Earth Day: Earth Mosaic

In this week's Photojojo newsletter, I read about an Earth Day photography project that is asking for participants! From the newsletter...

Got big plans for Earth Day?

Gonna build a windmill out of recycled soda cans? Or modify your
car to run on potato peelings and hope?

Yeah, sure you are. How about something that’s simple enough to
actually DO?

Something like taking a day-in-the-life portrait of the whole entire
planet!

You can read the rest of the article here.

Basically, Earth Mosaic is asking people to go out and take pictures on Earth Day, Wednesday, April 22, 2009. Choose your best one and email it to them! You can read more about it by clicking on their logo below.

We are having rainy days here, but we plan on going out and taking pictures, and the girls will be able to pick out which is their favorite photo they took to send in for the Earth Mosaic project.

What about you?

December

This month the girls learned about the history and customs of winter holidays around the world, as well as the seasonal changes in the natural world. We read some library books and visited websites to learn more. Here are some of the places we visited...

• Toured a Tree Farm
• Learned the History of Hanukkah
• Learned about the Dreidel
• Made a Dreidel
• Read "Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat"
• Learned about Kwanzaa
• And Christmas
• And Saturnalia
• And Yule
• Watched a Brainpop video on Winter Holidays
• Reviewed Christmas Carols, Music, & Lyrics
• Learned how they make candy canes
• Made a Christmas Tree countdown calendar
• Baked lots of cookies!
• Listened to Christmas Greetings in different languages
• Played Christmas Games
• Did Gingerbread Man Math
• Read the History of Gingerbread
• Made some Gingerbread Cookies
• Learned to Make Paper Snowflakes
• Watched Brainpop video on Snowflakes
• Learned Science of Snowflakes and Snow Crystals
• Clouds
• Avalanches
• Migration
• Metabolism
• Hibernation
• New Year's
• Read Animals in Winter by Catherine de Sairigné
• Animals that Hibernate by Larry Dane Brimner
• Ice Bear by Nicola Davies
• New Year's Celebrations by WorldBook
• The Penguin Quartet by Peter Arrhenius
• Penguins, Penguins, Everywhere by Bob Barner
• Polar Bears by Mary King Hoff
• Where Do They Go?: Insects In Winter by Millicent Ellis Selsam
• Winter by Janet McDonnell
• Winter: December, January, and February by Cath Senker
• The World of Penguins by David Saintsing
• Took a tour of Daddy's work

Gingerbread Horses

Gingerbread Men

Christmas Cookies

Decorating the tree

Making Trees and Ornaments for a Countdown Poster

They added one of their ornaments each day until Christmas.

The end result...

Touring Daddy's work

Making a Compass

We made a compass with a pin, magnet, lettuce leaf, and a bowl of water.

Georgia also experimented with her magnets and figured out which ones were stronger, and which were weaker. She used paper clips, magnets of various shapes and sizes, and a pen and paper to make a chart and take notes.

Wilderness Survival and the Compass

I just love how creative the girls are. They are inspired by so many things in their play. Yesterday the girls played the Expedition Game from National Geographic. Afterwards they packed up some backpacks, made a passport like in the game, drew some maps, thought up some missions, and went on an expedition. They even created a cave using a blanket.

Today they watched the movie Bear With Me, one they've watched before and loved. Right now they packed up their backpacks again. They wrote a list of wilderness survival needs. They packed some bandages for first aid, a snack, compasses, etc. We talked about the compass and different ways to use it. We have one packed in our hiking backpack, but we use the GPS receiver instead. We'll have to use our compass now and then I think, so that we can be prepared. It's a surveyor's compass and I'm not sure how to use the extra parts. Something I think we'll be learning soon! We also talked about how to make our own compass if needed. We're going to try this later. Compasses also led us to a discussion about magnetic north versus true north.

Now I'm off to do some research....

Geography Awareness Week Day One

November 16-22, 2008 is Geography Awareness Week, as promoted by My Wonderful World.

