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!

Learning About The Presidents And a Giveaway!

February has flown by and it is now time for us to share the books and activities we used to learn more about this months theme: US Presidents!

We looked for books that would make the Presidents appeal to both a Pre K and third grader. Their common interests of animals and baking turned out to be the key! 

The plan was to make a list of each president's favorite foods and make some of them ourselves. Our library didn't have as many White house cooking books as I expected. Thankfully I accidentally found this treasure: Have Fun with the Presidents: Activities, Projects, and Fascinating Facts by David C King. It provided our recipes as well as lots of other projects, puzzles for the Presidents from George Washington through George W Bush.

We tried John Adams' Cool Berry Flummery, a yummy berry sauce to go with ice cream and John Quincy Adams' favorite Shrewsbury Cakes, spiced shortbread cookies. Looks like we aren't going to run out of dessert recipes to try for awhile..apparently many of the forefathers had sweet teeth.

This book was my favorite because it has pretty much given me a whole toolbox of activities. The kids, however loved our second book...

Presidential Pets: The Weird, Wacky, Little, Big, Scary, Strange Animals That Have Lived In The White House by Julia Moberg. Two pages are devoted to each Commander in Chief and are full of funny illustrations of the vast range of animals that have lived in the White house. However, there is far more than just animals in this book. There is also the key achievements of is presidency, quotes and quick facts.

This was a great way to get our youngest especially interested in history having said that it is versatile as the reading level was perfect for Grade 2 and up.

Poppins Book Nook Giveaway! Every month the Poppins Book Nook group will be offering readers a chance to win a brand new storybook that ties in with our theme for the month. This month one lucky entrant will win a copy of So You Want to Be President?  !  The winner must reside within the United States. This giveaway is brought to you by the company Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, who is owner and founder of the Poppins Book Nook. By entering this giveaway you are also acknowledging that you have read and agree to all of the Rafflecopter terms and conditions as well as Enchanted Homeschooling Mom's disclosures found here {http://enchantedhomeschoolingmom.org/disclosures/}.  Just enter the Rafflecopter below to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Geometry unit for Preschool and Elementary age

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We use Math in Focus as our main curriculum. This does include some hands on activites and extensions but I am always open to adding more! I have been waiting for Miss K's geometry unit so we could do this Shape lap book from Hands of a child.
 

To align it with the Math in Focus lessons we added some extra mini books into it for:
Properties of Trapazoids & Hexagons
Line segments and curves
Area & Perimeter
I printed extra so Mini Piwi could make her own shape poster. Unfortunately i dont have a photo of this because she later took to it with her safety scissor.
She also enjoyed a lot of the Shape printables from 3 Dinosaurs.com

Online resources we used for practice:

Sorting Plane shapes and Solid Shapes
Identify the 3D shape game
Shape Inlay -Tetris crossed with a Tangram type of game
Triangle sort
Shape Lab
Polygon Playground

We also made shape biscuits. I got distracted with spelling and overcooked them a bit but they were still popular.

Including Mini Piwi in the Shape activities:

I had printed extra copies of some of basic shape mini books so Mini Piwi could make her own shape poster. Unfortunately i dont have a photo of this because she later took to it with her safety scissor.

She also enjoyed a lot of the Shape printables from 3 Dinosaurs.com

Online Pre School resources we used:

Umi Zoomi Shape building game @Nick Jr
Shape puzzle
Purpy's shape search
ABC Mouse

She spent a little bit of time making pictures with the plastic shape but wasn't as enthusastic about it as I thought she might be.

Our Fun Math books

This week we read Which is round, Which is bigger by Mineko Mamada.
It was a great way to prompt Mini Piwi to make comparisons between shapes and objects. The cute and funny title is an English translation from the original Japanese book.  Toddlers and preschoolers will enjoy answering questions about objects, the answers at first seem obvious until the next page reveals a twist.

Another point and giggle book with a Math theme we read was 100 Animals on Parade by Masayuki Sebe. We all spent a long time with this book counting animals and spotting all the  objects the author asks you to find. The kids loved the busy illustrations and the I spy concept.

*Disclosure:  I received a free digital copy of these books through Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

Math with Apples Project

This week we read 'An Apple pie for Dinner' and practiced our measuring skills with an apple Math investigation.

