Tot Tuesday

My little one has just began to try new foods. He wasn't too thrilled with sweet potatoes at first but now, he loves them!

Love that boy!

Human Body Unit - Brain

We started our new Science unit - the Human Body. The first week of our unit study, we learned about the brain.

We started out by reading a ton of books on the brain. J learned that the brain is the command center. She started this unit not too thrilled but she quickly snapped out of it after learning how cool the brain was. J put together a puzzle of the brain while reading what each part does.

Here she is putting the brain back together!

I bought a 4 D human body puzzle. It was smaller than I expected but we will still work with it. I just wanted to explore the brain but she insisted she put the whole thing together.

I traced her body on brown shipping paper - that's not as easy as it looks. Her neck turned out to be somewhat misshapen. But it will work:) Each week we will learn about a different part of the body and add it to her body outline.

She put together a puzzle of the brain while using her brain to figure it out!

She tested her brain with this awesome color word test. The object is to say what color the word is printed in rather than the actual color word. She thought it was going to be easy but it was definitely difficult. I found this printable at  (link below).

She worked on her brain hat while listening to Ned the Neuron on the iPad.

Cute - huh? She thought it was a funny looking hat.

She worked on several sheets for her human body notebook. She learned about the brain by watching a few videos and playing a few human body apps.

We tested her reaction time with several games...catching the ruler at several distances...

balance....

And I couldn't help it...I found Brain Silly Putty at the Dollar Store. It was really something in the Zombie section but it looked liked fun. So, she played with Brain Putty. We are done with learning about the brain. Now, we are onto learning about the human heart.

Links/Resources

My Body Book by Patty Carratello - the will be the book we will use for the patterns to add to J's body outline.

Adorable Wearables by Donald Silver - the brain hat pattern came from this book. We will use this book throughout the unit.

Easy Make and Learn: The Human Body by Donald Silver - another main resource for some hands-on projects.

The Crafty Classroom - the brain puzzle and the color word test came from here along with other brain printables.

Kids Health - this website has some great mini videos about all of the body systems as well as online quizes and free printables. We will use this website each week.

Wheel School - Guy Stuff

You may have noticed that Kaleb has been slightly absent from the pictures this week. He spent a week of working with his father. He helped "mow" the church yard. He helped "paint" a house. He spent a week being outdoors and being a boy.....getting dirty and playing hard. I can say that I missed him but I was glad he could spend so much time with his dad doing guy things. That's so important too:)

Tot Tuesday

My baby is getting so big....sometimes I wish I could slow down time. I am just trying to enjoy him every day. What a sweetie!

Love that smile!

Jesus Means Business

This week's Bible lesson was about how Jesus meant business. It discussed how He had no place to lay His head. The lesson related how birds and foxes have nests/homes but Jesus was only here for a short time.

We started with the lesson coloring sheet. I read her the lesson and she colors while we discuss it.

One of the activities was to make a bird's nest using mud. J insisted on wearing her dress that day so we improvised. (And Kaleb was with his Daddy so no mud making :( )

Here is the bird's nest that she created. Isn't it cute?

J wanted to make a clay bird nest complete with eggs and a pom pom bird mom. Here she is making her nest. This project will be completed later this week since we had to wait for the clay to dry before she could paint and such. I will add the final project pic when it is finished. We are still enjoying our Bible lessons - a few more lessons then we will be learning about the Sermon on the Mount.

Geography Unit - Chapter One and Two

Recently, I decided to add a mini unit on geography for J. I found an awesome inflatable globe (life size) and a core book - My World by Ira Wolfman. I found the book at a Goodwill so it did not have the included globe. I found the huge globe at Hobby Lobby. It was the same price as the smaller globes, so I said - why not? It does take up a lot of space but it is super fun.

We started the week out by reading the first chapter of My World. J made a flip book for vocabulary words that we come across during this mini unit. She started by defining the word Geography.

She read the book Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney. 

After that, she created her own map of her room, labels and all. She then turned the map of her room to a map that denoted the best hiding places in her room. She drew a map key and marked all of the great places to hide in her room so she can hide from her brother. 

We borrowed a ton of map books from the library and looked at several different maps.

We read about neighborhoods and landmarks in our neighborhoods. Then she began on her 3-d map of her street.

She made the houses from cardboard (fronts only). We talked about how the street was numbered and any landmarks that we could add to our neighborhood map. This idea came from Teach Preschool (link below).

She labeled where she lives on the globe (not sure the sticker will stay). We discussed where other family members lived as well as the country we lived in. 

She created this before during her Space Unit but we brought it out again for review - Me on the Map printable book (link below). It helped her visualize that she could be in several places at once....in the kitchen, in our house, on our street, in our city, in our state, in our country, on the continent, in our world, in our place in space.

In Chapter Two of our core book, landmarks were mentioned. So, to add to our study, I purchased the World Landmark Toob and printed some 3 part cards. J inspected each landmark and matched the cards to them

Then, she added them to our world map.

We also added a special person that we know who is going to Qatar soon. We will be learning about that country in her honor.

We brought out the landmarks all week while she learned the names of each.

And we researched them for a notebook page. We read about each one and wrote a fact or two on a plain notebook page. This page will go into her Geography notebook at the end of her unit. It was a good week, we learned a lot. Next week, we will continue our research about the landmarks and move onto chapter 3.

Links 

Inspiring Teaching Design - her TPT store has the great free printable that we used for our Me on the Map project.

Teach Preschool - super cute idea for making a 3D map of your street.

Suzie's HomeEducation Ideas - has the free printable 3 part cards for World Landmarks toob.

Space Unit - Space Stations and Wrap-Up Party

We finally finished our Space Unit - Yay! Our last week was spent learning about Space travel and the International Space Station.

J made her own Space Station using recyclables such as boxes, 2 liter bottles, gallon jugs and lots of paint. DH helped with this process - he's more adept for this.

She wanted her Space Station to be purple and she even made red astronauts from felt.

For our last week, J worked on several final projects to bring all of her learning together. She made an ABC book about Space. She included all the information that she learned throughout the unit. She wrote the facts for each letter and then illustrated them. This project was included in her Space Notebook.

She made a Solar System necklace from air drying clay. She formed the planets and the sun from the clay. She poked a hole through the beads and waited patiently for them to dry so she could paint them.

She painted each home made planet bead and laced them onto a necklace. She added pony beads in between each planet. J really wanted to make a bracelet but it was too large so I convinced her to make a necklace.

J was very proud of her creation. The only problem we had with it was the rings on Saturn and Uranus broke off.

Another final project was to make planet cookies - for our Space Party. We used different sized circle cookie cutters and we added a cookie ring for Saturn and Uranus. I gave her several colors of icing and let her create her planets.

J made the sun through Pluto. (Yes, I know that Pluto isn't a planet anymore but J wanted to include it.) She even included the red spot on Jupiter.

The last project we did was to create a review game for the unit. We used a game template and made our own question cards. Then, we had a Space Party! J made decorations. We ate homemade chicken nuggets, tater tots, Alien punch (lime sherbet and sprite), and our planet cookies (which didn't last long). We played our space game and J beat us all with her knowledge of Space :) It was a great Science unit. We had fun and, for once, I didn't stress out over my lesson plans. Our next unit is the Human Body - J is less than excited but I think I will be able to hook her into it!