We started late today, if you read yesterday's post you'll know why. I am feeling better anyway, but we started late with a minor diversion into geography. For whatever reason my kids had never really noticed the United States flag, and have been crazy about pointing it out for the last week and a half, EVERYWHERE. So I printed off a United States flag for her to color and taught her the pledge of allegiance, of course she'll have forgotten it, but we will probably start doing that everyday too. I also sang "The Star Spangled Banner" for her after her interest was piqued when I said that a flag was an identifier of a nation as was a song and items, like the Statue of Liberty. I haven't truly sung in a long time. It was quite rusty, and I think it is mutual that I not do that again, specifically THAT song.
One of the standards is that she needs to know her place in the world, not "place" as in her place is to be seen not heard, or any such nonsense, or get thee behind me. No, it means how she fits in. Too bad too, because I was hoping to teach her that her "place" was to sew in a sweatshop so that Mommy could compete with China, only on Etsy. I kid, I kid. So this is the earth, with our country identified, and our state and city. Those things on the left are pretend magnifying glasses, they "zoom" in to show our street and an identifying freeway, as well as the "In n' Out" She insisted that be in there. The next one "zooms" even closer to show our house, and her in the yard.
A minor detour. This is supposed to be a picture of my husband, but I think it looks like Count Purplica.
Here's the back, apparently it was a birthday card for him, his birthday was on Monday. Happy belated birthday, Daddy from Count Purplica!
This was our science experiment. Yes that is mud in baking sheets. It is supposed to represent how Rainforest habitats are like the one with the sponge. The water is still present, but also stored into the sponge, where it will continue to release moisture and water, keeping the earth very moist and providing water for communities. I think we put too much water in. I'm not sure they got anything out of this one.
The mud may not have worked, but we definitely learned about the layers of the rainforest. This is her coloring a book about it. I used parchment paper so that the pieces under could still be seen, and we layered them. I drew the "layers" but she colored them in and added the things that were specific to each layer, like butterflies, birds, snakes, monkeys, the sun, as well as herself on the ground to show how tall the trees were.
The finished product. On the right are little blurbs about the rainforest. They originally wanted me to have her staple just those together to make a book, but I thought this might illustrate the point better.
Showing the layers of parchment paper. The flash made it funny to where you couldn't see through it very easily. So I thought I would show you.
Good heavens! My hand looks a bit like a mangled finger spider or something. Clearly I am not a hand model!
This was her literature assignment. She was to make a book based off of yesterday's Venn Diagram. She decided she would rather write about Christmas. The Venn Diagram did have Christmas in it, and I couldn't care. She wrote an illustrated a book. That was all that mattered.
This was our pre-writing. Kelsey doesn't care much for writing, so this was needed, otherwise the story would say, "It is Christmas. Then end."
This is her "keeping room" diorama from history. She informed me she would not like to live in Colonial times, since they did not have bath tubs and potties, among other things.
I think Keira's been feeling a little under-represented in the home school blog. I tried to tell her it was because she isn't home-schooling yet. She would hear none of that. Here is a picture of her holding a random object to placate my silly 4 year old.
