Russia

We had lots of fun studying Russia. In fact, now that we've moved on, Alex asked if we could "Do Russia" again.

Here is some of what we did:

• Matryushka Dolls - http://mssscrafts.com/crafts/matryushka/ - we printed out 5 nesting dolls (see our photo) that you color then bend & they will actually nest inside each other - we also read the Christmas story about her from the same site
• Tchaikovsky - listened several times to "Tchaikovsky Discovers America" - wonderful!! We will probably buy this...
• Faberge Eggs - spray painted Easter Eggs & decorated with glitter & "jewel" stickers - even hid a jewel inside
• Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake - colored some swans & folded a paper oragami swan
• Onion domes - coloring page (used glitter glue, too) from crayola.com
• Great book: "The Littlest Matryoshka" by Bliss - cute story about nesting dolls
• "Rechenka's Eggs" by Polacco (added April 2006) - cute fiction book that also shows some Russian onion domed buildings and clothes and it uses some Russian words

Crayola.com had a lot of great ideas! Sorry this is so quick & choppy!
Update: Another lady who does Galloping the Globe shared her blog with our group. If we ever get a chance to study Russia some more, we would like to try some of the ideas from her blog: http://www.abiding.blogspot.com/.

Monet

Also for France, we've been studying the French Impressionists painters, especially Monet. Monet liked to take his easel outside to paint and he painted a lot of water scenes. So, we took our easel outside to paint a picture of our pool & the reflections in the pool. This was so much fun! Alex spent about 45 minutes on her painting! She even used her imagination and added water lilies. We just used water colors, so we didn't have many colors to choose from - I think Alex had 24 colors, and I only had 8. We need to buy some better paints!

Wright Brothers

We are studying the Wright brothers (who gained noteriety in France when they showed off their plane & flying skills). We found the instructions for making an "Incredible Edible Wright Flyer."
 

It is made with graham crackers, pretzles, and icing. We tried to make it with the icing, but it wasn't working for us. Maybe we should have tried a different kind of icing? Anyway, we ended up using a glue gun. I also wish we'd have broken the pretzles in half to make the plane shorter. This was a grown up job - too hard for Alex, but she enjoyed watching, eating, and then playing with the Flyer.

Eiffel Tower

This week we've been studying France. We looked at several picture books about France and studied several famous people. We watched the Nest animated movie of Joan of Arc, read quite a bit about Louis Pasteur (and watched the Nest animated movie), and read a book about Degas. Next week, we will finish by cooking a French dinner and studying Monet.

From www.papertoys.com, we found a printout to make a model of the Eiffel Tower. I really thought it looked difficult to cut, but Alex did a wonderful job! And, we once again enjoyed the freedom of homeschooling to "do school" in the beautiful outdoors!

Galileo

We've been studying Galileo, and decided to make the Leaning Tower of Pisa using vanilla wafers and icing. Galileo went to the top of the tower and dropped two different weights - one heavy & one light. At the time, people believed the heavier one would hit the ground first. But, the two weights hit the ground at the same time. Galileo revolutionized the way scientists "did science" by using experiments, not just "thinking about things."

Our favorite resources for Galileo were the animated video by Nest Entertainment and the book, "Galileo" (a "What's Their Story?" book) by Jacueline Mitton.

Scotland

We studied Scotland a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. The highlight of our study was visiting a friend of ours who is from Scotland. She shared some photo albums with us, especially of her wedding, and then showed us her husband's actual kilt & accessories from their wedding! It was really neat to actually see it and learn some new terms. She also served us some shortbread and gave us a package to make Shepherd's pie and loaned us some tapes of bagpipe music. I wish I had taken my camera!

I've already returned the books, so I don't remember if there were any that we liked particularly better than others. But, one extrememly cute book that we still have is called "The Ghosts' Trip to Loch Ness" by Duquennoy.


I think if we study Scotland in the future, or we might do it anyway, I'd make my daughter a simple kilt to dress up in - I think she'd love that!

Layers of the Earth

We have now started studying geology. To begin with, we are studying the layers of the earth. Alex made a playdough model of the 4 layers of the earth: crust, mantle, outer core, & inner core. Then, we cut it open to see what it looked like. She really enjoyed making her model! And, we bought new playdough, so we both enjoyed playing with it!

Owl Pellets

We spent one day dissecting owl pellets. Alex's pellet was a lot bigger than mine, but when we found the skulls, Alex's was a lot smaller. But, then she found another skull... and another skull...

So, she had 3 whole skeletons in her pellet, and I only had one, but it was quite a bit larger. We really enjoyed it once we got past the "gross" factor.

I took the time, while Alex was still "digging" at her bones, to lay out my skeleton. I know I didn't get all the bones in the right places, and I didn't find all of the bones (it just got too tedious), but we had a lot of fun discovering the joys of owl pellets & rodent skeletons! We thought the skulls & the teeth were the neatest part!

Space

We have been studying "space" since Alex took a Junior Astronaut camp in late July. Here are some of our favorite books:

"Postcards from Pluto: a Tour of the Solar System" by Loreen Leedy
"The Magic Schol Bus: Lost in the Solar System" by Joanna Cole (movie, also)
"The Case of the Planetarium Puzzle" by Vivain Binamin

On her own, Alex decided to make playdough models of the planets by size. She got the idea from the "Planetarium Puzzle" book. She learned the names of the planets in order during her camp.
She also made lots of other "space crafts" at camp as shown in this picture.




At home, we used a Lite-Brite to make constellations.

Ireland Crafts

We made two castles for Ireland. The first one, the pink one, took a LOT of time as I kept messing up. Alex was expecting it to look more like a Disney princess castle.








Alex helped a lot more with the second, green one. She helped paint, cut, and decorate it. It was a lot easier, too, as it is made out of toilet paper tubes.













We also made two green, shamrock "angels." The crafts for Ireland have been lots of fun, and I don't know how we'll do near as much on other countries!