Yesterday was a big day for Bug. He started the morning with Tae Kwon Do testing. He did great and achieved his green belt. He is now moving up to the advanced class for kids his age… Fairy is going to tag along with him. I don’t have it in me to spend 4 nights a week at different TKD classes.
After his testing we hurried over to his last t-ball game of the season. He had a fun time and is planning to play again next year… eager for coach pitch instead of the tee.
Even though it has been on the back burner in my mind, Bug has not lost any interest in his Inside the Body project. I thought I would share some recent images on the topic.
We went to a Kid’s Hands On Science Museum with some homeschooling friends right before Thanksgiving. My kids were thrilled with the human anatomy exhibits. They really liked the floor model heart where you could walk through the valves.
Bug is frequently found curled up with his favorite anatomy book. Hmm… is there something funny about him being curled up in his Blankie and asking about DNA?
After spending quite a bit of time looking at skeletons Bug wanted to make his own with play dough. I made him up a batch of white salt dough and he ended up focusing just on the skull.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme Fluffy inspired us to do two different crafts. Here is the first one… Wet Felted Wool Gingerbread Men Ornaments. I will be sharing the second activity later this week.
We started by digging through some of Gammy’s large bags of Wool Roving. We then tracked down some gingerbread men cookie cutters, flat bottom containers and a poky object (wooden kitchen skewers in our case… knitting needles, chop sticks, etc would work).
We placed the cookie cutter in the bottom of the container. Then we pulled off small bits of the wool roving and filled in the cookie cutter. Try not to let any of the wool escapse under the edge of the cutter. Be sure to get in all the corners.
Once the cookie cutter was full to the top edge with wool, we add very warm water to the container and dish soap.
Then we needed to agitate the wool for several minutes. This is where the poky object came in to play. Be sure to poke straight up and down.
The younger two seemed to want to STIR the wool rather than using a straight up and down motion. So I ended up just having them use their fingers to poke the wool. That seemed to work just fine.
It does take several minutes of constant agitation to set up. Once they were set, we rinse them, patted them dry on a towel and then I set them over a vent to dry. When they were dry I added a simple piece of embroidery floss for hanging.
You could definitely embellish these ornaments if you would like. Try blanket stitching the edge, adding buttons, embroidery, glitter, etc. You could add a wool design on the front before felting if you wanted. We decided to just keep ours simple this time around but I can imagine making a bunch of these next year and stringing them together to make a cute garland.
Bug really enjoys card games. When the grandparents came to visit a couple weeks ago they brought him a set of Star Wars cards. Amazing how such a simple ‘toy’ can give so many hours of entertainment. Inspired by the Star Wars Characters on the deck he has since been creating his own deck of cards. The ratio of face cards to numeric cards definitely makes it a loaded deck… and the games he has developed to go with ‘his cards’ definitely make you feel like the deck is stacked against you. Although he has really designed it so there are many, many chances for WAR. LOL – what fun!
I want to introduce the self guided project Bug has started recently. This has been an interesting adventure for me as well. I love the idea of a project approach to learning and can totally ‘picture it’ with older kiddos but an early reader? How on earth was that going to work? If you are looking for tips on it I would recommend stopping by Camp Creek Blog for a bit. Some great food for thought there.
Anyway, we choose a theme together. I think any Magic School Bus covered topic would have worked. Bug decided on Inside the Body. Ok, so off to the library we went. I had him talk to the librarian about what he wanted. She showed him to the anatomy section in the kids department and recommended a DVD to him. So he grabbed that and a stack of books.
Now what? I let him browse the books and choose what he wanted me to read to him. He saw a big diagram in the back of the Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body book and thought that was pretty cool and wanted to make one. I suggested we trace him for the outline. He then asked for coloring pages “like maybe the heart.” So I printed one off for him and he matched the colors to a diagram in one of his books. After we put it up on his body he wanted another one of “the guts.” I went off to print something up for him and came back and GASP – he was drawing all over the body and the bulletin board. I caught myself in the middle of a “What are you doing?!” (thinking he was ruining it).
Bug – “Just drawing all my red blood cells. And look see here are some white blood cells eating these germs. And here are some blue blood cells that are out of oxygen so they are going back into the heart.”
Eureka! We talked about it for a few more minutes, I handed his the digestive track coloring page and then left him to it. Then next day while he was working on it he showed me a cut he drew on his finger and the blood dripping out. “But don’t worry mom, I’ve got lots of platelets here, here and here.”
I thought I would share the book Bug wrote this week. I tried to stay out of the story creation and just do my part taking dictation so it is a Knight Story as told by a 5 year old boy. It is a very thrilling story and a cliff hanger, as per Bug’s implicit instructions (he explained that the story was done for now… the rest is for book two). I didn’t scan the final page which simply reads, “To be continued…” but just so you aren’t left hanging too long I will assure you he is already outlining books 2 and 3 in this series. Book two will be sent to print shortly. BTW – I believe the landscape and character creation to be highly influenced by Lego Catalogs. (You can click on the 4 arrows in the bottom right corner to make the slide show full size – and therefore legible. The pause button is helpful too 😉 ).
At the end of the week, the kids always do an illustration and narration in their journals (they dictate, I write). I thought I would share their entries from today on Johnny Appleseed.
Johnny Appleseed and a Friend Picking Apples
Johnny Appleseed planted apple seeds. He talked to his friends along the way. Then he gave his friends apple trees. He talked to them long, long ago. He carried his bible and his bag of apple seeds. He did not carry a knife or gun because he liked all the animals. The animals were nice to him.
Fairy
He picked up apples and seeds. He walked around and planted apples. He was a nice stranger.
‘A’ had his first testing for Tae Kwon Do last night. He did awesome and earned his yellow belt! One of the teachers (not his normal one) told us that he has never seen a young student do that well in all his years of testing and ‘A’ was his first to recieve a perfect score. The best part was that you could truly see how much A enjoyed it. He took it very seriously and is sooo proud of his accomplishment.
During testing the kids have to break a board which was really cool. I was taking a video of it but my camera memory card maxed out just before he hit the board. AHHH!
Here is the poem we will be working on memorizing for the month of August.
BEND low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.
Last week while ‘L’ was at Princess Camp the other kiddos and I did a mini Tree Study… at least that was our focus for art time. ‘A’ chose to work with pencils and ‘B’ of course wanted the messy paints out. Unfortunately my scanner bed isn’t quite big enough to scan the entire page but I think you can still get a pretty good idea of their work.
‘B’s Trees
‘A’s Apple Tree and Spider Web