Germy Germs K-1 Unit: Science and Language Arts

Posted in art, baking, books, crafts, freebies, germs, lower grades, recipe, science, science experiments, unit, writing by No Doubt Learning

This week we turned our attention to some happy, good-for-you microbes!

We began with reviewing the concepts of germs from last week by cutting out and assembling this “You Might be a Germ If…” book. It gave my preschooler some cutting practice and my kindergartener some reading practice. It’s a short little mini-book that you can use to review some of the negative aspects of germs. Feel free to click the page to download a copy if you think you’d like to try it out with your kids.

We then switched gears to start discussing the properties of yeast. Yeast is an amazing little micro-organism that can live with or without oxygen. Today we use it in baking, cosmetics, and other areas of every day life. Even though we can’t really see yeast cells because they are so tiny, in science we can watch their growth through chemical reactions.

Using a science experiment from Bill Nye, take 4 water bottles and label each (yeast-warm water, yeast and sugar-warm water, yeast-cold water, yeast and sugar-cold water). Fill the bottles accordingly, place a balloon around the outer lip of each bottle, and place in a conducive spot. We kept our two warm bottles in the living room and the two cold ones in the refrigerator.

Beware, your husband may ask you about what’s in the fridge. I know my husband loves living in our house. I’m sure it gives him a plethora of conversation starters for work. Ha ha ha.

Check the experiments after 12 hours and again after 24 and you will be able to observe a chemical reaction taking place.

The balloon of the warm yeast and sugar water mixture will be filled with a mixture of carbon dioxide and ethanol. This reactions is what happens when conditions are just right to multiply.

As an extension, we decided to see how yeast works in our kitchen. We used a 30 Minute Pretzel recipe to smell yeast, taste it in the dough, and observe how our pretzel designs “puffed” as they rose right before baking.

While the pretzels cooked, it gave us some time to write a little. My daughters each wrote a recipe for their grandma to use (with my youngest dictating to me). Although neither seem to include the “real” recipe, it gave a chance for some non-fiction writing with a little organization. Feel free to click the image below to download if you think it’s something you could use with your own kids.

We took a little time with a little “J” Sound Sort, in which we sorted words between those that started with a J and those that started with a G. How confusing can the English language get having two different letters that make the same sound? Geesh! The activity was a hit because we have “J” sound names in our family. Outside of that it gave us a chance to talk about the different words, just for the exposure. If you think you could use this at home, feel free to download by clicking on the image.

One of our favorite activities of the week was blow-painting our own germs. I found this idea on Pinterest from Raising Sparks and think it’s adorable. This is really not scientific, but it was a lot of fun and allowed us to discuss how we shouldn’t share straws or blow in people’s faces. Not only that, but we had some wildly creative stories that stemmed from the pictures!

Finally, our germy apples from last week. I was a little disappointed that our apples didn’t brown more (thanks a lot Granny Smith), but as soon as the kids touched them, they exclaimed over how squishy the cut apples were. I love how doing this experiment can be connected to how our own human skin protects our bodies from germs and microbes breaking through.

Please don’t forget to head on over to The Usual Mayhem and STEMmom to see what they’ve been working on this week. And, if you’re interested in a variety of Montessori ideas for germs, please visit Every Star is Different, who shared with her current germ unit with me. You will find lots of fun ideas to add to your own studies!

*Oh yeah, want to know what the results were of our petri dishes? I am so glad we checked them throughout the week because we had a few microbes growing in several dishes, but the home computer petri was really icky! The computer got a nice cleaning. Unfortunately, I had an epic fail at the final results because I preheated my oven where I was storing the petri dishes…and totally forgot to remove the tray. I would like to say the brownies that I made were worth it, but I doubled the batch and doubled everything but the sugar. So I didn’t even lose the petri dishes for a good treat in return. {Sigh…}

They look a little melted, huh? So sad…We’ll have to give it another try. Be sure to check out the Kitchen Pantry Scientist to see some “real” results.

