Handprint Bats

Sorry I haven't been blogging much this week. It has been crazy with parent/teacher conferences, working, and an audit for school. I am one busy girl. I have eight more assignments due before Thanksgiving and then I FINALLY get to student teach. I will try to balance my time, but I have to push through that last month.

Last week I had the privilege of subbing in my friends Learning Support classroom. I happen to be there on Wednesday Art day. No complaints from me!!! My friend had found a cute handprint bat project and I spent all day cutting 30 little hands out of construction paper. Not a bad day of work.

It was so cute I brought one home for "A" to do. It was so fascinating to see how all the kiddos chose to decorate their bats. Some did whimsical colors and yet some chose to make them realistic. When I told "A" that he said "I'm not a black sort of kid so I am going to use colors". Right he is-that boy loves himself some color. You can find the bat printable at DLTK. Just color, glue together, and make handprints out of construction paper for the wings. Cute-Cute!

Owl Lapbook

A few posts earlier, I had mentioned that "A" and I were going to do a mini learning unit on owls. I found a short but cute lapbook on Homeschool Share. I love this place for free printables when it comes to lapbooks and mini units. So after reading Owl Babies by Martin Waddle and All About Owls by Jim Arnosky we got down to working on the lapbook. This is probably the smallest lapbook we have done. I was sort of bummed that they didn't have a math component. In fact, unlike most lapbooks there isn't a lot of subject crossover. There was some good information to be learned though.

The best ways to share a lapbook is on video. So if you wish I included one...

 Not wanting to end any major learning unit without some art or craft I took advantage of the toilet paper rolls my sister-in-law has saved up for me. I found some sweet, colorful owls on Pinterest and they were just too easy to make. So now they join the owls we made from pinecones and feathers in our Learning About Forests unit.

The books we read:

Learning about Forests

Now that we have looked at forest artistically (see previous post) I thought it was time to delve in and learn some facts. I had "A" start out by watching another video by Univ. of Illinois called Trees are Terrific. This video is more geared towards younger children and has some really useful tips and facts. One of the activities in the interactive video is looking at the shape trees make. I decided to take this a little further for "A" by making tree print-outs. I then made a tri-fold with the three shapes in the video and had "A" match the print-outs to the shapes.

During the Walk in the Woods video from earlier, fungi was talked about in detail and their role as decomposers. This led me to try to broach the topic of producers, consumers, and decomposers and a simple forest food chain. I would have liked to do a food web but that is too advance for a five-year-old. I found a fairly simple Temperant Forest Food Chain that clearly shows the three roles living things play in a biome. I explained the food chain and how a producer is anything that makes it's own food which are plants, trees, bushes, etc. For a producer to grow it needs sun, water, and nutrients. Then I told him consumers need to get food from something else. I told him that there are three types of consumers: herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. He could name them with little help from his background knowledge of dinosaurs. Then we talked about decomposers and how those provide the nutrients for the producer. When talking about food chains you do need to discuss death because it is part of the life-cycle. Since "A" is only five I say that when the animal dies from old age over time the body breaks down and only the skeleton is left (that is why we only find dinosaur bones). The mushrooms, worms, and other decomposers help make the body part of the soil and dirt. The body helps the dirt super strong and healthy, and that is how the producers get their nutrients.

After the discussions, I had "A" look at some other print-outs I found that are either producers, consumers, or decomposers. He then had to sort them in another tri-fold. Next, I had him create his own food chain based on the one we just learned about. He wanted a ladybug to be the first consumer but we researched and discovered that ladybugs don't eat plants but plant eating bugs. So he had to change the food chain to add an aphid and then the ladybug. We then researched what ate ladybugs and he chose to do a spider next. We finished up with a bird and mushrooms. He did pretty well considering this is a pretty advanced topic.

