Thanksgiving Lapbook & Research

Since I started doing lapbooks last February I didn't have a Thanksgiving one yet. I thought it would be a great way to introduce the holiday to "A". Normally I get the printables from Homeschool Share, but they didn't have one. Which is shocking because they have everything else. After searching for awhile I came across this website, and it just has lots of suggestions of places to go. So this lapbook is a hodgepodge of stuff...and I don't really know where I got everything. I know some probably came from 1+1+1=1. Forgive me if I didn't credit you and just let me know and I will add it.

Research Used:

Books:Uncle Sam &Old Glory: American Symbols, Pilgrims of Plymoth by National Geo, Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation (really cute text that is part of a series), and Thank You, Sarah (not shown but in my Top 10 Fall books post)

Websites: PPlimoth website is awesome to look at primary sources and see both sides.  This other website talks about the symbols .

Completed Lapbook

I always include a video so you can see under the flaps

Magic Tree House

If you are looking for a good chapter book to introduce your emerging readers look no further! I normally recommend children who are ready to start reading chapter books start with the Magic Tree House series, by Mary Pope Osborne. There is over 45 books that have a brother and sister duo (Jack and Annie) go on adventures in a magic tree house. All they have to do is look in a book and wish to go there. Some of the places they go are dinosaur time, the rainforest, ancient Egypt, old Japan, the World Fair in Paris, Pompeii right before the volcano explodes, the ice-age and more. There really is something for all interest and because the characters are both a boy and a girl it appeals to both genders. If the child finds a book that really interest them Mary Pope Osborne's husband wrote a non-fiction companion to the books so they can do a little research! Each book is about ten chapters and is at a 2nd grade reading level.

Well, my son is NOT at a 2nd grade reading level. However, he has at the age he will sit for chapter book read-alouds. Some books I have done as a read-aloud are Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (my favorite book of all time), The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Beasts of Clawstone Castle, and Because of Winn Dixie. That being said sometimes he wants to hear a story when I am not able to read to him. What then?- books on CD of course! This is my favorite thing to do in car rides. I put the speakers on the back and pop in a book on CD. I normally choose stories that are only about an hour to read, so they hold his attention and he doesn't have to recall too much information when we have to pause the book. Our favorite books to hear in the car-the Stink series (Judy Moody's brother),  the Dinosaur Cove series, and Magic Tree House (of course). We get a collection of eight stories on five disks from our local library.

Whenever I do a read-aloud I try to do some comprehension component. I was thrilled to find that Magic Tree House has a pretty great website. You give your child a log-in and then you put in your email address. Then they have their own tree house they can decorate. You also can go on a mission (a game) that has you go to four different locations in their books. Answer questions, earn points & medals, and then a cool artifact to decorate your tree house with. Here is my son's tree house and the objects on the right are from his missions!

On top of the game and tree house component the website has a passport. For every book you read you answer three comprehension questions. If you get them right you get a stamp in your passport. They have it for all the books and the non-fiction companion books as well. Here is one page of my son's passport so far:

So if you are looking for something to hold your child's attention, and a fun learning component to go along with it, I highly recommend these books and the website. I do have to say that the comprehension questions are only knowledge base in the Bloom's taxonomy (I will write a whole post about this-I promise). What this means is that your child is just recalling information and not a lot of critical thinking is taking place. That is really my only negative comment about the whole thing.

Top 10 Amazing Animal Tales

Sidenote before getting into this Top Ten recommendations: There is a lot of great animal stories in chapter book format, but I only included picture books in this list. I will eventually do some chapter book Top Tens but it seems most my readers have younger kids. If you like my book recommendations also check out the Shelfari Widget I added. These are books I have run across recently that I love but don't really fit into a Top Ten theme. There are always some good choices on there and I will keep adding to it. Hope you enjoy the new list....

1) The World's Greatest Elephant by Ralph Helfer: A boy and an elephant were both born in the circus in the same day. There bound was unshakable and when the elephant was sold to America the boy stole away and the ship rather than be apart from his best friend. In a shipwreck the elephant saved his live. Even when they got separated-years later they found each other. Some argue if this is a true (as it claims) or not but either way it is a beautiful story!

2) One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies: A poetic, illustrated story of the life of a loggerhead sea turtle. The text is very informative but yet remains accessible to young children.

3) Jubela by Cristina Keller: A true story of a rhino that was orphaned by poachers and finds adoptive parents. This story can be sad for younger ones but it does have a heartwarming ending, and is a great way to discuss endangered animals.