Click the button below to be brought back to the introductory post for this unit. We have one more Tuesday to go before we share our free planning resources. Enjoy!

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Cheerios and Lattes

22Apr2013

Geology Enrichment K-2: Rock Collecting (Lesson 3 of 4)

Posted in art, crafts, geology, lower grades, nature, rocks, science, unit by No Doubt Learning

Rocks Change! That was the mantra of our last rock collecting lesson.

We began with one of my favorite stories, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig. In this story, Sylvester finds a pebble that answers his every wish…even to turn into a rock, when danger approaches.

Even though animals don’t turn into rocks, it was a great springboard into learning how rocks really do change by force of wind, water, and pressure.

To demonstrate pressure, we used sugar cubes and shook them up in a milk carton at different timed intervals. The “rocks” changed from having flat surfaces to smooth, round surfaces.

plate tectonics 023

We then saturated chalk (made from limestone) in water and learned that rocks can break apart. Our chalk “rock” we were able to use as a paint.

This led to a discussion of river rocks. River rocks are nice and smooth because they’ve been carried down rivers, bumping into one another, and they’ve been shaped by the flow of water. If you don’t have river rocks available near you, the Dollar Store has a variety to choose from in the craft area.

We then changed our river rocks into Pet Rocks…or Rock People using googley eyes, foam shapes, and a glue gun. If I had known how much imaginative play would come from this project, I would have brought more supplies!

We followed that by showing how rocks can change over hundreds of thousands of years of pressure….as animals and plants decompose. After our discussions, we created our own “fossil.” The kids creatively pressed shells and plastic animals into their air-drying dough.

Next week we’ll be doing a review of the concepts we’ve learned and I’ll include a Google Doc of resources. I hope you’ve been able to get some ideas for teaching your own Rock Collecting unit!

12Feb2013

Ocean Animals: Jellyfish

Posted in crafts, field trip, games, lower grades, nature, ocean animals, reading, science, unit, web sites by No Doubt Learning

I used to say I loved seeing the “Aha” moments of learning in my students, now that I am homeschooling, I take immense pleasure in seeing what draws the attention and fascination of my own children. Their recent fascination has been jellyfish. The Monterey Bay Aquarium hosts Homeschooling Days throughout the year and it was the perfect free opportunity to learn first-hand about these incredible ocean animals.

Aside from visiting the regular jellyfish exhibit, we were lucky enough to visit during their new “The Jellies Experience Exhibit,” where we could play around with cameras, lights, and learn even more about the biology of jellyfish. Did you know that jellyfish are more than 95% water?

Aside from the jellyfish, and all the other ocean animals, we were amazed to see penguins first-hand – a perfect link to our Polar Animals Unit.

At home we focused on jellyfish vocabulary and color words using Jellyfish Color by Words and played a Jellyfish Site Word Memory Game that you might want to try with your own children (both free at time of posting). We also crafted-it-up by making jellyfish from halves of Styrofoam balls and colored pipe cleaners. Crafts by Amanda has a step-by-step pattern and I love how the jellyfish of my daughters each turned out looking so unique!

Check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s game page with tons of resources and interactive activities for any unit on ocean animals. There are so many great resources for educators!

Head on over to The Usual Mayhem to see their studies with Ocean Animals this week!

Have you entered my current giveaway for the Reading in 1st Series? If you have a beginning reader who would benefit from site word practice, check it out!

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20Jan2013

Science Wednesday: People of the Arctic Science Experiment

Posted in art, book study, books, crafts, geography, lower grades, nature, polar animals, science, unit, winter, writing by No Doubt Learning

After learning about polar animals of the Arctic (here and here) and of the Antarctic, we went spent some time focusing on the people of the Arctic. Over the past week, we’ve really enjoyed the Five in a Row book, “The Very Last First Time.” This fictional story is based on the Inuit people who live in Ungava Bay in Northern Canada. During the story, a little girl named Eva ventures off under the frozen top waters of the bay to collect mussels, while her mother waits for her on top of the ice.

