Weekly Wrap Up (Preschool & First Grade, Leaves & Rome)

This was our last ‘official’ week of the the 2012-2013 School year!  This week actually took place the week 7/22….but with reviews and vacations…it’s going up this week. 

What we did this week:

Circle Time:

We have been using the Mona Lisa Fine Art Page, so we read the book Leonardo and the Flying Boy

Science:
We watched Rock and Learn Life Science (the plant portions)
Magic School Bus Gets Planted


Took advantage of our FREE Trial with Discovery Education Streaming Plus (available through 8/31) and watched a few videos about Leaves, Stems, Roots and Plants in General. 

Used these Leaf Shape Cards from Montessori Print Shop to classify a variety of leaves we found in our yard and made leaf observations using the observation checklist from 2TeachingMommies, we also used the labeling the leaf diagram.

Celery and Food Coloring Experiment

History:
We continued with Ancient Rome, listening to SOTW 1 (as per Pandia Press Ancient History Odyssey I)
We watched Pompeii:  The Last Day
Colosseum:  A Gladiator’s Story

Cole finished up the previous weeks book and read Gladiator’s (Usborne)

Other fun books we used this unit:

He made a Roman Leaf Crown

Geography:  Little Passports – Italy – and fittingly the ‘prize’ was basil seeds to plant! 

And for the finale – we took a field trip to the Big Island to see the volcanoes!  What better way to end a unit on Ancient Rome and Pompeii!!  See Field Trip Friday for more details!

Weekly Wrap-up (First Grade & Preschool) Seeds & Ancient Rome- Week 32

Preschool activities this week – Boxes in action.  The large picture is circle time science, my first grader is labeling parts of a seed (we discount monocot and dicot seeds, and observed how seeds change after being soaked in water, from Pandia Press R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey, Life Science) The littles are coloring a flower picture.  Also pictured in action is Handwriting without Tears and Touch Math.    The seed sensory box was a HUGE hit this week!  To see the original boxes laid out go to my weekly workbox post HERE.

We made seed mosaic flowers, and did several experiments with seeds.  Bottom left is some birdseed, an avocado seed and some mustard seeds.  The other 3 plant pictures are radish seeds in different environments with different variables (some have paper towel, some have water, some have sun, etc…so see which grows best).  I got the flower page from HERE and enlarged slightly with my printer.  Many of the seed projects we did were taken from Science Activities in a Bag, I did a swap and a review of the ebook a while back.  You can read it HERE. 
We read:

C read:
He finished The Story of Rome from last week.  He read

and started reading

we also are reading the nonfiction companion as a read aloud

We watched:
Episode 11, Season 1 of Magic School Bus (Goes to Seed)
Season 3, Episode 8 of Curious George (2nd half, Seed Trouble)
Brain Pop Jr Plants – Plant Life Cycle (subscription required)
For Rome we watched Drive Thru History Season 1, episodes 2&3 and listened to Story of the World Vol 1 and read from the Usborne World History Encyclopedia (as per Pandia Press, History Odyssey- Ancients I).

This current week will be a really light load….I’m headed to girls camp at the end of the week, and we have two field trips days. 
Linking up at Tot School
and Weekly Wrap-Up

First Grade–Week 31

History – The Celts and the Romans; Science – Flowers

For History we listened to Story of the World and read from the Usborne World Encyclopedia (as per Pandia Press Ancient History Odyssey I)

We also got a FREE Green Hill Music - Celtic Sampler 2013 from Amazon.com

As we ventured into the Romans we watched

Horrible Histories – Rotten Romans (on netflix); this is a new discovery for us, so we also watched some of the episodes for time periods we have already covered.

Brain Pop Jr – Ancient Rome (subscriptrion required); because it was 4th of July week, we also watched Statue of Liberty on Brain Pop Jr, and the FREE movies on Brain Pop throughout the week.  They have a different FREE video each day, and typically the correspond to holidays, current events, etc.)

and Drive Thru History – Season 1, Episode 1 Ancient Rome:  Historical Overview.  There are a few more episodes we will watch this upcoming two weeks as we continue with Rome.

