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!

Pumpkin Science activities for Kids roundup

The Perfectly Pumpkin contest hosted by  B-inspired Mamas, Preschool Powol Packets and Gift of Curiosity and us!
There were so many amazing pumpkin themed activities, recipes and crafts! It must have been a tough decision for our guest judges to pick a winner for their categories.

The Science nerd fan in me was drawn to these fun science themed Pumpkin activies that were entered.

Life with Moore Babies played with states of matter and created some very cute decorations with their Melted Crayon Pumpkins.
They also showed us how they demonstrated the pumpkin lifecycle by growing pumpkins in a pumpkin!

Little Bins for Little hands made a Pumpkin-cano which may just be the coolest baking soda and vinegar experiment I have ever seen!

A lil Scientist at Stir the wonder had a great time with an exploration of Pumpkin guts.

The Preschool toolbox shared a couple of great Pumpkin life cycle printables and the fun they had working with them.

Frogs and Snails and Puppy dogs tails made up a mixture of Pumpkin spice scented 'Clean Mud'!

These were just a small sample of the amazing entries the contest had! Thanks to everyone who entered! To see the winners head over to the announcement at B -inspired Mama.

Shaped Animal Science Report: Bats!

I wanted to share a Science lesson Miss K did as part of an Amazing Animal unit.

We had been learning all about (non feathered) Flying creatures and I asked Miss K to choose one species to write a report on. She choose Bats.

Miss K has been fascinated by them ever since we saw one outside a Star bucks (of all places). While crossing the parking lot we heard some commotion outside the store. Three men were pointing up and dancing around. They were seemingly terrified! It turned out there was a (very) tiny bat that must have decided to come out of his sleeping spot a few hours early. It was just sitting there looking at everyone and the kids thought it was hilarious that they were 'freaking out' about a little bat. They had just watched a Wild Kratts episode about Bats. I did explain that some Bats can make you sick if they bite you. Miss K pointed out that a Bat would bite you if you are yelling and screaming at it. Good point!

I had a Bat and Bat Skeleton image from Evan Moor and used this to create a shape book.
This Bat image and Bat Skeleton will also work well if you would like to make bat book too!

 One the second page Miss K wrote about what the different things that Bats eat.

 One the third page was a Bat Food Web.

 One the final page was a paragraph about the largest and smallest species of Bats.

Our Books


We loved the Little Red Bat By Carol Gerber. Little Bat is faced with a big decision and visits all the creatures in the wood to ask their opinion on whether she should fly south for the Winter. It is a good introduction to Bats, Migration and food chains. Christina Wald's illustrations are full of expressive but realistic Animals in detailed forest scenes. You will want to look closely at each page to make sure you don't miss something!


We love the National Geographic kids Magazine so Miss K wanted to borrow this title from the Library. It is full of information and the amazing photos that Nat Geo is known for. I really like this series as they appeal to a wide range of ages.


Merlin Tuttle's 'American Neighborhood Bats' surprised me. I had borrowed it for the Photographs but I ended up enjoyed reading the sections on how important they are and the many myths and fears that surround them. It is written more for adults but in a few years I think Miss K will enjoy it too.

Our Online Bat Resources:

Are Bats Blind? from Discovery Kids

Incredible Bats.com is a great site where you can 'X-ray a bat',  watch Bat Videos,  take a Bat Quiz and more.

Creature features -Vampire-bat @ Nat geo Kids

Bat rescue.org

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 great Earth 'day' project: Save the Monarchs!

Source

We had been planning a unit on recycling to celebrate earth day this year. That, was until I recently I read an article about the decline in Monarch Butterfly numbers.

We love Butterflies and I couldn't imagine not seeing Monarch's in our gardens or at the park in the Summer!

Butterflies were also the reason we began this blog nearly two years ago. For Easter 2011 the Piwis received a butterfly garden. The blog was a way to show family how our painted lady caterpillars were growing. Each day Miss K would type a few words into the title of the post and I would add a picture. Eventually we released the butterflies in the Community gardens.

I showed Miss K the article about the Monarchs and she asked how we could help.

To get a better idea of the reasons for the decline we visited Monarch watch. MW is a group that  monitor the numbers of Monarch and their amazing Migration. They have also begun a program to help gardeners set up 'way stations' for the butterflies.

We have learnt so far that the Monarch Host plants (Milkweed) are less abundant. There are apparently multiple environmental and social reasons for this. Thankfully there is still hope: Chip Taylor (Monarch Watch Director) summarizes the situation:

"All in all, it was not a good year for monarchs. While some of the present decline can certainly be attributed to the seasonal conditions last summer, it is the decline of monarch habitats in the United States and Mexico that is the major concern. The good news is that we can do something about the habitats in the United States and Canada – we can plant milkweed. That said, in order to compensate for the continued loss of habitat we need to plant LOTS AND LOTS of milkweed. To assure a future for monarchs, conservation and restoration of milkweeds needs to become a national priority." (source).

With a bit of planning we came up with:

The Piwi Kids 'Save the Monarch Plan'

Research:

• Produce a Lap book that will outline everything we learn about:
• The Monarch lifecycle and Migration
• Native milkweed vs. Tropical Milkweed
• The causes of the decline in Monarch numbers
• The causes of decline in host plants.

