homeschool recap: mini units
As I progress with this pregnancy, I'm getting more and more easily fatigued, so I don't have as many in depth photos to show of what we have been doing the last couple weeks. We have studied two different mini units for our science curriculum. The weather has been tricky here, so we haven't had as much outdoor time, so we've had to make do indoors!
First up is our rock + minerals + crystals unit. We used our trusty Nature Anatomy book along with the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia to learn about how rocks, minerals and crystals are formed. Zoey received this crystal growing kit for Christmas, so we will be conducting an experiment tonight as a family to see if we can grow some over the next couple of weeks!
Last Christmas I gave the kids this awesome game called Rock On! that comes with an assortment of rocks and crystals with identification cards and all sorts of information. You use that information to play a fun game. There are a couple ways to play for different age groups, and I only have the highest of praises for this learning game! We played with the rocks and used them to identify different crystals found in our text books.
The kids and I were amazed to find that the lake had frozen over! Des is very into throwing rocks and sticks into the lake, so imagine his surprise when he through a rock and it just made a loud sound and slid. They spent a long while throwing rocks and sticks and laughing. So many new experiences for my desert babies.
One of our tasks when we were at the lake was to study the winter trees - another one of our mini studies. They identified the evergreen trees, and the ones that look like skeletons during the winter. We also looked to see if any of them had buds that would be a sign of spring. None had buds, so we can't get too hopeful yet! We also gathered winter foliage to bring home for a project.
With such good weather we couldn't pass up playing at the park before heading home! The kids are very into the tire swing right now. I pretty much can't even push them without imagining how nauseating it must be to swinging on that thing, haha.
Back at home we sorted through all of our nature findings and took forked branches from the winter trees we found, and made a natural weaving! The kids absolutely loved this and said they want to do it for all of the seasons. I loved the smell of the pine needles! They smelled divine.
The next day we busted out the I purchased a few weeks ago. I don't think I'd personally recommend this kit because we'd follow the recipes and had to majorly adjust them to get them to form a slime or putty. I'd stick with following recipes online and buying the ingredients from a crafting store!
We made galactic slime and we made color changing slime that would change based on the temperature of it's environment. This was a fun activity to do while stuck inside because of bad weather.
Going along with our winter trees theme, we took our slime and playdough and made winter scenes. The trees figurines are from Safari Ltd. I'm linking to them so you can see them, but I would buy them at Michaels or Joanns with a coupon!
Since Desmond is working on letter sounds, I had him take a T stamp to his playdough to make T tracks along with his winter scenes.
This geoboard activity was mostly for Desmond, but as always, Zoey loves to join in with him, which makes it more fun for Des anyway! I took our shape puzzle and placed a shape down in front of the geoboard and then had them create the matching shape with the rubber bands. This was good for Desmond's finger strength!
While I work on schoolwork with Zoey, Des has gotten quite good at entertaining himself with his toys. It's a struggle sometimes and some days he just plays ABC Mouse on my computer (which is also great and I recommend!) but he really loved that memory game the other day!
I introduce new spelling words on Monday each week and we work on spelling usually 3-4 days out of the weeks. Here is how we study:
- First day - spelling work introduction. I say the word, then the word in a sentence and then she will write down what she thinks how the word is spelled. If any are incorrect I will correct her afterwards by writing the correct spelling next to it and then have her write it correctly again.
- Second day - write the word in a sentence. I will say the word and she will write it and then underneath she will write the word in a complete sentence.
- Third day - stamp the word. I will say the word and she will stamp it out with these stamps.
- Fourth day - magic painted words. We do this rarely and only do this when she is still having trouble with words, but I will write the words on a paper with a white crayon and then she will paint the entire page with watercolors to reveal the hidden words. It's fun and great review!
- Fifth day - spelling test. It's the same as the first day and after a week of this method she has never gotten any of her words spelled incorrectly. I believe in repetition and even if it feels like it might be SO repetitive, it's worked for us!
We've still been recording in our moon journals and it sure was fun to record the blood moon last week!