C has been reading

For Science we talked about flowers.  We took the nature hike (featured in last weeks Field Trip Friday Post).  We talked about the different parts of a flower, and dissected a Hibiscus Flower.  The printable sheet was from Pandia Press R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Life Science.

We also planted some carrot seeds in a plant viewer that I bought at OrientalTrading.com

For Writing this week, he had to write Flower words.  We used a write around the room printable from 3dinosaurs.com flower pack

We watched Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that:  Flower Power

and we read:

Science has become part of our circle time in the morning (something new we are trying out for an upcoming review, stay tuned!) so everyone participates!

Other activity we did this week was Lego Club (at currclick.com).  He built a log cabin, and then added some of his own personal touches to it

Next week:  Seeds & More Rome

First Grade–Week 30–Ancient America

North American continent box with lots of Mexican civilization stuff. The box includes photos from a cruise I took with my mom to the Yucatan.  4 part cards from Montessori for Everyone.  The Temple of the Inscriptions from the Safari Toob Around The World Toy Figure Playset

Make your own mask – we bought these from Oriental Trading and decorated them as part of co-op art class. 
We listened to:
on audible (book was FREE with a 30day trial subscription)
C read:

We also watched a short video clip on Brainpopjr.com about the Mayan civilization (subscription required). 
This was in addition to listening to SOTW and reading from the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World History, following along with Pandia Press History Odyssey Ancients I. 

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First Grade–Week 28 (Ancient Africa)

This last week we talked about Ancient Africa in History. 

In addition to SOTW (Story of the World) with Pandia Press
We watched:
Wishbone Season 1, Episode 6 Bark that Bark, which contained African-American folktales ("Anansi the Spider" and "The People Could Fly") on Youtube.
and on Netflix we watched a few episodes of Lost Kingdoms of Africa
We played Mancala – an ancient African game of counting and strategy

You can also get a free Mancala app for your iOS device
For Science/Literature we are working on a Moving Beyond the Page review, so stay tuned for that!
This Week will be continuing with Moving Beyond the Page and for History – Ancient India! 
Some other great books:

It’s all in the curriculum….

I have heard so many Homeschooling Moms talk about how much they dislike Science, and it comes as such a shock to me!  I LOVE teaching Science, it’s my favorite subject to teach in our homeschool!


Bee farmer presentation

I have even had several mom’s tell me that I should give science classes to homeschoolers and charge money, that so many mom’s would be willing to pay because they dislike it so much.  There is even a mother who does this on the island already.  I had C enrolled in her classes the summer before his kindergarten year.  The classes were great, but I was envious, I wanted to teach science, and doubling it up just seemed pointless, so I did not reenroll him and have been doing our science lessons ever since!


Aquarium field trip

So why is it that moms hate science so much?  I honestly can’t figure it out, but my guess is that they are not using a very good curriculum! 
This year for life science we used R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey by Pandia Press.  It’s a great, hand’s on curriculum.  Almost weekly we are doing some sort of science experiment, learning about animals.  We take all sorts of great field trips that are science based (though a lot of those come with living in Hawaii). 
It’s also a great subject, because all 3 of my children can participate and enjoy it, despite their age differences.  (My boys are 6, 4 and 2).  It’s amazing to see them all learn, and retain what they learn, even the littlest of the bunch! 


Lab on Crustaceans

I never liked science in school, and I think many people had that experience, which is why they automatically do not like teaching science for homeschool….but, like any homeschool subject, MAKE IT FUN!
If you are not enjoying science, rethink your curriculum and try something new! 
You can see all the fun stuff we have done for science this year by visiting our First Grade and Field Trip series.  I add some stuff occasionally from Montessori Print Shop and The Magic School Bus DVDs, but Pandia Press can easily stand alone! 


Lab on Mollusks

I hope that you can find more JOY in SCIENCE if you don’t already!