4) KoKo's Kitten by Dr. Fracine Patterson: Koko is a gorilla who has famously learned to communicate with sign language. This book is about when she kept asking for a kitten of her own. An amazing tale that also has some heartwrenching & heartwarming moments, but great insight into the emotions of animals. Follow this up by going to KoKo's Kids Club website and learn more about her. You can see videos and even paintings made by her.

Koko reading the book. (Picture from The Gorilla Foundation)

5) Titanicat by Marty Crisp: Another tale that claims to be based on a true story. A young cabin boy for the Titanic was in charge of caring for the ship's cat. When the cat starts to act weird and move it's litter of the ship the day of sailing the boy takes it as a sign he shouldn't sail either. Good thing he didn't. Kid's are intrigued by the Titanic story and this is a different side to the story.

6) A Mother's Journey by Sandra Markle: Another informative text that reads like a picture book. The story the mother's journey of an emperor penguin after she lays the egg and leaves it with the father. It is about her plight and dedication to return back to her chick. A great companion to The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins which is the tale of the father's penguin.

 7)Seaman's Journal-On the Trail with Lewis and Clark by Patti Reeder Eubank: I don't know if it is because we are were the Lewis and Clark trail ended but its a pretty big deal where I live. This is the story of the expedition from the view of Seaman-Lewis's Newfoundland.

8) Craig, Juiliana and Isabella Hatkoff books: The first book was Owen and Mzee. It is the true story of a baby hippo and tortoise over 100 years old. With the success of this book they kept writing about true animal stories. Some other favorites is Knut (all though since the book was written he unexpectedly died just this year), Winter's Tail (about a dolphin with a prosthetic tail, which a movie is being made about), and more.

9) Togo by Robert J. Blake: Many kids know the story of Balto from books and the Disney movie. Balto was the lead dog that brought the serum to Nome, Alaska that helped save the town from Diptheria in 1925. What most people don't know is that all though he ran the last 50 miles and crossed the finish line, a dog name Togo ran 350 miles to get the serum before passing it on to Balto. Togo gave so much of himself he could never mush again. It's a great story about sacrifice, persevering, and being a winner/hero doesn't always mean crossing the finish line-and getting all the glory.

 10) And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell: I have been hesitant to put this on so that I don't get angry comments, but I have to be true to myself- I love this story. It is the true story about two male penguins in a New York zoo who paired up and tried to hatch an egg of their own. When zookeepers observed this they gave the couple an egg (that would have been abandoned), and the same sex pair raised the chick together as a family. I find it fascinating this behavior observed in other animal species, besides humans. If homosexuality is something you have a problem with please just delete this suggestion on the top ten. I on the other hand find this story touching and remarkable.

Word Clouds with Wordle

I am not sure if you are familiar with Wordle, but if you aren't go quick!!! It  is an amazing FREE website that creates word clouds. You can create word clouds for about anything. I thought we would finish up the space study by doing a word cloud on space as a way to assess vocabulary and comprehension. The point of the word cloud is you can only use single words. This can be a challenge when you are describe something. This was super difficult for "A" who likes to talk ALOT and in long sentences. He is learning though and I think it will help him in school-especially with poetry.

To make a word cloud with Wordle you click on create at the top. Then you type words. If you want a word to be larger you type multiple times. For example with the above Wordle we typed: Space Space Space Pluto Mars Earth Earth Stars. You don't put commas. Then when you are done typing hit go. A word cloud will appear. You can hit randomize and it will rearrange word clouds in different font, color, shape, etc. When you find one you like you can also change the color and font yourself. You can also make them either vertical or horizontal. When you are complete hit print. Viola you are done. Easy Peasy!!! I can't wait to use them in the classroom but here is just a couple other ways we have used them at home:

We are moving to Anchorage in a year and this is the positives to share with "A" to help with idea of moving.

We also made them as Father Day gifts. Here is the one "A" made for Daddy. We made ones for the grandpas too!

Alien Party

We have been doing a lot of learning this week about outer space for this week's summer challenge. Today I thought we should do some silly crafts to lighten the mood. We made three different types of aliens. Our first alien was made from recycled juice lids and pipecleaners, the second was from recycled boxes, and the last is a green blob made from corn syrup. The inspirations for the aliens came from Craft Jr. and Makes and Takes. Then we made them have an alien party!

Soda caps, pipecleaners, poms, and googly eyes (idea from Craft Jr.)

