Learning About Careers in The Theatre

It was tough to decide which direction to take this month with the Poppins Book Nook theme: What will I be when I grow up? It was exciting to look through books about careers in our community.

The girls both had different types of ideas and so I decided not to cram it all into one project. The post today will focus on career in dance and theatre. Miss K (8) began taking Musical theatre classes, and she is 'hooked'.  They are studying 'Broadway Musicals by the decade, from the 30's to the 90s' to go along with this we are working on a unit study based on this amazing book I found on Amazon.

How Does the Show Go On: An Introduction to the Theatre  It gives kids a great view into how a modern Broadway show is produced. Its split cover opens up like a red curtain and begins at the front of the house and then takes you to the stage and behind. At each point, there are detailed explanations of the many roles of the people working and acting in the theatre. The book is extremely interactive, and there are playbills and tickets to take out and look at. There are also parts of scripts and directors production sketches and of course a lot of photos from many well known Disney Broadway Musicals.


We went through it quickly exploring all the pieces but now have started at the beginning again to study each role and part of the production in a unit study. I am making notebook and lapbook type components as we go through this book. With luck, I can soon share them on the website for you to use with your theatre fans and budding actors and actresses!

In the meantime here are some we have already found...

• The Notebooking fairy has pages to use after seeing a performance
• Jimmies's Collage has several Shakespeare themed mini books that would be great to include with the history of theatre.

• My new favorite Drama resource is Dramanotebook.com. It had given me the confidence to begin playing Drama games with the girls and we may even try script writing soon thanks to some great lesson plans they share.

Thanks for taking the time to join us this month, be sure to check out all the inspiration from all the other Poppins Book Nook Bloggers!

An InLinkz Link-up

Butterfly Unit Study & Lap Book

Our Earth day inspired project focused on helping local Monarch butterflies. If you haven't seen all the fun and learning we have been having then please go and check out Our Save the Monarchs posts and Pinterest board.

Miss K wanted to know more about all the local butterflies not just the Monarchs. All her reading and observations culminated into a colorful lap book.

The final product contains the printables from two free lap book as well as some of our own mini books.

Free Butterfly Mini Helper lap book by Home school bits

Butterfly Lap book from Home school Share

Title Page

We had just finished with a Hans Christian Andersen unit so Miss K added this quote from 'The Butterfly' to her title page.

The Lifespan tri-fold book was for Miss K to record the number days 6 different species spend in each stage of their life cycle. The Host plant flap book listed 20 different plants and the Caterpillars that use them as food sources.

Life cycle, Host Plants, Life span

Anatomy, Anatomy Glossary

The Anatomy of the Butterfly had us all amazed. Miss K would have happily spent several weeks learning about each species. A trip to Butterfly house got everyone even more excited!

Butterfly feeding

Butterfly or Moth, Wingspan, Texas Butterfly species.

Miss K is on the look out now for a pocket Butterfly Identification guide (and a flower guide...and one for trees). At the moment I am trying to decide between the Caterpillars, Bugs and Butterflies: Take Along Guide for younger kids or get one that will be good for years to come like the Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths.

Mini Piwi had a week of Butterflies too!

Preschool Butterfly science and Food art

We have been seeing a lot of Monarchs and Painted Ladies in the park this week. What Butterflies have you noticed near you?

A week long Volcano Unit Study

Miss K's unit on Volcanoes ended up having a strong New Zealand theme. I didn't realize how much I remembered from school about New Zealand Geology. The Kids were excited to hear about the active volcanoes (Mount Ruapehu, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe) I grew up close to.

Mt Ruapehu, New Zealand

The imagery in the Maori Myths and legends really capture the beauty of New Zealand. There is one about about the mountains and the river in my hometown that really stayed with me. This week I read it to the Piwi's. We didnt have much luck finding books on New Zealand Volcanoes at the library but the the Volcano zone on the GNS science website was a great alternative.

Another great resource we used was an book and activity set called Volcanoes of the world. The book itself was full off information about how volcanoes are formed, how they erupt and highlights some of the more well known 'trouble makers'. What Miss K loved most was the kit to make your own World volcano map and a flip book of an erupting volcano!