Projects:

• Purchase fully grown Milkweed plants. These are on their way  have arrived from Educational Science.
• Look into the possibility of  hosting a way station and encourage people and public gardens in our community to also host them.
• Propagate Milkweed Plants from seeds to give to gardeners in our community. You can find these at Live monarch.com  for a small donation. We are waiting for ours to arrive.
• Make lots of Butterfly crafts!

Field trips: 

• Visit local community gardens to observe butterflies and identify host plants
• Visit a Butterfly sanctuary
• View 'Flight of the butterflies'

To date we have ordered our Milk weed plants and seeds. Next week we begin our research for the lap book. Should be a lot of fun and learning!

I will be pinning resources for this project on our Pinterest board:


What plans do you have for Earth day?

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 

 

Science our way

 

This post is part of the 2013 Virtual Curriculum Fair at Homeschooling heart and mind. The theme this week is Exploring Our World: Social Studies and more Science

We were fortunate to be able to explore a lot  of our Science curriculum at Museums and parks this school year. An unplanned 6 week stay in Houston’s Museum district meant that some amazing lessons were right on our doorstep.  

It sounds like a dream situation . Unfortunately, to begin with, I didn’t view it like that. We were travelling with the portable curriculum and missing our workboxes. We certainly planned to visit some of the museums and the zoo but it seemed too costly to visit all of them. The original plan was to stick to our my lesson schedule.   DH (the voice of reason) encouraged us to go everywhere while we were here & the kids were really excited . 

Note booking in Considering God's creation

I was scared we would fall behind. Crazy? Yep!

We homeschool so we have flexibility and I was trying to stick to some imaginary timeline!  Long story short, God gave me a jab in the ribs (long story) and reminded me that our stay was temporary. Humbled, I went through the science and history we had planned for the year and found that a lot of it related to the exhibits we could see. A local family, we met, also forwarded us an email listing regular free days for the Museums -even the zoo! Most museums' websites also had educational resources we could do while we were before, during and after our visits. This became our new lesson plan along with daily Math and Language.

Most of the visits were on free or discount days so the cost to see and learn so much was minimal. We knew we could go back the following week so we weren’t worried about seeing everything in one visit.

Some highlights

Houston Zoo:
During one visit we studied Elephant habitats and Miss K wrote a report. Mini Piwi was excited to see the baby elephants after a week of E is for Elephant Pre K activities

We also watched a chick hatch: Wow!

 

During another visit we met a long horn up close

Houston Museum of Science and Nature

The Piwis loved seeing all the crystals and Minerals ...

 

 

 Making clouds

 and waves...

 Presenting the weather

and entertaining the security team in the Dino hall...pretending to be Sloth-zilla

 

During our second visit we were identifying Carnivores and Herbivores in the Dino Hall. Mini Piwi was doing her D is for Dinos week and Miss K was studying predator/prey relationships and food chains.

 

Cockrell Butterfly house

Miss K worked on her Insect note booking pages from Considering Gods creation and Mini Piwi was all about C for Caterpillar the week we visiting the amazing Butterfly house in the HMNS.

 

Houston Space center.

I made up Space lapbooks in anticipation of this visit! Piwi Daddy was able to come with us and it was definitely a learning experience for everyone. One of the highlight was touching an moon rock and another was seeing Space shuttle Discovery.

 

 

Childrens' Museum

One warm afternoon the Piwi's learnt about the properties of water

 

We came back again to spend time in the lab

 

Health Museum:

A diagram is one thing but to be able to walk around a giant model of a brain, heart or eyeball is definitely an awesome way to learn!

 

 

Downtown Aquarium

Even Thanksgiving dinner was a Field trip....The Piwis liked the little aquarium on site but the huge tanks in the restaurant itself were amazing. The waiters were full of information about the species of Fish swimming around us. I admit this visit did not fall under the minimal cost category. We tend to do something to find different ways to make holidays special for the kids since we are away from extended family.

 looking at their new Moray eel buddy.

There is certainly no doubt that that Piwi's learnt plenty during our stay in the Museum district. I even learnt to relax and use the resources we are given. It also made DH & I more pro active in finding places to take the Piwi's. We no longer have the Zoo or Museums so close so we are more creative. If I can't find a field trip with local homeschool groups I try to organize one. We have found many Ice cream stores, yogurt shops & Pet shops are open to tours and talks. All you need to do is ask. There are also several websites to find field trips.

touristinformationdirectory.com

fieldtripfactory.com

teachtopia.com

 Check out what other families have to say about this week's theme

Cell Unit Study - Mitochondria and Energy by Julie @ Highhill Education

Our Blended Social Studies by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool

2013 Virtual Curriculum Fair-Exploring Our World: Social Studies and more Science by Leah C @ As We Walk Along the Road

Exploring Canada by Annette @ A Net In Time

Project Passport: The Middle Ages by Missouri Mama @ Ozark Ramblings

Virtual Curriculum Fair- Exploring Our World by Karyn @ Teach Beside Me

Our Absolutely Positively Favorite History Curriculum Ever by Wendy @ Homeschooling Blessings