Monday's topic is Human Geography and Culture.

Here's what we did:


We listened to music from around the world. We listened to traditional Irish, Arabic, Chinese, Aboriginal, Mexican, Moroccan, Egyptian, and Mongolian.


We even choreographed some dances with the help of Grover from Sesame Street. In the activity Global Grover Grooves we saw him dance on stilts as in Carnival from Trinidad, do a chinese acrobatic routine, perform the Mongolian Bowl Dance, and a Russian Cossack kick-dance.


We learned some folk games from around the world.

We learned some greetings from around the world. We used the site Say Hello to the World, as well as a library book titled Greetings of the World by Dwayne E. Pickels.

We learned about foods and ethnic cuisine from around the world. The girls played the game Mix & Mash at Disney's Pass the Plate site.

This Week....

Here are some of the things the girls did this week...

The girls both worked on making pipe cleaner animals. They each have a kit that they received from Grampa T. Olivia has a forest animals kit, and Georgia has a Noah's Ark kit.

Here are the first two that Olivia made: a rabbit and a fawn.

Georgia checked out the new world history book we ordered.

And both girls read more of the library books we have.

Olivia did some painting...

...and colored pages from her Africa book.

She's also been doing copy work. She takes books or magazines and will copy words into notebooks. It's great practice for writing!

Georgia crocheted some more.

More coloring for Olivia....this time in her dinosaur book.

Coloring is great for working her hand muscles to help with writing and other fine motor skills.

Olympics & China

Georgia has learned more about the Olympics and it's history. She read about the olive branch wreath and about the Olympic flag and what the rings and colors symbolize. She made a mini book about Greece. She took a quiz on what she learned. We found a lot of good activities at the Olympic section of Enchanted Learning. She's also made a mini book on China. Olivia colored a Chinese Flag. The girls both watched a BrainPop video on the Great Wall of China, and Georgia watched one on communism. Olivia made a mini book on Chinese Animals and on Chinese New Year. These were found in the China section of Enchanted Learning. We read about the history of chopsticks.

And we have watched more of the Olympics. Georgia has been following Phelps. She tells Mark all about it when he gets home. She also likes the running races. She'll say the countries that are competing in a race and who's first. She's recognizing more country flags through this, that's for sure. She's pretty good with geography, but if she's not sure where a country is she'll check the map on the wall. We also have a world map laminated placemat that we'll have beside us for quick reference. (Those placemats are really nice. We have one of the US Presidents, a Solar System one, and a United States map placemat. On the backs they have interesting facts. I believe we picked them up for under $1 each at Walmart a couple years ago. We don't always use them as placemats, but when we do the girls love to look them over and learn something new.)

Some Internet sites we checked out were:

Animal Record Breakers Photo Gallery
2008 Summer Games (Nat.Geo.)
GeoGames (Nat.Geo.)
Olympic Timeline (Funschool)
Olympic Quiz (Funschool)
Sports Jumble (Funschool)
Sports Around the World (Funschool)

China & the Olympics

Of course with the Olympics in Beijing this year it makes a great opportunity to learn more about China and the Olympics! This spring the girls learned some about China, but there's a lot more to learn! Last week we visited the library and checked out over 40 books. Not all were on China or the Olympics! The girls LOVE getting books, and it's hard to say no when they want another. I love that they love books!!! So we have been doing a lot of reading this past week. We have had a chinese meal cooked in a wok, and eaten with chopsticks made of bamboo. We have learned a bit about the Great Wall of China, and some on the Silk Road. We have a biography to read on Marco Polo, and more books on ancient China. We also have some fun crafts to try!

And of course we watched some of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. The introductions of countries lasted a while! We hadn't heard of some of the countries....mostly the smaller Pacific island ones. Made for a great geography lesson! We have watched some of the games. Swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, tennis, bike racing, fencing..... Lots more to see!!

Here's a BrainPop video about the Olympics that you may enjoy...

http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/culture/olympics/

This week we...

