Fruit Week, Day 3

Today we made Banana Split Kabobs. I'd seen these on Pinterest a few times and figured we'd give them a try.

They're super simple. First we put the fruit on the kabob sticks.

Then we let them sit in the freezer for about 10 minutes, just enough to give them a bit of a chill.
Take them out and dip them partially in chocolate and then dip in nuts, if desired.

Then we laid them on a wax paper cover pan to dry. Since the fruit was chilled they dried pretty quickly.

And then enjoy. They were good but really wasn't anything too special.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Fruit Week, Day 1-2

Yesterday started the last week of our summer break adventure as school starts on Thursday, until then we have a half week of cooking with fresh ingredients.

Yesterday we made stove top applesauce, and while it cooked we made homemade cherry limeades.
The girls diced and peeled 4 large Granny Smith Apples.

Then we added 1/4 c. of water and 3 Tbsp. of maple syrup to the pot and let it cook until the apples were tender.

Once they cooled just a bit (but not all the way, about 10 minutes) we mashed them.

Then we let it finish cooling in the fridge and devoured it. (Seriously between all the Ks, they each had two bowls and I had none.)

While that was cooking we used fresh limes for cherry limeades.
A bottles of Sprite (12 oz, and not something they get very often so they were ecstatic)...

Squeeze in the juice of a few lime wedges (2 should be plenty) and 1/4 c. of Grenadine or Cherry Juice.

Finish by throwing in the squeezed lime wedges and a few maraschino cherries and enjoy!

Today we made a mango strawberry salsa and served it with cinnamon sugar pita chips.
We started with 2 c. strawberries, 2 c. mango, and 1 c. pineapple chunks and pulse them until chunky and mixed well. Then add lime juice from half a lime, 2 Tbsp. OJ, and 2 Tbsp. honey.

Stir well.

And eat!

That's all for now,
(For real this time, my camera card is finally caught up)
Jo! 

Space Week

Last week was a reading week with a space theme, here's the quick run through:
(You can tell I'm getting tired of trying to keep up with an everyday activity, they did simple language arts worksheets several times.)

Day 1: Solar System Scramble

This was a worksheet I found online, it was just scrambled planet names.

Day 2: Making a Solar System Book
After we had a chance to unscramble the elements of our solar system we decided we were expert enough to write our own books ;)  We just used construction paper to make a simple book (a planet/sun/asteroid belt on each page).

(She made her circle too big and was trimming it down when she noticed she was making a spiral and that made her happy.) 

Day 3: Rhyming Words Worksheet
I threw this together on Word. I came up with a few space themed words that I could make several rhymes and put them in a table.

(The words were: star, sun, moon, rocket, space, and light; I added a picture to each one so me beginning reader could know what they were.)

Day 4: Solar System Word Search
This was another one I found online. Just a simple space themed word search.

Day 5: Story Retelling
I whipped this worksheet up on Word, I used a table and a few space themed pictures. Just used "First", "Middle", and "End" for them to tell me about the story they read.
KK chose the Magic Treehouse Midnight on the Moon and KL chose the Berenstain Bears On the Moon from the library a few days before we did this.

Day 6: Story Stones
These were a ton of fun but took longer to prepare than I expected. We got a space book from Goodwill (for a bank busting $.88) and cut out pictures that would fit on the left over river stone from tic tac toe earlier and could be used to tell our own stories. After you've got pictures that fit stones just Mod Podge them on, make sure to cover the top to help seal the picture onto the rock (I actually put 4-5 coats over the top, because I'm always scared they're going to start peeling).

(These are what I ended up with.)

KL told a story about an astronaut who went to space and saw a bunch of space things. (It was cute when she told it but it really was a pretty simple story line.)

KK, on the other had, told a story about an astronaut who went to visit aliens on Jupiter and accidentally knocked the planets out of orbit and into each other- destroying the Solar System except for Mars for some odd reason. 

(Here's a close up of a few.)

Day 7: Making Constellations
This was kind of fun too, but a bit of a stretch for reading week. I used a circle cutter to cut out 3" circles and then an awl to poke holes to match constellation stars so we could project them on the wall. To be fair, we did read about their names and a few of the big stars that were a part of a few.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bug Week, Day 5

I've been so busy lately that I've been a bad blogger, which I feel I should apologize for but the only way I continue to have something to blog about is by keeping busy, right?

Anyway here's the end of bug week:

On Day 5 we looked into different camouflages of our insects.
I made simple signs to show different places they could hide.

And away they went, stacking insects where they hide well...

This came together really easy and was fun for the Ks, unfortunately it didn't take long before they has them all separated and were off to something else. Even though they understood what was going on, it just didn't keep their attention long. It was just too simple for them.

I know that I missed the last day of bug week because we were busy through the day and I was sore that night but for the life of me I have no evidence of the 6th activity we did.... it's lost!

That's all for now,
Jo!

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!