We made them spaceships from aluminum muffin tins

Made from recycled boxes, aluminum foil, sharpies, pipecleaners, and googly eyes (from Craft Jr.)

Our green glob aliens. One fell over on my white carpet (AHHH). Looked cool though!

Green Globs all better: corn syrup, green food coloring, and googly eyes (from Make and Take)

ALIEN PARTY!!!

We needed some American Heroes to come save the day. I found a foldable rocket ship that I had saved from a Subway Kids Meal and then we made another rocket out of paper towel tube, paper, two foam circles, and tissue paper.

This Subway Rocket made by Smithsonian was a good find

Homemade Rocket Ship with a paper towel roll

Here to save the day or ruin the alien party (depending on the side you are on)

When we weren't playing I snuck in some learning from the Solar System Preschool Pack that 1+1+1=1 blog. I printed out some of the worksheets that use clothespins to mark the answer. I am newly obsessed with clothspins, so expect to see more with them. I especially like the cards she uses that has the child pick out the beginning consonant sound.

I also wanted to quickly note some fun games we found on the NASA website. My first favorite game was called Grab It : where four pictures of items and a rocket ship with a letter showing are on the screen. The child chooses the items that begin with that sound and the arm reaches and and puts the correct items in the ship. The second game (Rocket Builder) is matching shapes to create rocket ships. The child has to complete a whole fleet to win the game.

Taking a look at the Solar System

Now that we have explored our moon it was time to look at the planets. We started with talking about what planets are and what they are not. I had printed out a great worksheet that helped "A" with the classification from 1+1+1=1 Solar System Preschool Pack. This is a fabulous resource and I recommend everyone check out all the printables she has!

Next on the agenda for learning we talked about the orbit the planets have around the sun. From Exploring the Solar System by Mary Kay Carson I found an activity to help demonstrate that the planets don't go around the sun in a perfect circle but in a orbit we call elliptical.

1st fold a paper in half both ways. Put a tack in the middle as the sun. Take a string and draw a circle.

Next put a second tack anywhere on the horizontal line. Put the string over both tacks and draw another circle (elliptical orbit)

I had "A" color a sun for the middle and color an Earth to put it on orbit around the sun.

This has some great learning activities but the text is better for children over ten.

 I had "A" watch Magic School Bus Space Adventures because he walks away with a wealth of knowledge that he retains from these movies. The movie is from the 90s so we talked about how when I was younger we said we had nine planets in the solar system, but now they don't classify Pluto as one of the planets. We now call it a dwarf planet and we have new dwarf planets that we didn't recognize before. I tried to tell him it was an exciting time because scientist are really gaining new insight into our solar system, rather than comment on how confusing it is (which it is!!!) We then watched a read a book online at NASA called The First Annual Planet Awards. It was a great way to learn just the most important facts about each planet, a must for short attention spans. We followed up our research with some books from our library. We also looked at space photos, "A's" age and weight on NASA too. "A" had figured out his weight on the other planets earlier when we went to the Seattle Pacific Science Center in May. I then had "A" sort the planets into terrestrial planet and gas giants.

Movie Research:

 Books We Read:

13 Planets by David Aguilar ( an update look at the solar system by National Geographic Kids)

Me and My Place in Space by Joan Sweeny (these ME books are a series and a must read)

There's No Place Like Space by Tish Rabe

The Planets in Our Solar System by Franklyn Branley (Read-and-Find-Out Science book)

Pacific Science Center:

"A" in a space capsule

Sorting the Planets:

Planets are from the preschool pack mentioned earlier!

Then it came time for our huge activity of the day. I took the printable planets that I got from 1+1+1=1 blog (mentioned above) and we went for a walk to do a scaled down look at the distance of the planets from each other and the sun. Our front door was the sun (since that is the center of our universe), and then using a guide in the Exploring the Solar System book mentioned earlier we started counting our steps. It was great practice for "A" to practice his counting higher than 30. It was remarkable how far we got!

Our guide for you to try!

The sun-our starting point

The four terrestrial planets (pretty close to the sun and each other)

Our first gas giant starting to get farther away

Our planets on the sidewalk. Luckily no one took them. We put rocks on them so they wouldn't blow away!

Saturn-our house is at the big tree and up the driveway

Our ending point (Neptune). Our house is two trees up!

Finally, since I can't finish any day of learning with out some art strewn in "A" made two solar systems. The first is chalk around circles to give it almost a eclipse look. The second is a spattered paint solar system. I walked to make planets to go on the splattered paint but "A" was anxious to use his space stickers.