Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?
I see children staring at me.

Children, children, what do you see?

We see a Toucan sitting in a tree.

Toucan, Toucan, what do you see?

I see a Gorilla almost as handsome as me.

Gorilla, Gorilla, what do you see?

I see a creepy bat hanging from a tree.

Creepy Bat, Creepy Bat, what do you see?

I see two Lizard Snakes that are even scaring me.

Two Lizard Snakes, two Lizard Snakes, what do you see?


We see children asking "What is he?"

Unknown animal, unknown animal, what do you see?


I see a Sloth eating a leaf upside down from a tree.

Sloth, Sloth, what do you see?

I see an Elephant being a real lad-ee (lady).

Elephant lady, elephant lady, what do you see?

I see a pair of Haitian twins looking at me.

Haitian twins, Haitian twins, what do you see?

We see a Tortoise walking very slow-lee.

Tortoise,Tortoise, what do you see?

I see four Giraffes that are so much taller than me.

Four tall Giraffes, four tall Giraffes, what do you see?

We see an Alligator that could looks kinda sleep-ee.

Sleepy Alligator, Sleepy Alligator, what do you see?

I see a Zebra having a mid-day munch-ee.

Zebra, Zebra, what do you see?

I see an Ostrich ready to outrun me.

Ostrich, Ostrich, what do you see?

I see some pink Flamingos and children saying "Pew-ee!"

Stinky Flamingos, Stinky Flamingos, what do you see?


We see a Baboon and his little red hiney.

Red hiney'd Baboon, Red hiney'd Baboon, what do you see?

I see two beautiful Lorikeets laughing at me.

Beautiful Lorikeets, Beautiful Lorikeets, what do you see?

We see a hungry Tiger wanting to eat me.

Hungry Tiger, Hungry Tiger, what do you see?

I see a Lemur saying "Will you just leave me be?"

The End.

Science, Weeks 9 and 10 (The Water Cycle, Rain, Rainbows)...

We have studied rain, the water cycle, and things in between for a couple weeks. I found it interesting and the kids liked it. Here are some of the books we used:

Water Up, Water Down-The Hydrologic Cycle by Sally M. Walker
Down Comes the Rain by Franklyn M. Branley
A Drop of Water by Gordon Morrison
**Did a Dinosaur Drink That Water? by Robert E. Wells
This Is the Rain by Lola M. Schaefer
Water by Christin Ditchfield
Rain (Blastoff Reader)
How Does the Sun Make Weather? by Judith Williams
and our ever trusty Usborne Encyclopedia of our World


Several of the books were easy readers that the kids could read and understand on their own. I loved the **'d one because it was such a clear and easy explanation of the water cycle.

They also colored some pictures of the water cycle as we learned the process (evaporation, condensation, precipitation).

We learned about rainbows and what makes one happen. The kids drew pictures of them with the correct colors (ROY G BIV---red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). Will is only pretending to not be happy....you can almost see him smiling. :)

History, Week 9...

Last week was Week 9. It went like this:

Pretest

Legend of Trojan Horse--This was a fun one to read (I remember writing a paper about this when I was in high school and I always enjoyed the story) and I used this horse and army men hidden in the ace wrap to tell the story.

Ruth and Naomi-a good story to remember. Kendall keeps calling Boaz 'Bozo' in all seriousness and her Bible story happened to be the same one that night!

Gideon-The book suggested making clay pots, but we didn't. (The three things the army used were clay pots---they threw them on the ground, cracking them, torches, and horns---the noise of these things and all the torches made it seem to the enemy that the army was much larger than it's 300 men)

This week's Post test was cumulative over the last 9 weeks and was very thorough. It was good to test how much the kids have retained.

Timeline.

I like the burnt match that Gideon is holding for a torch. Kendall made the Trojan Horse. Ruth and Naomi are holding hands and Ruth has a gold cross on her because she is in the lineage of Christ.

What we have so far...

Step Afrika...

Friday we went to see this performance at ImaginOn. It was awesome!! I only took Luke and Kendall but wish the whole family would have gone.

Luke-Step Africa is a group of people who do really fast moves. There were 4 girls and 5 boys. 9 all together. They dance by clapping their hands, stomping their feet, snapping, and hitting their feet or boots. I liked it a lot.

Kendall-We went to Step Afrika and I want to tell you the kind of dance they did. They stomp their feet and put their leg up and clap under their legs--their left leg and their right leg. When they say "Attention!" you have to put your arms like you're driving a car and say "Hugh!"

