Mexico Exploration

The Shady family is going to Mexico!! We meet the Lizard King there in 43 days. LK's best friend has a condo in Cancun and we are using frequent flyer miles for Princess' and my flights. The only cost with this trip is food and some spending money. Who knew a trip to Mexico could be so affordable?!

In preparation for our trip, we are learning about Mexico through DVDs, books, crafts and a lapbook. Fun!!

Look what I found:

Lapbook Links
Hill of Fire book with a related lapbook
This great site and this site
and a Magic School Bus site with more volcano information (relating to Hill of Fire)

and this treasure trove from the library, with more on the way!

We'll be spending two whole weeks in Mexico in order to keep LK out of the country. Spending less than 35 days in the states allows us a big tax savings.

LK's next leave will be at home here in Oregon. Stay tuned...soon I will share what we will be doing in June when he comes home. And we're hoping for a visit from Tatt-man (LK's son), his wife & the new grandbaby in July once LK is home on leave and we're settled in!

Kwanzaa

This year at Village Home we learned a little bit about Kwanzaa. Princess was intrigued. She wanted to learn more and to celebrate the holiday.

On the internet I found a lot of fun activities here and here and a lapbook here. I copied and pasted the pages from this

http://www.primarygames.com/storybooks/kwanzaa/start.htm

to make a mini book.

We made a paper kinara and "lit" the appropriate candle for each of the seven nights of Kwanzaa.

We did worksheets that Princess loves to do.

We learned about Dr. Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa.

Unscrambled some Kwanzaa words

(Why is Blogger doing this? Does anyone know?)

Our mkeka (straw mat) for placing the symbols of Kwanzaa.

Our unity cup

We learned the meaning of Kwanzaa colors and talked a little about slavery.

And read this book.

Princess loved learning more about Kwanzaa and our (very basic) celebration.

Winter

The Lizard King is safely in Afghanistan. Princess and I are getting back into our routine. The house is a wreck, but I'm slowly getting things in order.

We have spent the last few days reading winter stories, doing winter worksheets, projects and learning a bit, too.

We made a real crystal snowflake using these instructions.

We read the Ukranian Folktale, The Mitten in this little book we found on the Enchanted Learning website.

We colored a mitten and animals found on the website, too so that we could act out the story ourselves.

I turned our Math-U-See workbook into Winter math with some snowflake stamps. We really like Math-U-See. The math worksheets I found online were simply math problems with snowflakes on the page. This just seemed more fun.

We've done crossword puzzles, played Tic-Tac-Snow, found our way through a maze, a picture hunt, we read The Snowy Day and this activity to go with it. We read Winter Waits and It's Winter. And who doesn't love to color a winter picture?!

We are turning this exploration into a lapbook. I'll be sure to share the photos once we're done.

Happy Winter everyone!

Hanukkah Exploration

We leave Friday afternoon to meet the Lizard King in Disney World! I can hardly believe that the time is so close. We will spend 5 fun-filled, much needed, days together. (Have I mentioned this already?) We fly back to Portland on the 10th and Hanukkah starts on the 11th.

I have spent a good part of the weekend searching for Hanukkah activities to entertain us this week and during the week of Hanukkah. I found a site were you can design your own BINGO cards! They even have a Hanukkah theme! I found a Hanukkah lapbook here along with links to other sites with even more stuff! The one thing I couldn't find was a picture (easy) crossword puzzle, so I made one myself. :)

Today Princess chose the crossword puzzle and Hanukkah Bingo.

We made cornstarch clay, using this recipe. We used the clay to make Hanukkah decorations and a couple snowmen. Princess and I are wondering if we'll be able to paint the clay. We'll find out once everything is dry.

Thanksgiving Week

Inspired by Sherry at Living and Learning, I set out to create a fun-filled week of Thanksgiving activities. I am shifting my thinking now that we are on our 7-week break from Village Home classes. I have also decided to stop teaching classes there so that I can devote more time to Princess.

Here are some things I found for us to do this week.

Thanksgiving math worksheets

Thanksgiving activities and more activities from Enchanted Learning.

Thanksgiving riddles, who doesn't love a good giggle?

First Thanksgiving printable book

I've also created some fun crafts, including paper chains, paper turkeys and more!

It should prove to be a fun-filled and thankful week!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Spider Lapbook

Our spider studies have come to a close. As has become our new custom with studies like this, we finish with a lapbook.

I found a lot of the mini books here, just page down the list to spiders. Enchanted Learning has some of the pieces we used, too. SpiderRoom.info has a wealth of information and great pictures. Be sure to turn your sound down. The animated spiders talk.

I have to say that finding resources for this lapbook was the hardest so far. We did have lots of spiders around the house and yard we observed which is always a great bonus in a lesson.

Princess decided on a colorful spider for the cover.

Since she is just learning to write, Princess isn't comfortable writing long answers. Here we found the definition and pasted the answers with the vocabulary words.

For shorter answers she is happy to write.

She really likes to make the number 8!

Princess enjoyed answering the questions at the end of this mini book.

Here she wrote the short words and I wrote the long ones.

These are spider defenses and offenses.

Here Princess labeled the parts of a spider.

Who doesn't love a little poetry?

Sorry for the sideways photo. Blogger is acting funky.

Anyway, here we have spider life cycle cards.

These were my biggest challenge by far.

I finally took the life cycle from SpiderRoom.info and

made them into sorting cards.

Sorry for the funky photos. I think maybe I need to wipe my lens. ;P

Spider Studies

Continuing our spider study, we decided to make a spider egg sac. We used beads for spider eggs. We put the "eggs" into a balloon and blew it up.

We wrapped the balloon with yarn as our spider silk.

We mixed a glue wash.

covered the sac with glue wash

and waited days for it to dry

When it was finally dry, Princess popped the balloon with a pin.

It worked!

If you look closely, you can see one of the "spider eggs" inside the "egg sac".

Pretty cool project, huh? I love homeschooling!