Afterschooling: Weekly Wrap Up#5

O.K the kids are moving right along in their academics at school. Ken has a project due next Friday that is a
Survival Project. She will be able to choose being stranded on an island, in the desert, or a forest. After choosing their location, she must choose five items and give an explanation of how she will use them to survive the conditions of their location. Ken is very excited and so am I  Ken will start on this today. Michelle is so excited about participating in her first science fair this March, she is in the planning stage of deciding exactly what she would like to do for this.  DJ was listening to his sisters and wants to do his own project on Anartica and Penguins.

                                                                  DJ
                                  
                                      Coloring the state bird of Michigan.

                 Double digit addition with the Small bead frame.

DJ ditched the Magic Treehouse book Civil War on Sunday for the Hooked on Phonics Master Reader program. DJ saw me reorganizing some of my not used materials and found this. There are four levels to this program. DJ  started on Level 1 Friday and now is on the last level, he loves to work on the computer.

Working with children of the world matching activity. I found this activity on the blog Handmade Beginnings.
It is now his first go to activity, he is getting really good at matching the flags from our Flag world puzzle with the children. Thank you so much Eva for blogging about this.

 Finding out what is the scale of the quarter compared to the one in the book.

                 Posing for the camera. DJ lost another tooth!

   Painted this volcanoe. We haven't had a chance to blast this thing off yet due to the weather.

DJ's most interesting read of the week is this book. It tells the story of volcanoes and how it affected Pompeii.

                                                              
                                                              Ken

           Multiplying with the Golden bead material.

                                                                        

  Working with unit and tens boards with the Long divison racks and tubes work.

                                                                        
                                       United States map work.

                                                                          

Kens' Hydroponic plant is steadily growing. It just clicked to her yesterday that she could be using a ruler to measure growth. She still is recording her observations in her plant journal.

                                                       
Ken is still all in for the American Girl Series. This week she finished the second book  Addy Learns A Lesson. Ken will be sharing about this book in a post tomorrow.

                                                               Michelle

                                             Enjoying her Spanish.

                              Working with house classification cards in spanish.

                             Loves finding new words with this dictionary.

                                 A page from the book.

Michelle has spent most of her time this week with work from school. Michelle is really, really loving school and puts all of her energy into her school work first.

                                                                             

 Thank you for reading what we have been up to this week.
                                                Enjoy your weekend!!

Whose Tools Are These? (StArt)

Whose Tools Are These? is written by Sharon Katz Cooper. It is a wonderful story that introduces children to different jobs that use different kinds of tools. It shows the picture of the tool on one page, the child guesses who they think uses the tool, then the child discovers the answer on the next page with a picture of  a person who uses the tool. The book also describes exactly what the worker uses the tools for.


                                                   The cover of the book.

                                                 Our Project

               First they cut their piece of yellow cellophane into smaller pieces.

                                                                
  This is JD's second day here with us. He was so exciting about using scissors that he didn't want to stop.
                                                    

                                                                                
                            Then they glued the pieces onto their hats.

                                                                   
          I stapled the hats to fit their heads and then they colored their hammers.

                                                                 
                                            Construction Workers

To see more art work done by children inspired by stories please visit StArt hosted by A Mommy's Adventures.

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Keeping It Simple

I realized that I haven't shared with you that the children in the toddler group has changed. Most of them that were toddlers when I started this blog have become of preschool age. With that being said I have to change the style of the activities and now I  can renew the toddler shelves with some materials that have already been toddler tested with a stamp of approval.

                                                          Color Box #1

                                                                     
The toddlers are busy as usual, during my observations of them individually I noticed that all of them play the guessing game when naming colors. When working with color box #1 they are very good at matching. When naming the colors it depends on what day of the week it is that they actually name the color correctly. So I made up a red basket containing all red objects, and a blue bag that contains all blue objects. The goal is to recognize the colors and name the object by saying " The red apple", " The blue cup". After working with these activities I hope that when working with the color box #1 they will be able to name the colors red, and blue, and then we will work on naming yellow.


                                                          Red Basket

                                                                   Blue Bag

I also set up this activity where they can weigh the red and blue bears or size them up.