For Miss K's Notebooking pages 

• Parts of a Volcano three part cards from Etc Montessori 

• How a Volcano erupts mini book from Crayola.com 

• Some of the basic mini books from the Volcano Lapbook at Home school share

 
Books as always were the main source of all of Miss K's investigations and we found a good selection...some we already had, others we borrowed.

Multimedia resources we used in our unit

•  Earth quake report has Daily volcanic activity updates that include photos and videos

• Magic school bus blows it's top game -this was a fun activity after we watched the episode and read the book 

• Discovery Channel's Extreme World App-Ultimate Volcano was one of the eight interactive subjects
  
  Volcano Tour App took us on a Virtual tour of 80+ volcanoes

 Mini Piwi also had her own 'V is for Volcano' activities and Miss K was an eager assistant for the messier ones! Like...

Erupting Mini Piwi's Playdoh Volcano....

and playing with Lava in the bath thanks to the great idea from in lieu of preschool 

 

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..

Exploring Electricity

Over the last month, we have been working our way through The Magic School Bus - Jumping Into Electricity kit & The Magic School Bus And The Electric Field Trip book

Miss K and I created graphic novel style note booking pages for her to record her observations and results of the electricity experiments. She came up with the ideas, I drew it.

 

The experiments in the kit were really fun and clearly explained. The guide is laid out a lot like the Magic school bus books. Miss K could follow the instructions and enjoyed reading the explanations and background information.

 

 

I like to explain things with models. My models are not conventional. Here we are using plastic fruit to represent the atoms and the green pom pom is the electron jumping from each atom. Apparently Miss K has picked up this trait because when I asked her what she already knew about electricity she pulled out four crayons to show me that it can only flow if the 'circuit wasn't broken'.

 

This pictures I got were from the Static electricity experiments....

 

 

The circuits were a real hit with the Piwi's too! By the time we packed up the Christmas lights (after Three Kings day) Miss K could explain how they worked!

 

 

Some other kits we are going to include in our Science curriculum

 

 Chemistry:

 

 

Polymers & Slime

Exploring Flight


Light science

 

 

 

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Christmas &Winter Science Experiment roundup

 

Plant unit study and Lap book

 

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Monday kid corner

2nd grade-ish Curriculum plan for 2013

Last year we were virtual schooling so we had the year's lesson plans laid out for us. You can read more about our journey and curriculum here.

I had only planned our lessons until the end of the year so we could make any required changes in our curriculum. Here is what I have so far...I am still

Language arts/spelling

• Copy work from St. Annes Helper. Miss K can review her Catechism and do copy work at the same time! We downloaded some samples last week and they were great. Miss K proudly showed Daddy her beautiful writing.

• Continuing with Learning Language arts through literature (3rd grade)

• 2nd grade & 3rd grade word spelling list from Time 4 learning.

• MCP phonics B

Math


The Math in Focus curriculum is sold in two parts, we had just purchased the first semester books just in case it wasn't a good fit. The lesson themselves are really good for Miss K. We just recently changed up the order we did the chapters. I felt Miss K needed more confidence in addition and subtraction before we could move onto multiplication. I got a bit sneaky. We did two lessons of math each day. One from the math in focus measurement unit (chapters ) and then later in the day some from Mammoth math addition and subtraction 2b. Usually miss K also does 20 mins on IXL...so that's kind of three math lessons. She has yet to notice because she doesn't consider measuring stuff and computer work 'Math'. Having said that, the IXl novelty is starting to wear off now that the virtual prizes are not coming as readily now as they do in the beginning.

History/Geography

We have a few more days left of Advent and then we return to our Galloping the globe.

 

Science

• Considering gods creation
• Galloping the globe
•  Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

 

 

 

Dogs unit study Click here to view more details

Roller coasters Click here to view more details

 Volatile volcanoes Click here to view more details










Catechism

Grade 2: Call to Faith . Miss K really loves this series. We were using Faith and Life last year but our Parish is using this, but even if/when we move I would continue with it.

• St Anne's Helper copy work books. The samples we tried were really good so we have ordered some for Miss K. Use discount code: catholicmom

Click here to visit St. Annes Helper.

 

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Saving money on learning stuff for 2013

 

 

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