My girls wanted to find out how Eva climbed under the ice, so we did a little science experiment to figure it out.

First, we filled 2 yogurt containers half way with water and placed them in the freezer for one hour (don’t forget to set the timer!). When we took the containers out, they looked like this – completely frozen over…but we could see water jiggling underneath the ice.

My daughters used chopsticks to carefully poke a hole in the ice, just as Eva and her mother used tools to cut a hole in the ice of the bay.Then they poured the water from under the ice out of the hole. This represented the tide going out in the story.

Carefully, as to not disturb the ice, the girls placed Squinkies and goldfish crackers under the ice, to represent Eva and the tide pools under the bay.

We followed the activity with writing poetry using a picture prompt (old calendar picture). My kindergartener dictated while I did the writing.

Have you checked out The Usual Mayhem, Journey 2 Excellence, Childhood Beckons, and Montessori Tidbits yet? They are also posting on Polar Animals this week and it concludes our studies of this region. Next week we’ll have a document for you to download some free Polar Animal lesson ideas and resources for your own learning adventures. See you back here on Wednesday!

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16Jan2013

Science Wednesday: Animals of Antarctica

Posted in art, books, crafts, games, geography, lower grades, nature, polar animals, reading, science, unit, winter, writing by No Doubt Learning

Happy Wednesday! Last week I posted about the Arctic here and here…and here you will find my outline for the unit. Now it’s time for teaching a little about the life on mysterious Antarctica! Animals are the only inhabitants of the South Pole and there’s such a variety!

Much of what we did came from lapbooking sites. HomeschoolShare offers polar lapbooking resources and there’s free penguin lapbook resources and killer whale lapbook resources at LapbookLessons.com. They have some great lapbook templates to use.

Albatross

Much to my surprise, the Albatross captured the fascination of my girls. Aside from our library books, we read facts from National Geographic where we could even listen to Albatross calls! We compared the Albatross wingspan of 11 feet to areas in our house so we could see how ginormous they were. Yes, their wingspan is even longer than Daddy is tall!! RSPB Wildlife Explorers had some great information and and you can even make your own paper albatross, but we chose to make the Albatross Puppets from the National Wildlife Federation. These were a HUGE hit and have been flying around the house for the past few days!

Penguins

Penguins were such a fascinating topic. My girls were impressed to find out that Emperor Penguins can grow as big as a 6-year-old! My daughter is 6, so this was quite impressive! National Geographic Kids had a great selection of penguin videos and pictures, among other facts.

There were several resources from LapbookLessons.com that we used, including the Life Cycle of a Penguin and an easy reader using thumbprints to form penguins. My daughter also read a free Penguin Party reader that we downloaded from Powol Packets. The little readers we find help boost her reading confidence!

We tried walking like penguin males, holding the bean bag “egg” on our feet. Boy, was it hard!! Those penguins are really talented!

I think our favorite penguin activity though, was getting our feet a little messy for our penguin footprints.

Krill

Krill were mentioned in a lot of our readings for this week. To learn about krill, we used the small booklet from HomeschoolShare.com to record the facts we learned from both the video Antarctic Krill on Youtube.com and National Geographic Kids, where you can see red swarms of krill on top of the water. It’s amazing that these one to two-inch creatures are the basis of many food chains. In fact, they are just a few steps below us! For example, if you eat tuna or salmon, those animals eat krill. They are an extremely important building block!

Blue-eyed Shag

Aren’t Blue-eyed Shag colorful? At first look, these birds look a lot like penguins, but they are in fact birds that fly! They are a form of cormorant that have an orange-colored growth that appears during mating season and strategically hunt for fish, floating on the water in what appears to be a raft-like cluster. It’s interesting that these birds like to stay out of the ice and their babies are born without down to keep them warm. Take a look at this video where you can see Rockhoppers, Blue-eyed Shag, and Black browed Albatross. See if you can pick out the Blue-eyed Shag! For the Blue-eyed Shag, we printed out a picture from online and wrote facts on a 3×5 card to glue into our lapbooks.