This book is very cute! Granny Smith (pun intended) wants to bake an apple pie but  she doesnt have any apples. All she has is a basket of plums and sets off in the hope that she can trade them. The illustrations are very fairy tale like and reminded me of the amazing shadow applique my grandma used to create.

Apple Math:

Earlier in the day we had compared raisins and grapes and talked about how drying removes the water.
The goal for apple investigation was to find out how much weight an apple looses when it is dried. Mini Piwi was chief fruit weigh-person, Miss K was the data recorder and self proclaimed 'calculator  of the important stuff'.

Here's the method I wrote for the Piwis to follow

1. Have a grown-up peel, core and slice 2 apples into thin pieces.

2. Line a baking pan with baking paper and ask Mama to turn the oven on to 200 degrees

3. Weigh the slices from each apple and record the measurement for each one

 4. Lay the apple slices on the pan

5.  Ask a grownup to put the pan into the oven

6. Wait patiently :-) for about 1 hour until the apple slices are dry.

7. Ask a grown up to remove the pan from the oven at let tthe apples cool

8. Weigh all the dried apples to find their new total mass.

 9. Eat the apples!

There are so many things you could have kids calculate from this activity. We kept it fairly simple and I asked Miss K to find:

1. The total mass of the apples before they went into the oven
2. How much mass the apples had lost from the drying

Another calculation that occured to me (after we were done) was the mass of the core and/or peel we had removed.

 The Piwi's really enjoyed their snack and even Miss K declared that this kind of math was actually fun.

Piwi Art study: Learning about Landscapes

After our Monet study we spent last week looking at landscapes. We discovered this great series 'Come look with me'. The one we used this week was 'Exploring Landscape with Children.' by Gladys Blizzard.  The example given in the Amazon preview is for Pieter Buel the Elder's 'Hunters in the Snow' (1565), it also gives the other works of Art included in this book.

Each painting has background information which we read together and questions to encourage thought and observation.  I really appreciate the guidance it give a parent (like me) without a lot of art knowledge.  More importantly, it engages the kids. Although it is aimed towards older kids, once Mini Piwi saw Miss K pointing out parts of a painting she wanted to be involved too.

Another great resource was the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's kids website.  .They offer interactive activities to explanation the horizon line and different perspectives. You can also make your own digital landscape. It is great to be able to instantly see the what happens when you change the horizon line of your painting and/or add different features into the foreground, middle or background.

After a few days of looking at Landscapes, the Piwi's were ready to paint their own. Before she painted I asked Miss K to ponder these questions.

• What materials would you like to use for your art?
• What mood will your art have?
• What kind of weather will it show?
• What time of day is it?
• Will your landscape include people or animals?

She chose to paint with Tempera on Acrylic paper. Her landscape is of grassy meadow on a Spring morning. It shows a deer resting in a patch of Flowers.

 

I had intended on letting Mini Piwi just paint but she thought the questions I gave Miss K was a game and wanted some too! I asked to position her paper like Miss K's to make a painting of an outside picture.

Her questions were: 

• Would her picture show Sun or the Moon?
• Would there be leaves or flowers or trees?
• Are there animals there?
• Is it a noisy or quiet place?

 

Mini Piwi painted flowers and a sun. Later she told Daddy it was Mickey and the Sun. An artist can chance her mind!

I was so proud of the creativity the Piwi's showed! Next we moved onto another Artist study.

What works for us...Math

2013 Virtual Curriculum Fair @Homeschooling Hearts and Minds.

Week 2 topic: Discovering Patterns: Mathematics, Logic, and Science

Shortly after Miss K began soaring ahead in Reading , she became aware that Math did not come to her so easily. The novelty of the new curriculum in first grade wore off very quickly. We knew she needed something else but we were locked into the schedule of the virtual curriculum. In the end we supplemented with Saxon and vowed to find something better this year.

After some research we settled on Math in Focus (MIF) by Singapore math.  Each lesson has a guided practice section we do together and a lesson in the workbook. Our only issue was that it does introduce Multiplication and division fairly early on. Sensing we would need to revise a bit on skip counting and addition facts. I decided to bypass it and come back to it later in the year.