Our last learning activity had a little craft component to it, hooray! At Fun Crafts for Preschoolers I saw an idea of making a hallow log from a coffe container (I used a baby formula container). We painted the container brown to look like a log. Then "A" had to tell me what he thinks he would find in a fallen, hollowed log. I reminded him that logs are dark, wet, and since it is a dead to think of decomposers. Here are some of the things he chose:worms, fungi, conks, mushrooms, spiders, beetles, tree frogs, salamander, and chipmunk. I found images and we taped them on the "log" (I couldn't find my Elmers).

Then Daddy had the idea for one final craft. Daddy is not the crafty one in the house, so this made it especially fun! We found some large pinecones and then using feathers, googly eyes, and orange construction paper we made some pretty cute owls.

Creating Three Forests

For the fourth week in our summer challenge we are studying the forest. I am really excited because I am going to finish up the week with two fun outings: World Forestry Center and the Trail of Two Forests. I wanted to start the week just thinking about what forests look like. We live next to quite a few forests so "A" has some schema, but we also looked at one of my favorite non-fiction books for some further inspiration: Forest Explorer by Nic Bishop.

It was time to begin creating forests of our own. These happen to be all one dimensional art pieces but you can do so many things here. I just had an idea for a shoe box diorama...hmm, will I find the time to complete one this week? Back to reality and what we have actually finished! The first forest was a mural. I took brown wrapping paper used for the post office (a roll is $1.50) and made a large rectangle down our hallway as the backdrop. Next, I scoured online for free coloring pages of any living thing I may find in a forest. I used supercoloring.com for most of my images, but now their site seems to be down (I was so excited to share them as a resource). A note on printing out the pictures: make sure you check the size, so your mouse isn't the same size as your brown bear (took me a lot of  trial and error). Some of the animals we printed out were: birds, owl, bat, trees, mushrooms, fallen logs, leaves, ants, bees, raccoons, opossum, chipmunk, squirrels, wolf, bear, moose, skunk, porcupine, mosquito, chrysalis, butterflies, rabbit, deer, spiders, and wildflowers. Then I had "A" choose the placement of the animals, after I cut them all out. I thought that we would make a forest scene with a forest floor and trees in the back. I was excited to talk about sight perception and how smaller trees would be in the back because they appear farther away. Yeah, well "A" had a different design in mind. He was very upset there was no trail or stream so he had to run and get his markers to add them in. Then he put the coloring pages strewn all about. I have to say it probably looks cooler his way, rather than mine! I was surprised that my background paper was not big enough for all of our additions so we had to make some choices, our opossum hanging upside down didn't make the cut, among other things. Once everything was in place it was time to decorate. We used markers and some oil pastels. After three days the masterpiece was complete. He used a great mix of using realistic and abstract colors.

Since "A" is so fond of using color I found a cool idea for a colorful, forest collage at First Pallette for our second forest scene. They have many variations of the collage for ideas, but I chose it to fit our forest theme. After printing out their tree template you just look for creative paper to put it on. I used what I had lying around: origami paper, cut up present bags, and magazines. They recommend cutting out grass and a pond as well. I added a mushroom for good measure. Once you have glued down the collage I let each of us pick four animals to add to the scene from online coloring pages. "A" chose a bear, rabbit, duck for his pond, and a moose. I chose a bear too, a deer, a chipmunk, and an owl.

"A's" finished collage

My finished collage

We have decided to tape our collages together for a huge collaboration piece.

For some further learning, we went to the University of Illinois for a walk in the woods. This is a great interactive flash video where you learn about the forest. This takes a good 30 minutes to complete and I had to narrow down the amount of nature field notes he watched (an added feature). Due to time and we not having some of the animals featured (lightening bugs) we cut our viewing short. Vocabulary is high, so it may be better geared towards upper elementary-but my five year old loved it. He had to pause it to tell me about conks and how interesting they were (didn't know about them myself until watching the video). When we learned about lichen and how it is made up of fungi and algae we had a text-to-text connection from another one of my favorite non-fiction titles: How To Clean a Hippopotamus by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. It makes a mama proud when I ask, ""A" what is that called when living things help each other out?", and he responds with "symbiosis". After viewing the video, click on Fun Places and then have your child (or you) make the third forest scene by clicking on My Woods. This is a computer game where you can change the background to different photographs of forest scenes and then add cartoon features like: mushrooms, snake, owls, squirrels, and more. You can change the size of the cartoons and then print out your finished picture.