Seals

Just like the wolverine, Enchanted Learning had an online coloring picture that both kids enjoyed coloring. Aside from our library books, the National Geographic site had some additional facts and and it was so neat to listen to the audio (look on the site’s right menu) of what seals sound like!! You can also check out Weddell Seals on Youtube.com, which are one of the largest species of seals. My girls really enjoyed being able to see the animals in action.

While studying seals, we used straws to blow watercolors across a sheet of paper. Doing this, created some interesting creations! I fell in love with the kids art on Pinterest

A while ago, I had falled in love with this post I saw on Pinterest and had to try out the seal art. I simply cut around the girls watercolor creations and ended up with some adorable seals (which even led to a discussion on animal training).

Whales

We read numerous books about whales. Aside from books, you can check out National Geographic Kids, offering information on the Blue Whale and the National Wildlife Federation explaing that the Blue whale are not only the biggest, but loudest creatures on Earth. If you are studying whiles after learning about krill, you might be interested in this short BBC video clip of whales hunting krill in Antarctica.

We recorded our facts on the back of construction paper whales. After tracing a template from an image search, the girls “dressed” them up with bows. It was good practice in tying bows for my kindergartener!

My girls are really into coloring right now, so we also printed off this Blue Whale coloring page to add into our lapbooks.

Sharks

Sharks are almost everywhere, except….the waters of Antarctica! The waters are much too cold for sharks to inhabit the area. So on our study of the South Pole we crossed out sharks and added this symbol to our lapbook!

Next week I’ll be posting some general ideas for the polar regions, as well as some learning we’ve done about the people of the Arctic and scientists of the Antarctic. Hope to see you back here next week!

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out The Usual Mayhem, Journey 2 Excellence, Childhood Beckons, and Montessori Tidbits who each have posted about Polar Animals this week. We’d love to have you follow along with each of us!

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13Jan2013

Science: Arctic Animals {Part 2}

Posted in art, books, Christmas, crafts, geography, nature, polar animals, science, unit, winter, writing by No Doubt Learning

I hope you caught a glimpse of my first Arctic Animal post last Wednesday. Here’s a follow up offering even more animal activities to do with your young ones at home!

Arctic Hare

Who doesn’t love learning about bunnies? With all of our focus on the large animals, it was nice to take a step back to the smaller ones. The library book to the left was a great introduction to the animal. The arctic hare has shorter ears than a regular rabbit and has an amazing ability to change fur color from brown in the summer months to white during the winter months. By doing so, the hare is camouflaged so predators don’t attack. Unfortunately, many of the animals we learned about were predators! As an art project to our learning, we potato-stamped some rabbit art based on the rabbits from Nurture Store.

Caribou

Did you know that reindeer have a large reign? The new vocabulary helped us understand that reindeer are amazing travellers! Among many resources, the pictures in our library book (left) were amazing and helped us see reindeer as the true creatures they were – not just as a connection to Santa. It was so much fun for the girls to see on a map that the Caribou live right above the United State in Canada! One of the activities we did was a picture-story. I had an old calendar that had a picture of a Caribou and my kindergartener dictated a story to me. The funny thing was that it included many characters from our house meeting up with the Caribou!

We also really enjoyed the free unit provided by The Teachers’ Cauldron. We didn’t use all of the activities, but we organized our research, labeled reindeer parts (with little sister coloring the reindeer in), practiced our measuring, and wrote another story (although this one didn’t have ANYTHING to do with reindeer – I’ll take it – it’s writing!!)! If you’re working on reindeer, I’d go check it out!

Snowy Owl

Snowy Owls don’t make nests in trees or cliffs – they make a hollow area in the ground to lay their eggs and nest. We thought this was fascinating, given than the Arctic Foxes and other land animals were predators. But, maybe it helps that the Arctic Owl is one of the biggest owls in the world! Using the foldable provided by Homeschool Share, we recorded our research and my daughter made a thumbprint owl scene. We’ve been very much enjoying Ed Emberley’s thumbprint art books lately, so it was a perfect tie in.