To be honest, I am a bit sneaky with Math. I discovered that as long as it doesn't 'look' like math, Miss K does not consider it an additional math lesson. Today was a good example. We use workboxes. The picture is from the first week of school in June (two apartments ago...did I mention we move a lot?)


Box 1: LA book
Box 2: Math lesson from the MIF text. 
Box 3:Spelling.
Box 4:MIF workbook pages for today's lesson
Box 5:Test prep practice (3 questions LA, 3 questions Math)
Box 6: Science Unit study (Currently Ocean)
Box 7: Time/clock activity
Box 8: Call to faith
Box 9: Color by number +/- facts pages (From enchanted homeschooling -awesome!)
Box 10: Reading
Box 11 IXL.com math
Box 12: Boggle

Miss K had 5 'Math' workboxes, but the only groans about Math were when she was about to start with MIF. The groans on the Miss K scale were also only about a 2 (compared to 9 or 10s we were getting last year with the virtual curriculum). If we did 5 lessons of math from the textbook I could only imagine the response.

I have also tried to incorporate a Hands on Math activity each day that Miss K and Mini Piwi (3) can both work on.

Math happens all around us and I wanted Miss K to understand the importance of knowing how it works. She also needed to be able to see that it could be fun. If there isn't a project we can do to explain something then I usually end up doing an impromptu 'puppet show' using what ever toys I reach first. Yesterday, I had a (plastic) crab and a lobster explaining to Miss K about a mental math technique. If she's laughing, she's not getting frustrated and wanting to give up. It also kept Mini Piwi entertained.

I might sound relaxed about math. However, it is something that has had me praying for help and guidance. It is hard for any Mama to watch their child struggle with something. The 'I hate Math' comment still happens but we hear it less. When it does, I consider it a sign that we need to slow down and get ready to bring out the talking lobsters.

 

 

Check out all the other VCF posts on this week's topic: Math & Science

HTML:
Delight Directed Middle School Science? by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds
The Hardest Part of Math by Kristi @ The Potter's Hand Academy
A Tour Through Our Math and Science Life by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool What Works for Us…Math by Piwi Mum @ Learning & Growing the Piwi Way Math Art – Geometry by Julie @ Highhill Education It's Math-magical by Missouri Mama @ Ozark Ramblings Virtual Curriculum Fair: Fun and Games with Math by Tonia @ The Sunny Patch Discovering Patterns by Lisa @ The Golden Grasses Math for the Natural by Erin @ Delighting in His Richness Virtual Curriculum Fair~ Discovering Patterns by Karyn @ Teach Beside Me Too Many Math Programs or Not by Linda B @ Homeschooling6 Virtual Curriculum Fair:  Math and More!  by April @ Coffee, Cobwebs, and Curriculum The post where I admit I was wrong by Kristen H. @ Sunrise to Sunset High School Math - Beyond the Textbook by TechWife @ A Playground of Words Discovering a World of Logic and Order by Joelle @ Homeschooling for His Glory 2013 Virtual Curriculum Fair- Discovering Patterns: Mathematics, Logic, and Science by Leah C @ As We Walk Along the Road
The Plans of Mice and Math (My Math in Focus review) by Chelli @ The Planted Trees
Rightstart Math is right for us! by Leann  @ Montessori Tidbits
Our Favorite Homeschool Math Curriculums by Wendy @ Homeschooling Blessings

Shared with the new linky party....

Monday kid corner

M is for Magnets

At the start of the week we were still talking about opposite charges with our Magic School bus electricity experiments. I realized that the magnets on our Thomas trains were a perfect example of attraction. Mini Piwi was really interested so while Miss K worked on her Electricity notebook pages, I got out the big magnets. I showed Mini Piwi how much stronger they were than the one on the trains. She thought it was all hilarious!

 

I had some experiment sheets for Miss K to do with Magnets but no printables for Mini Piwi. Her enthusiasm inspired me to make a quick 'M is for Magnet sheet'. Today we had a mini scavenger hunt to find all the items on the sheet. The cat was the hardest to find as he was asleep up high in a bedroom.

 

 

....the leaf didn't move!



The spoon sticks!

 Mini Piwi put a sticker by the things that the magnet could pull. She then went all around the kitchen looking for other things that she could pick up. A word of warning about working with Magnets...make sure your wallet/handbag/computer is out of the way. These things don't like magnets as much as Preschoolers do!



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