"A's" printed picture from the computer.

Top 10 Juvenile Non-Fiction Books

1.) You Choose Interactive History Adventures by Capstone Press: Do you remember choose your own adventure book as kids? Well, this brilliant series (over 22 titles) takes that format but in true history scenarios instead. Each book gives you three characters to be (real people during that time) and you get to see what would happen if you played out that characters role in history. An example would be: for the Underground Railroad you could be a runaway slave, a slave catcher, or someone who lived in a railroad stop and helped slaves. There is great text features to help keep it engaging. The books cover wars, immigrants, pirates, Titanic, Westward Expansion, Gold Rush, and Exploration. Once I got students to read them (a lot of book talking) I couldn't keep them on the shelf.

2.) A Street Through Time by Dr. Anne Millard: I don't know if some of your questions from little ones begin "In the old times did..."? This book looks at one street over the course 12,000 years. It is really helpful for children to see the changes in a localized way. Each page highlights the scene, and ask children to look for some of the details.

3.) How to Clean a Hippopotamus by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page: As a general rule anything these two is brilliant. I am a HUGE Steve Jenkins fan. This is my most current favorite of theirs (of which there is many). It is a book about the symbiotic relationships between animals. For you Nemo fans there is some really interesting facts about clown fish and sea anemone that blew me away!

4.) The Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry: This is my favorite children's anthology of poetry on the market right now. The 200 poems are arranged by themes of season, school, humor, animals, feelings and more. There are some old standbys but new poems to, and the illustrations are vibrant and inviting.

5.) A Seed is Sleepy and An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Huts Aston: These books are so beautiful written it is hard to describe. If you teach writing I would recommend these for lesson plans. Each book takes one thing from the natural word and finds one simple sentence to see that item in a new, creative light. Often times the page will have a piece of beautiful prose and then true facts as well. She just put out a new book about butterflies that I can't wait to get my hands on.

6.) Forest Explorer by Nic Bishop. Nic Bishop is a photographic genius. He takes life-size photos of animals, insects, spiders and other things you would find in the forest. Then he makes a photo collage of a scene. He follows up each photo landscape with field notes about what he as captured. His book Backyard Detective follows the same format and is worth checking out. The pictures in both are colorful and detailed and children can't stop staring!

7.) A Life Like Mine by UNICEF. This is my favorite from a group of books that look at children and compare their lives from all over the world. In A Life Like Mine it declares that all children should have the right to play, get an education, have shelter and food, not fight in wars, and other things we in America take for granted. The text features and photographs are amazing and I find children find the text accessible and not boring. Due to content I would wait until children are in 3rd grade for some pages (like war) but others are okay to share (play). Either way expect great discussions.

8.) If The World Were A Village by David Smith. This book looks at if you took all the people in the world and made them 100 people in a village what would that look like. It talks about how many people would be each nationality, what religion they would practice, what language they would speak, how much food, water, and money would they have. This is a great lesson plan to teach percentages and make pie charts to see the difference. Also brings up discussion about if we shared food we would all have enough, but we don't. Due to the math and content I don't know if primary age children would understand or even be interested. He has also made one about America that would be interesting.

9.) Wooden Teeth and Jelly Beans: The Tubberman Files edited by Ray Nelson. This is a funny book that looks at facts and tidbits of the Presidents of the United States of America. This book is simply for entertainment with facts strewn in and I wouldn't use to get all your Presidential facts but it definitely intrigues children (3rd-5th grade most likely). It was here that I learned that George Washington's teeth weren't made of wood, something I still here teachers say. Note to reader I think it ends with the first Bush or Clinton.