Not only that, but we also learned form our Arctic Memory game that many birds in the arctic have feathers down their legs to keep them warm in the chilly weather!

We played this game at the kindergarten level by laying out the cards picture-side-up. I would show a picture and my girls would each look for that card. As they were searching, I would read the facts about that animal or painting. We then split the deck in half and were able to play 2 different games of memory. It was great bringing a form of professional art into the lessons!

Arctic Fox

The Arctic Fox is similar to the Arctic Hare in that its fur changes color from summer to winter to blend in with the arctic conditions. One of the most interesting fact we learned about the Arctic Fox was its relationship with the Polar Bear. Arctic Foxes stay their distance from Polar Bears, but once a Polar Bear is done with its meal, the Arctic Fox is quick to finish up the leftovers. Another great lesson we learned was the difference between foxes and wolves. My girls could pick up on the differences in pictures almost immediately, whereas I had a little more trouble!!

Again, we filed all of our pictures, notes, and interesting facts into our lapbook pockets.

Other Arctic Activities

I wanted to take the time to also highlight a few other activities we’ve enjoyed with the Arctic portion of our Polar Unit.

Check out Ana Capurro at Ingles 360, who has a some polar play dough mats and coloring sheets to identify Arctic items for free in her Facebook group.

The girls have also been free-playing with the little creatures from our Actic Toob. At first we used them in our sensory tub, but they have been roaming the house ever since. It’s so much fun to listen to their imagination as they entwine what they’ve learned with what they are playing. Amazing how the food chain even comes into play!

Royal Baloo has a free downloadable kindergarten Arctic pack. We used the math and Sudoku game from the pack. It was our first experience with Sudoku and it was a success!!
Probably the biggest learning experience for us though was to visit the snow this past weekend. The girls really learned what it felt like to live in the Arctic. Well, maybe not the “real” Arctic, but they had a whole new view of snow, ice in their boots, and managing around the slippery stuff. Ah-ha! That’s why many of the Arctic animals have wide paws, or grips on the pads of their feet!!

Stay tuned for Wednesday post, when we share ideas from the South Pole. It’s onto Antarctica!

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8Jan2013

Science Wednesday: Arctic Animals {Part 1}

Posted in 5 senses, art, books, crafts, creativity, games, geography, nature, playing, polar animals, science, unit, upcycling, winter by No Doubt Learning

Did you grab a copy of my Polar Passport last week? If you did, you’re all set to go! This week we spent learning about Arctic Animals and you’ll find some teaching resources below while focusing on your own children!

We decided to lap book this unit, so we put both world maps and polar maps on the front, with “fact file” pockets on the inside. My kindergartener cut sealed envelopes in half, affixed polar stickers, and wrote the names of the arctic animals on the outside. Next, we taped the pockets in pairs at the bottom, so they flip down (and all 8 are able to fit in one file). Inside each “fact file” the girls included pictures the new facts they learned, online pictures, words, and maps of each of the animals living areas. (Note: We found lots of maps at ecokids.ca, where we entered as a “”kid” and searched for the animal we were learning about). We also included copies of the digital pictures of projects they made throughout the unit. (The pictures of the lap book are as they are today, we still have several weeks of Polar learning ahead, so I’ll update them in future posts.)

We love the Magic School Bus series, so the YouTube video was a great springboard into the lesson earlier this week. It was a great reminder of the blubber science experiment we did during our hibernation unit. It was great for the kids to realize that polar animals also use blubber to stay warm in the icy weather and water!

The video created a second springboard of the kids wanting to create their own “Magic School Car” that would take them into the polar regions. The car comes equipped with a door, headlights, wheels, and plenty of seating for all of their friends to tag along (although I have been told, they are not done with their creation!). I’m sure it will be worked on for several more days.

