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For Thanksgiving, we are doing the Evan-Moor study entitled "Life in Plymouth Colony." It's a History Pocket book. Anyway, one of Alex's favorite things has been the tithing man and his pole. The tithing man who watched over the long church services. He had a pole (forgot if it has a name) that had a fur (or feather) on one end & a knob on the other. If a child was giggling or talking during church, the tithing man tapped him on the head with the knob. If anyone (except a baby) fell asleep during church, the tithing man tickled them under the nose to wake them up. If an adult smiled or talked during church, they had to pay a fine! Glad our church isn't so strict. :-)
The picture above shows Alex holding her Tithing Man's pole. Hopefully, she won't bring it to church! :-)
The past few weeks, we've been studying Italy. I must be running out of steam, as we did a little less for this country, too. We did have another Treasure Chest about Leonardo DaVinci. From that kit, we built a model of Da Vinci's flyer.
And, we'd picked up a book that had a model of the Coliseum. We made it, too.
We've had fun studying countries, but we are going to take a break for November to study about Thanksgiving and then probably study Christmas Around the World in December.
I adapted this from something I read on a Core Knowledge website about insects. We filled a conatainer with Cheetos, drew a bee on Alex's finger and then had her finger "visit" the flower looking for nectar. When she picked up her bee finger, "pollen" was on her finger! A great way to demonstate pollination!
In October, we went to an Italian Festival. We had already eaten lunch so didn't try any of the main dishes, but we did try Italian doughnuts. They came coated in either powdered sugar (Alex's favorite) or cinnamon sugar.
We also watched dancers doing Italian dances - especially tarantella's. A few weeks later, we were studying arachinds and read that the tarantella dances were started because of a ban on dancing! They created the dances saying they were "sweating out the poison from tarantulas." We even went on stage and danced a little! The photos didn't turn out very well because of the lighting. This photos is actually just two of the dancers having fun before the show. They wore tambourines tied to their belts.
While we were in Kansas, we also visited the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita. This was my first time there, although Alex had been there before. It was beautiful with lots of shade. We spent a lot of time watching the swans. One of them would "bark" at Alex if she hadn't fed her in a while. There was also a fish who liked to steal the food by popping out of a pipe.
In September, we went to the Cosmosphere while visiting family in Kansas. We'd never been before, and it was a great experience. They have lots of space memorabilia and we watched the IMAX film, Destination Imagination. We also went to a lecture/show about Dr. Goddard, the Father of Modern Rocketry. What a fascinating story! And, an exciting show, with plenty of explosions. We would highly recommend the Cosmosphere to anyone who has a chance to visit.
After attending a class about insects and arachinds at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, we decided to study more about these creatures. Tonight, we had a bug for desert! Actually, it's made of ice cream. It has 3 body parts (head, thorax & abdomen) made of ice cream, 6 legs made of pretzles, eyes made of M&M's, a mandible made of a broken M&M, and then we added a chocolate "shell" for the exoskeleton. Yummy, bugs!!! Tommorow night, we think we'll try the same thing, but make a spider instead! Yum, yum! (This was adapted from a Core Knowledge lesson plan)
Non-fiction book:
- On Beyond Bugs: All About Insects by Tish Rabe (added to list March 2006) - great Cat in the Hat book - it's funny, it rhymes, and it teaches, all at the same time!
- Insects That Work Together: A Bobbie Kalman Book by Aloian & Kalman - wonderful book with great facts & photos! (added Oct 2006)
We are just getting started on Egypt, but wanted to write down some of our favorite resources so far (since I have to take them back to the library tomorrow)...
- "Mummies Unwrapped! Alien Adventures in Ancient Egypt" - a National Geogrphic Kids Video that is funny (in a childish way - but we enjoyed it), yet informational
- "Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by James Rumford- wonderful book - it also teaches about perseverence and that even kids can dream big & fulfill their dreams
- "Adventures in Ancient Egypt" by Linda Bailey - funny, but very informational book - it's about twins (brother/sister) & their little sister who travel back in time (reminds me of The Magic Tree House books) - lots of pictures - we highly recommend it
- "The 5,000-Year-Old Puzzle: Solving a Mystery of Ancient Egypt" by Claudia Logan
- "The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians" by Jovinelly (added May 2006) - we've been reading some more about Egypt lately & came across this great craft book - we made a headdress & will post the picture soon - we planned on making the cat mummy, but haven't made the time
- "Look What Came from Egypt"
Above is a step pyramid we built out of sugar cubes.
We went and saw "The March of the Penguins" movie at the theater last week (but, Alex fell asleep after about 20 minutes). After that, we borrowed a very cute movie from the library called "Antartic Antics." It is based on a poetry book by the same name, but in the movie they sing them as songs and they are very cute! Also, we borrowed a book called "Penguin Chick" by Betty Tatham. It goes wonderfully with "The March of the Penguins."
