallop the globe: Early exploration

This week we began our first unit in Galloping the Globe, by Loree' Pettit and Dari Mullins.We used the resources in the text to plan out a unit that included History, geography and literature. Switching between the history of exploration and an introduction to maps and reading maps, everyone learnt a lot and remained interested right until the end of the unit.
We also found the Early explorers activity book which kept Miss K busy with coloring, word searches and mazes and plenty of interesting facts about each explorer. Here are some of our notebooking pages for this unit.

Early Exploration Time line

Our explorer time line pieces came from Homeschool Share. Inside each mini book Miss K added their country of origin and where they explored/what they discovered.

Making a map of your room and The map of the world

A timeline showing images of early maps of the world. We were all amazed at how much had been 'guessed at'

The Globe from teacher file box

Learning about map directions, the compass and compass rose