And they have these boots that were green. And they said they used them in the jungle. They clap their boots and it sounds like they are clapping their hands. They can do all kinds of moves.

I liked it and we got to stand up and do it with them.

Mom-I loved this so much! It was a group of 'brothers and sisters' that have taken up the "Step" style of dancing. They were very entertaining and very talented and seemed like very nice young people. They encouraged education to the audience. Any time I hear drums or see this style of dancing, I get tears in my eyes. I don't know why, but I just love it so much! I think it's very cool that these African American folks are proud of their heritage and are keepin' it alive and making it known to others.

Stress....

Check out our new stress balls to mess with during circle time. The kids were fidgety, so I thought these might help. We are all 4 enjoying them.


Here are their best stressed faces...

History, Week 8...

We didn't do much else than read the lessons each week. None of the activities really struck me as something we had to do. Having done Classical Conversations last year was helpful because the kids recognize a lot of the names and things we talk about. I do believe CC is a great way of learning...


Pretest- "What Do You Know?"


(Since we didn't do much, I'll just point out the main points we learned about each topic)


Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti-A Pharaoh and his wife who were the first to worship only one god (monotheism), although it wasn't the one true God. They worshipped Aten (god of the sun) and Amenhotep even changed his name to Akhenaten which meant "pious servant of Aten." They could not have any boy babies, so he married someone else to have some boys. But one of their daughters did marry King Tut (below)...


Tutankhamen (King Tut)-Became king when he was 8 or 9. Died when he was 18. Not exactly sure why, but there are theories. His tomb was discovered in 1922 and was unique because it was the only ancient pharaoh's tomb that had remained untouched. Everything was there and there was tons of gold...


Ramses II (The Great)-Possibly the pharaoh in charge during the exodus of Moses the the Israelites. Was known for the way he brought Egypt out of weakness. Known for great buildings that some still last today. He put a monument of himself (X 4) at the entrance of a temple he built in Abu Simbel. Humble guy....

Post Test

Timeline

Nefertiti and King Tut (with his gold mask---didn't have enough glitter to cover the whole thing)

Ramses' 4 statues of himself...

What we have so far...

Science-Weeks 7 and 8- Rocks...

OK, we were slow about rocks so it took 2 weeks to do it. Things we studied-

-The different groups of rocks (Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic)-We wrote a description of each one. Also did a test where we put 4 different looking rocks in a cup of warm vinegar to see if it would fizz. That is one way scientists can classify rocks--by it's reaction to acid.

-The layers of the earth-drew a diagram of it and brought out the globe to show them how the innermost layer is all the way in the center of the circle (globe).

-Talked about what Geology and Geologists are.

-Gems-Went to Dan Nicholas park to gem mine. Brought them home and identified each one.

Scrubbed them real clean with soap and water and toothbrushes...

Will's gems...

Luke's gems...

Kendall's gems...

-Crystals-Tried to grow crystals, but it didn't work great. I don't think our salt had fully dissolved and that was the problem. Crystals were supposed to grow all on these rocks, but they just grew in a few spots. We had dyed it red to make it pretty, but the ones that actually grew stayed white.

Supposed to be in sunlight, but it was a cloudy week...

You can see a few crystals on the bottom rock...

It was a random assortment of things to study, and I hope they got something out of it. They enjoyed the gem mining and loved identifying them most of all.

I think next year I am going to get a science book. We can still do fun experiments and stuff, but I feel like I'm just piecing this together and there are a lot of holes. My hope is that even if they are not retaining all the info I give them, that they are at least developing a love of learning. If they are super interested in rocks when they get older, they will know how to go about learning more about them!

Books we used (some we didn't really use much, but just looked at pictures and I got some info out of)

-Guide to Minerals by A.C Bishop

-Geology, Earth Science by Tim Clifford

-Sand and Soil, Earth's Building Blocks, by Beth Gurney

-Extreme Rocks and Minerals by Smithsonian (web-linked)

-Rocks and Fossils by Chris Pellant (Kingfisher Young Knowledge book)

-Igneous Rocks (Geology Rocks!) by Rebecca Faulkner

-Sedimentary Rocks (Geology Rocks!) by Rebecca Faulkner

-Cool Rocks *** by Tracy Kompelien

-Rocks and Fossils, A Visual Guide, by Robert R. Coenraads

-and of course our trusty First Encyclopedia of Our World (Usborne)

-More Mudpies to Magnets experiment book pages 89 and 86