Bug Week, Days 3-4

On Wednesday we took a look at the different features and looks of bugs.
We made a chart and listed spots, stripes, antenna, color, and number of legs (easy one, I know but it helped them realize part of what makes an insect an insect).

I just made a chart on Word, simple project.
Here's a few action shots:

(KL didn't know what, or how to spell the names of, some of them so I used little post its to help her there.) 

(KK stacked hers after she finished with them.)

On Thursday, we investigated flies- more specifically, their compound eyes.

I spent a lot of time using Microsoft Paint to make the image of a fly's head. Then transferred that image to Word and filled the page around it with information about the eyes.
Then they used bubble wrap to fill in the lenses of the eyes.

(KK's eyes)

(KL's eyes- the paper really wanted to shine on me :( )

If you choose to paint with bubble wrap (and it is fun), it works best if you paint onto the bubbles with a paint brush and push it on the paper gently so it doesn't smear.
Like so:

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bug Week, Days 1-2

This week is a science week (we got a late start but hopefully we'll make it up later this week) with a bug theme.

On Monday we made roly polys (polies? I'm not sure how you pluralize that)-- how about pill bugs, that works.

On each segment we wrote a fact that we learned about pill bugs.
It was really simple, just 7 triangles held together with a brad (and you can barely see but there are feet and antenna there too). We drew a face on the front one and left off a fact, but the other 6 are informative.
Here's a few action shots:

(Assembling their bugs)

(Learning and writing her facts)

On Tuesday we made play dough fossils.

We went into a little detail about fossils but they were too distracted by playing with the play dough and plastic bugs.
Here's our bugs (I ordered from Oriental Trading, but they were a little smaller than what I wanted but there were plenty to play with):

Then they pretty much just made an imprint, whether by folding the play dough over or using another piece to cover the top and then pull it off/open it up and see the imprint left by our bugs.

Here's a few action shots:

(KK tried to get one of each kind all in one big piece, but it tore as she was lifting it up)

That's all for now,
Jo!

Picnic Week, Days 6-7

To finish up picnic week we learned about area and measurements.

On Friday we used picnic blankets to talk about area (since squares are built in to the cliche checked picnic blanket).

You can't really see in the picture but I did them all on a Word table made with equal widths and height. KL was counting all of them since area is new to her; KK was counting sides and multiplying to figure it out.

The last day we made lemonade shake ups, practicing with measurements.

They squeezed the lemons and measured the ingredients and shook until it was mixed good.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Picnic Week, Days 3-5

Sorry I'm running so late on my posting :( 

I'm still in recovery and have been light headed and easily exhausted this past week. 

Anyway... 

Day 3 was a hot dog themed greater than/less than game. (I don't have any pictures.) It was another thing I did on Word. I took a hot dog picture from clip art and used a random number generator (from 10-99) and put a number on each side and let them sort/answer less than or greater than. 

Day 4 was a simple worksheet I threw together pretty quickly practicing fact families.

KL did addition/subtraction. KK did multiplication/division. Fact families is still a pretty new concept for KL (fresh out of Kinder) but by the last 2 sets she stopped asking me for my fingers to help her count because she was noticing the relationship between them all. 

Day 5 was matching numbers on fruit slices. 

Oranges were the number, strawberries were ten/one blocks, and lemons were tens & ones. (Again all done with clip art on Word.)

They made a few matches and then decided to play a "Go Fish" style game with them. 

That's all for now, 

Jo! 

Picnic Week, Days 1-2

This week is all math concepts with a picnic theme.
Sunday we were out of town and didn't get back until late in the evening so they did Sunday's activity on Monday, after completing Monday's activity.
(All of this weeks activities were pretty easy to set up and they're really nothing special so they may very well all be quick posts but it'll still let you know what we're up to and maybe inspire you to find a way to make things work for you.)
I had a hard time finding picnic themed math ideas but I found plenty of math ideas and found a way to work them into a picnic theme.

So, here we go:
On Monday we played Race to 100, on a picnic blanket.
Super easy, I just made a 10x10 table on Microsoft Word and colored every other square red like a cliche picnic blanket. I hand wrote the numbers because I didn't think to add them before I printed.

The rules are simple enough, take turns rolling the dice to "climb" the graph and reach 100 (no going over) first. We used ours in a binder sleeve to we could dry erase and play again. (We also couldn't find our dice so we used our Chutes and Ladders spinner.)

Then, for Sunday's late activity we made math problem sandwiches:

(Again it was all done on Word, using clip art and word boxes over them.)
I made several different "top buns" and several different lettuces so they had plenty of problems. I used a random number generator for what numbers to use and chose between 5-49 so it wouldn't be too hard for them. (KL hasn't done tower/2-digit addition.) I made KL do addition and KK did multiplication. They each chose a number, whether bun or lettuce, and then worked the problem on their white boards.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bird Week, Days 6-7

On Friday we made bird cages!
(Complete instructions can be found here.)

This one took a little time, but was really cure so worth the effort!
We used Country Crock lids and I stiffened them up by adding some cardboard underneath (which was not in the instructions but I thought it'd be a good idea).

The girls did a lot of the tracing and gluing: 

They even threaded the wire through the "bars" of the cage, but needed mom's help to make the loop. 

Since I used KL's finished project to show you what we did here is KK's: 

Then on Saturday we made owl masks: 

(The template can be found here.) 

We started with the simple ones (the blue is KK's and the red is KL's), and we made those by folding them in half to cut symmetrically on the sides. (I kept referring to  paper snowflakes but that apparently confused the girls.) Then we had a little more fun with our more extravagant ones (KK's is the green, KL's is the orange). KL wanted to curl hers like KK did but it was past bed time by the time we finished so it didn't happen, but I like it as is anyway. 

Here's a few action shots: 

That's all for now, 

Jo! 

Bird Week, Day 5

Today the Big Ks got an intro to sewing skills while we made felt birds.

It was pretty simple. I cut the pieces out of felt, they attached the small body piece to the larger and then attached the other pieces (in no particular order, it really was chosen by where they started/ended attaching the first two pieces together).

Here's the action pics:

That's all for now,
Jo!