10.) Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival by Kirby Larson. This is about a cat and dog that were left behind in the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. The two animals meet and save each other's life, forming an impenetrable bond. Follow their inspirational story that has a happy ending, so even the youngest readers are inspired by the story.

Urban Nature Scavenger Hunt

Living in the Pacific Northwest we are lucky to have nature at our fingertips: 2nd tallest waterfall in the US (and prettier than the 1st by far), 2nd largest free-standing, single rock monolith in the northern hemisphere, one of the most ruggedly beautiful coastlines anywhere, dense forests, mountain ranges, high desert, farmlands & vineyards, lakes, rivers, the prairie dunes of the Palouse Hills, and tons of protected green space-after all we are all tree huggers here! However, I couldn't explore our "backyard" for our summer challenge and not include another part that makes up our landscape-urban city life. We live in a suburb of the metropolis of Portland, OR, with over 2 million inhabitants. At Go Explore Nature I found a Urban Nature Scavenger Hunt and I knew we were set to explore!

Scavenger Hunt (pic is of Portland)

We started out the day reading the Curious Garden by Peter Brown, and talked about how nature can be found in cityscapes. This book fits nicely with Portlander's sentiments because we are known for garden rooftops and green living. Then after a surprise lunch with Daddy at the shipyards it was off to the big city! The goal was to find natural thinks in a concrete jungle. Some of the things on our hunt was a flower in a sidewalk crack, birds, leaves, trees, puddles, seeds, and evidence of animals. In downtown Portland there are quite a few park spaces, but I purposely took "A" where we wouldn't come across them. It took some searching but we found everything but a seed (we went home and researched that Pine Cones can't be considered a seed). The great thing about the Urban Nature Scavenger Hunt I found was it also asked thoughtful questions like: Close your eyes and see if you can hear any natural things among the city sounds, take 20 steps and see if they were all concrete and where the nearest grass is, and (my fave) if you were a rabbit where would you sleep tonight. Of course, we also had lots of fun finding Curious Gardens of our own. "A" even discovered wind turbines on a skyscraper-nice find little man!!!

Weed trying to sneak through a grate

Boys in Downtown with Max in the background

Do you see the wind turbines on the skyscraper in the back?

Roof Top Garden (Curious Gardens)

Flowers Blooming in a Concrete Jungle

I love this city!

To finish up the Urban Nature Study I wanted to do an art project at home. I was really excited to do this one, so I made had to make one myself. My brother use to be an architecture major and had this fun stamp kit that makes buildings out of shapes. When he switched majors I got his castoff. Now this kit is pretty advanced! It has a book of ideas but it is not for the faint of heart. That being said the things you can make are endless, and I am excited to use this many times in the future for art work at home and in the classroom. "A" and I got busy building a city scene,  and "A" was content creating for some time. Then we drew nature in the urban landscape because as we now know- nature is everywhere if you are just patient enough to look.

"A" making a city using the stamps

My city with book of ideas and kit in background

My finished Urban Nature scene

"A" proud of his masterpiece (I'm pretty proud too)!

Gourd Birdhouses

This has been the very first summer I have been truly in love with my backyard. My hubby helped my make raised garden beds in the spring, which has made a world of difference in my green thumb (or lack thereof). A few other cosmetic items made or bought (on clearance-of course) has turned our yard into an oasis.One of the cosmetic items made has been a fun craft for my little man, but for me too: Gourd Birdhouses!

My backyard-SWOON! You can see the gourd on the fence.