                                                                            
Simple is just the best thing sometimes. The color of the week has never worked for my group of toddlers. I tried that weekly activity the first weeks of September, it just isn't child led enough for them and a true time block of boredom when your a toddler who may be interested in something completely different.
                                                                           
 

Intro to Geology

Geology: is the science that studies Earth's history that is recorded in rocks.

It is real simple. You sort the rocks and the shells. What I really what the children to gain from this activity is to know exactly what a rock is. What I have learned from experience is that you never assume that a child already knows something. Yeah sure some may know what a rock is the first time they see it others may not. I can't tell you how many times I have witnessed a child working while snot was running down their nose, even though there was a box of tissue at arms reach. When I remind the child where the box of tissue is and then assist them with wiping their nose they are relieved and I watch that child very happily wiping their nose repeatedly for days even after their runny nose has disappeared. The box of tissue that was once full before I showed the child that they have the abilty to wipe their own nose is empty by the end of the day. The child knows that the tissue is there but somehow there is a disconnect that they don't have the understanding that it is alright to get tissue to wipe their nose, or they just don't know how. The reason that I am sharing this with you is because I play this scenario in my head whenever I am about to present work to the children.

It took me exactly twenty minutes to set this up. I purchased the river rocks and shells from the dollar store ages ago. I do have matching rocks included in the bin that are igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. The rocks have matching numbers, this is for the child to discover.

Lets's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans is what I will be reading to gain the childrens' interest. I haven't met a child yet that didn't enjoy listening to this book. The pictures are wonderful. Rocks and Minerals will be on the shelf beside the work, exciting photographs that I hope will get the children to ask me some questions.

                                                              
I have some exciting plans to go along with our studies of Geology if the children are interested.
                                                                           

What DId We Learn All Week?

                       Don't worry Mom and Dad!
 

                                

                                                                           
           I just can't fit everything into my backpack!!                                        

Learning About Hydroponics! (Science Sunday)

Ken says she may want to be an Botanist when she grows up. So one of her presents she received for Christmas was a Hydro-Dome plant kit. The kit is made by Dune Craft. This is what Ken has been learning while taking care of this plant.

What is Hydroponics? Hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro water and panos labor) is a method of growing plants using mineral solutions, in water without soil. Plants may be grown within their roots in the mineral solution only or in a inert medium, such as perlite, gravel or mineral wool.

History of Hydroponic Gardening: Hieroglyphic records show that ancient Egyptians were probably the first people to attempt to grow plants in a soil less enviroment. Some suspect that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may have used primitive hydroponic technology. The Roman Emperor Tiberius is believed to have used hydroponics to grow cucumbers out of season. The next major development in hydroponics occurred in the 17th century in Europe, where greenhouses began to use hydroponics methods regularly to grow plants and vegetables. The U.S. began exploring and experimenting with practical applications during World War Two. Today, hydroponics is popular not just as a way to produce larger, healthier, and flavorful foods on a large scale, but also as a household hobby.

Ken learned these cool things from the information that was provided in the plant kit.

                                                            
                                                    Getting Started

Soaking the rock wool. This process took about three days to get it done right.

                                  Planting the Seeds
                                   
Placing the rock wool in the net pots.

               Putting the lettuce seeds in the holes in the rock wool.

    Placing the net pots in the tray of the dome.

                                              

                                                     Observations

Before you can move on to fertilizing you must wait for your seeds to sprout.
Ken is recording observations in her plant journal.

                                                                     
                            After four days the seeds began to sprout.

                                                                         

                                                        Fertilizing

Now you fill  the base of the dome with lukewarm water enough so that the pots will be about one half submerged in water.

 Add 1/16 of a tablespoon of Part A Hydoponic Nutrient. Derived from Ammonium, Calcium, Nitrate, Double soil.

      Add one scoop of Part B Hydroponic Nutrient.

Then you aerate the water using the Hydro-Pump. The hydro-pump consists of three parts: the pump, airline, and the stone diffuser.  You aerate the water once or twice a day.

                                         
To see what other science activites children are doing  please visit Science Sunday hosted by Adventures In Mommydom.