Teamwork!

Getting from one room to another like this:

Daddy and Mommy were pretty impressed.

World Travelers

Here's a new, fun, geography activity we have discovered:

We travel the continents and oceans by plane, train, or automobile (depending on which continents we are hopping to).  Here's how it works:  "So, Malachi/Karis, how would you get to from North America to Asia?  Be sure to tell me what oceans and continents you are crossing as you go."

All I had to do was lay the map down o the floor with some vehicles, and before I could instruct them in what to do, they started doing it themselves!

While Brother and Sister Slept...

 Malachi enjoyed airplane-flying today...

...and observing a very busy spider.

We decided to try to throw a bug into the web and see if the spider would eat it.  As I walked down the porch steps to get the bug, the spider's web actually caught me and I ended up tearing the whole web down in the process.  That spider was working so hard too! 



Wild Dogs

Continuing our study of mammals, we focused on wild dogs today.

The favorite animal of the day was wolves.  Here is one in his den with a wolf pup:

Here is our howling wolf pack:

Malachi was a little upset to learn that there aren't very many wolves in North America, and maybe none at all.  However, he was delighted to make these wolf puppets as a substitute for the real thing: 

We ended the day by calling Pap-Paw in Mississippi and asking him to tell us the story about when a coyote almost got one of his calves (we can never hear that story too many times!). 



First Farmers: 2000 BC

In History today we learned about people who lived around 2000 BC.  We compared how they lived with how Stonge Age hunters lived (we learned about them last week).  Life progressed in several different ways between the two time periods.  One way was that the people we studied today had learned how to make clay pots.  So, we made our own "clay" pots:

Asher preferred to make balls and Karis preferred to make pancakes.

Our pots, pancakes, and balls ready to be put in the kiln:

Then we painted our creations:

Mommy ended up making the pots for Karis and Asher, but everyone did their own paint job.

Karis' pot: 

Asher's pot:

and Malachi's original piece:

Just for your information: farming, herding animals, and  bronze tool making were other marks of progression during this time period which lead to permanent housing and a less nomadic lifestyle.



It's Still Dry!

We did a water trick today for our Science lesson:

 Yep, it's still dry!:

When we let the air escape out of the glass, the water was able to fill it and soak the paper towel.

All this water-play inspired the desire to paint with watercolors. 

Malachi was so proud of his painting:

 Thinking about a past activity we did on the color wheel, he mixed colors together trying to create the secondary and tertiary colors around the rainbow.

We Got a Package From Mam-Maw!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Stone Age Hunters

Today we studied the stone age hunters of 10,000 b.c.   Here are a couple of our hunters in their "animal skin" tent:

We tried to make tools like they did, so Malachi is working on cutting the piece of animal skin (a.k.a string) for his bow using a sharp rock that we found.

Here, our hunter is in action with his bow and arrow... Later he threw a harpoon too.

Karis is gathering berries using the tool she made.

Our history book, A Street Through Time, provided a lot of food for our imaginations today as we tried to make and use tools like stone age hunters.  Malachi went outside on his own while the other two kids were napping and worked on his tools and Karis asked me tonight when I was tucking her in, "Mommy tomorrow after we do school and do our reading and math and coloring, can we go outside and do stuff like those...uh... what were they called again?"  I never know what will get their wheels turning.



I Never Forget a Face

For Geography today, we pulled out this fun eeBoo game: 

And we kept our globe nearby:

As we made matches, we found the continents that each face was from:

About halfway through, I wondered if playing this right before bedtime was a good idea:

The game ended happily, however.  Especially since they both won!



Friday Funny Faces



Wild Cats

In Science we continued our study of mammals.  Our focus this week was the cat family.  We learned a few interesting facts about some wild cats. Did you know that:

1) Cougar, Puma, and Panther are all names of the same animal... a Mountain Lion

2) Mountain Lions/Pumas/Cougars/Panthers can jump as far as 40 feet... and

3) What we often call a Black Panther is actually a Black Leopard, just called by the name panther??? 

Here we are measuring out 40 feet so we can see how far a Mountain Lion can jump.

We tried to jump that far, but it was impossible!  So, we counted how many of our jumps it took to make one Mountain Lion jump.

Then we pretended that our stuffed wild cats were Mountain Lions and made them jump (by throwing them) the 40 feet:

Here is the Black Leopard that Malachi drew for his Science Notebook:

Malachi Did It!

We are just about finished reading this book:

Inspired by the chapter in which Laura and Mary go to town and dress in their bonnets, Karis models her bonnet:

Yesterday Malachi read his first words and even spelled "cat" by sounding it out.  I wanted to take a picture of the word and he wanted to add the words "Malachi did it" (so he sounded those out too).  He is not angry in this picture, he is cheering himself in the manner of a "rock star"...

 AND today, he read his first book!
He just had to read it to Karis and Asher too:


It has been an exciting couple days for us... weeks of letter-sound drills have finally paid off!

Field Trip: Diesel Locomotive

The week before last we studied steam locomotives in history.  This past week we were able to take a field trip to see a modern, diesel-run locomotive:

When we arrived, Mr. Tim took us across the tracks:

He even let us climb aboard! 

To our delight, we also got to ride a little bit, ring the bell, and blow the whistle.  Here, Asher is "driving" the train: 

In this picture, we are watching the bell ring:

  After our driving and riding, Mr. Tim showed us how the engine of a modern-day train is different from a steam locomotive.  No fire, or boiler in this train.. It has an engine, generator, and compressor:

He even showed us how the train stops.... 

...  and the signal switch to change tracks. 

We are so thankful that Mr. Tim gave us such a great tour!

Of course all this touring inspired us to get our big Christmas train out to play with.

Malachi soon figured out that our Christmas train is actually a steam locomotive, not a diesel-run train  like the one on our tour, since diesel-run trains don't need this: 

Thanks again Mr.Tim... We had a great time!