This is so simple, fun, and beautiful you won't believe it! Purchase some dried gourds. We got ours at a local farm for about $1.50 each. I have also seen them at grocery stores and of course you could grow them too. Just make sure they are dried out. The little ones I find they were practically giving away. "A" thought the tiny ones looked like ghosts so he couldn't help drawing spooky faces. However, the larger ones we decided to make into birdhouses. Scrub away the dirt on the outside of the gourd. I used water, a little of vinegar, and a scrub brush! After they dry you can mark where you will put the bird hole. The hole doesn't need to be very large, but big enough for a bird to get in. Then decorate away! I used permanent markers (so the rain wouldn't wash it away) and nature stencils. "A" decided to just make flowers and vines free hand.  I did find that once my art did get washed away (don't know if I had unknowingly used the wrong markers or what). I actually kind of liked the fresh clean canvas so I could once again create a beautiful gourd! Lemonade out of lemons, I suppose. Anyway, once the gourd is decorated drill a hole on the line you made for the bird hole. I did a lot of little drill marks and then used a standard kitchen knife to saw away the circle. It should just pop out. Inside the dried gourd is some weird dry flesh that you need to take out. It comes out easily enough. Then just place it where you wish, fill with birdseed and enjoy! A note on placement: I put mine on the fence post but you could also hang it. To hang drill two other small holes on the top of the gourd (one on each side). Then use string or wire to hang it. Make sure it can hold the weight of birds though!

"A's" decorated gourd waiting to be drilled, and my finished gourd waiting for birds!

Nature Walks & Summer Supplementing

My oldest is starting full day kindergarten in the fall. When he was three, I put him into a great (and well renowned) preschool, but money was tight this last year-with having the baby and taking time off work. That being the case, I have really tried to supplement his learning at home. This summer I wanted to kick it into overdrive, and have some clear goals in mind. My first goal is to work on simple addition and subtraction,  beginning reading by sounding out simple words and recognizing rhyming words , and science-mainly maintaining a nature journal.

Imagine my excitement when I found out about the Summer Challenge three fabulous bloggers started (Teach Mama, Pink and Green Mama, and Naturally Educational) to work on fun, educational activities with your little ones. Then to make my summer goals even easier Go Explore Nature has a link for a free REI Nature Journal. So far, we have done three out of the five nature walks. I put the pages of the journal into a three-ring binder and added some other pages to the journal like Nature Scavenger Hunts, Wildlife Observations, Experiment Observations and more. I put these things under a science tab and then made two other tabs (math and literacy) for my other summer goals. Now all our summer learning is in one binder for easy access.

"A" with his summer learning binder on one of the nature walks

Our first nature walk was around a local lake. My little man had a blast thinking like a nature detective: Why is the moss white? Why is there foam at the bottom of the waterfall? Why does this flower have thorns when it doesn't look like a rose? It was great. The highlight was seeing a mommy duck and her ducklings. Oh, and a line of geese crossing the lake which he dubbed the "Army of Geese!"

Boys on First Nature Walk

Mama and ducklings

The second walk was a 1.5 mile loop in the middle of a Wildlife Preserve. It is one of the only places you can explore, because mostly you can only see the preserve in an auto tour. This has been a favorite place of my family to see wildlife and birds. We saw turtles sunning, Great Blue Herons, Nutria, wild bunnies, and snails. Very exciting for "A" with lots to report in his journal. On the downside the 1.5 mile  loop carrying baby in the Kelty backpack was getting painful towards the end, and it will determine future hikes.

Great Blue Heron

"A" over some wetlands at the preserve

Turtles sunning themselves

First time packing the baby in the Kelty. Boy, was he heavy!

The most recent nature walk was a trail near the Northern Oregon Coast. The trail was mostly grassland, to which "A" said looked like Africa. Very little wildlife was found, but it was fun to see vegetation that was different to where we live (due to the ocean environment) and also Daddy was able to go with us!

Jetty Trail at the Coast- "A's" African Grassland

Daddy gets to explore with us!!!

Each nature walk "A" draws a picture of what he saw that day. We then write the name of trail , date, who he was with, weather, what he saw, and what he heard. Then he collects keepsakes he finds on the trail (he isn't to pick at the plants). I put the nature treasures on a piece of paper and cover it with contact paper. It has been very interesting to see how these items are different depending on the trail we were at. Lastly, I do a photo montage of the day. Look for more posts on our nature walks and journal...it's been my most favorite activity of the summer!

Examples of some pages from our journal.