Then: Steam Locomotives

To complete our Then and Now unit in History, we learned how trains used to be.

We started our lesson by browsing through some books about steam locomotives and learning how they work.  (In case you were wondering, according to Asher, he is dressed like a policeman.)

This was my favorite of the books (though it wasn't as exciting for the kids).  I learned a lot from it and was able to summarize bits of information for the kids... and the sketches are beautiful.

While we were reading, we were letting some water boil on the stove.  When we were done reading we were able to observe the steam leaving the pot, and even got to see the power of steam by watching it move the pot lid and the styrofoam cup (a.k.a smokestack). 

After our learning and observations, we recorded our findings.  Here, Karis is making steam.

We even let our "boiler" run out of water... a steam locomotive can't move without it.

Malachi was able to complete his findings: First you can see the fire, then the boiler pipes with water, then steam.  Finally, the piston and wheel: 

Steam locomotive playing was a necessary end to this lesson:

Malachi was excited to show Daddy how his piston actually moves his wheel. 

Hopefully, we will have a field trip tomorrow to see trains of the present-day!

Wednesday

 Getting ready to start our day... 

Finding an even better use for those rubber bands....

Afternoon math homework...

Mammal Friends

Asher got straight to work today, busying himself by hopping from one activity to the next.  When he came upon his bowl of rubber bands, instead of putting them on the door handle and taking them off as he is supposed to do, he thought it would be more fun to do this:

 Malachi worked on rhyming words:

Karis traced a square, rectangle, and circle onto different pieces of paper:

Then everyone worked as a team to find the different shaped objects around the house:

We had an end-of-the-day Science lesson on mammals.  To begin our unit on animals, we read about and discussed the characteristics  of mammals:

 Then we gathered up all our animal friends into a pile:

We sorted them according to whether or not they were mammals. Throwing the mammals into the far corner pile was the best part of this lesson:

My crazy mammals with their mammal friends:

Karis was delighted to find these long lost friends at the bottom of the animal pile: 



Thursday's History

We studied several pages of our Then and Now book before focusing on these pages about the kitchen:

After talking about all the differences, we experienced the differences.

First, we went outside to our dirt spot and made some washcloths dirty.

 Since there is always plenty of dirty clothes around our house, we were first able to wash clothes the modern way... which only took about 3 minutes...

Then we went outside to wash our dirty washcloths the old-fashioned way with tubs of water and bars of soap...

This took quite a long time... even with lots of little hands helping... by the time it was over, the washcloths were still dirty and we forgot to hang them out to dry!  We couldn't have made it back then.



Wednesday's Geography

After a little P.E.,

We had a quick, outdoor geography review.

Then, we went inside to learn a little more about the different people of North America.  Our new friends this week are from Alaska and Canada:

We made an English stop sign and one in Inutikuk, the native language of Levi an Inuit from Canada.

All this talk of the cold weather in Alaska and Canada and inspired a raid of the coat closet...

followed by igloo building....

 

... and igloo dwelling.  Here the Inuit boys are resting from their Canadian hunting trip in the igloo that keeps them warm:

Malachi's reflection on what he learned:

Tuesday's Science

In Science this week, we made clouds.  We had a lot of fog on Sunday morning and Malachi was very interested in it, so we decided to discover what made fog happen.

First, we read some books about weather:

Then we poured some hot water in a jar:

Next, we covered the jar with a glass lid and put ice cubes on the lid:

It was really hard to see clouds forming in the jar.  Here, Karis is looking and looking, but no clouds could be seen.

We had to turn off the lights and lift the lid off the jar a little.  We used our flashlight to see the clouds.

We learned that it was foggy on Sunday because the ground was hot from the sun during the day, but then the temperature was a lot cooler at night.  So, when the cool air met the warm air/or water vapor from the ground... we got fog!

We recorded our findings for our science notebook:



Friday Fun-Work

Reading wrap-up: vowels

Sorting:

Cutting progress:



Asher's Week in Pictures