We watched the movie Hoot and really enjoyed it. The girls also learned about the burrowing owls and how one person can make a difference and help save wildlife.

We played some bingo games this week. One was about space, and the other had lower case consonants.

We went to the park a couple times, had fun on the playground, and saw how big the goslings are getting. We also visited a park in a neighboring county to do some geocaching.

We have been having fun with the new web cam we bought. We bought it to "visit" my dad, but we have also used it to make our own little movies. It's so much fun!

The girls had fun making pictures with glitter...and I had "fun" cleaning up afterwards. No matter how much I think I got it all, I'll still see glitter here and there for a while!

The girls both received their NWF magazines and have read them cover to cover.

We had fun making shadows with our hands. We figured out how to make a dog, bunny, and soaring bird pretty well.

We learned more about China and had a Chinese meal. Olivia and Georgia seem to use chopsticks better than I do...and I've used them quite a few times in my life! They picked up on it quick!

The girls played their geography game, put together puzzles, wrote stories, drew pictures, practiced gymnastics... all the usual fun stuff!

Georgia practiced writing in cursive some more, and practiced playing the recorder, too.

We read some more library books.

Georgia has taken some more pictures with the camera.

Tomorrow we'll be releasing the snails back to the wild. We've really enjoyed watching them but its time to let them go.

I'm sure the girls will also want to make some more movies tomorrow!

Free Info for State Studies

Over the past month we have been receiving travel guides, brochures, and maps from all the states in the US. We ordered them free from each state's tourism website. We thought this would be a great way to learn more about each state, and indeed it has proven to be so.

The travel guides, which are the size of magazines, give basic state info, such as state symbols, population, climate, etc. The photos are beautiful! Not only is there information about the political and geographic aspects of the state, there is also a lot of information about historical events, people, and places, and on native wildlife, too!

We have Civil War maps and booklets from a lot of states, info on the Western Expansion, Lewis & Clark's Corps of Discovery, Colonial life, presidential biographies, Native American heritage, the list goes on...

Along with the travel guides, we also received a map of each state. The girls have had a lot of fun looking them over.

Some states had guides specifically for children, too.

It took me a while to look up and find all fifty states and Washington D.C.'s travel sites, but it was well worth it for such valuable information!

Mark's enjoyed reading them, too. He's always pointing out places that would be great to visit some day!

Brazil, Amazon River & Rainforest

Today we read some library books on Brazil, the Amazon River, and the Amazon Rainforest. That was the topic the girls picked when we went to the library last, and we are just now getting to the books!

We learned about a lot of wild animals found in this region. We also read some Brazilian folktales. The girls enjoyed the book How Day Came From Night featuring Iemanja's daughter, written by Mary-Joan Gerson. They also loved The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry. This book, and the beautiful artwork, inspired the girls to paint their own picture of the rainforest.

Today we used watercolors.

Here's Georgia's painting...

And Olivia's...

We also talked about the Brazilian culture, and of its African American heritage. From Gerson's book, we learned that of all the African slaves shipped to the new world, Brazil received the most. Brazil has the highest number of people of African decent in the Americas today. We talked about how cultures merge from many influences.

We also read a book on the Yanomamo people.

We have plans to try some of the crafts and recipes in the books. And we are also planning on making an Amazon Rainforest lapbook, which we started today.

Lapbooking

If you are wondering what a lapbook is...

This site really helps explain it.

http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking

Today Olivia finished working on her dinosaur lapbook.

The flaps/books inside open up to reveal information about the topic.

And here's Georgia's finished dinosaur lapbook...

And here are some of the ones they've made before...

Georgia's Antarctica lapbook (cover, inside, back)

On the back of the Antarctica one she made a game, and four penguins to move around the board. This lapbook was explained on a previous post. http://canterburyacademynews.blogspot.com/2007/02/antarctica-lapbook.html

Olivia's Fennec Fox lapbook

Olivia's Gemsbok lapbook

Georgia's Moose lapbook

They've already been talking about other ones they'd like to make.