Sensory Tub

Using a variety of arctic animals from the dollar store and toys around the house, I created a sensory tub to introduce many of the animals and objects we’ll be discussing. To do this, you can use a dishpan, lots of cotton balls for snow, rice, a small shovel or scooper, lots of animals, and I threw in all the ice cubes from the Don’t Break the Ice Game. The activity didn’t stay in the tub long. Rather, the animals ended up in the doll house and bathtub, but the animals were an instant draw. While they were in the tub, it gave us a chance to talk about camouflage. It was so much harder to find the white colored animals in the cotton balls, just as it is with many polar animals in the snow. In fact, challenge your children to find all the animals in 10 seconds and you may find that the white animals are the ones that are left behind before time expires!

Animals of the Arctic

Wolverine

Did you know that the wolverine has back teeth rotated 90 degrees to chomp it’s food…or that it can spray a scent similar to a skunk? We read several articles about wolverines and learned that even though they look like bears in many ways, they are actually the largest species of the weasel family. My kids were focused on the nickname “Skunk Bear,” so we grabbed a bottle of air freshener (too bad I didn’t have anything stinky) and did a quick experiment with gasses. We first talked about how the wolverine uses it’s scent to scare off predators and that led into a discussion about how the air is made of particles that move. From across the room, I sprayed the air freshener and had my daughters tell me when they could smell it. After a bit of a pause, they excitedly told me they could smell it. The connection was made: Wolverines warn others to stay away from them with their smell…a smell that animals can be made aware of from a distance.

In addition, the girls each had their turn coloring a wolverine online, which was filed into the fact file, along with pictures we had drawn of the interesting facts we learned.

Narwhal

Narwhal whales have always been a favorite of mine, so I was glad to find this book at the library last week. It has great facts for the kindergarten level including a life cycle diagram, which we were able to compare to our worm life cycles, and lots of great photos. Among other things, we learned that Narwhal do not live near Alaska, but in other parts of the Arctic, the tusks are only grown by the males, and killer whales are one of their predators. There’s also a great photo inside of the Narwhal lined up at the edge of the ice during the summer. We learned that whales are mammals and nurse their young, which was interesting to my kids because they live under water. Not only that, but the Narwhal sometimes float belly-up, so it looks like they are dead, which is how it has the nickname “corpse whale.” Got to introduce some new vocabulary there!

You might have noticed in the “Magic School Car” above the porthole. Well, of course, our car can go under water, so we made a porthole to look at all the Narwhal (all of which happen to be male and a little more colorful than they are in real life, with a few tropical fish stickers thrown in, so they didn’t starve!). We placed our colored Narwhal and fish on the inside of a blue paper plate and cut a circle in a second plate. I punched holes around the two plates together, and the girls laced them up. It happened to fit perfectly in a hole they had already cut into their car.

Polar Bear

Polar bears are HUGE and are ruthless animals that will eat anything form walrus to Killer Whales. We enjoyed several polar bear books, as well as several YouTube snippets showing polar bears coming out of their den and trucking across the snow. Just to get an idea of how what keen hunters polar bears are, we tried several experiments with senses: sight, smell, and hearing. For sight, I hid several types of prey (stuffed animals) in the dark and closed the windows and turned out the light. The girls used a flashlight to “hone-in” on their prey as quickly as they could. For the sense of smell, I placed several vegetables in plastic sandwich bags, put a blindfold over their eyes and they had to guess the food. And, for the sense of smell, we used shakers created out of prescription bottles and different objects to see if the girls could guess the contents. From this, the girls were able to create a better understanding of the senses the Polar Bear uses while hunting. Feel free to check out some other experiments we’ve done with the 5 Senses.

We finished up Polar Bears with an art project using cotton balls (from our sensory tub) to paint Polar Bear faces and talked a little about it was pointillism on a much larger scale. Boy, was it hard not to paint with the cotton ball!! The basics for this project: a traced paper plate for the head and half circles for ears, cotton balls stamping the paint, two googly eyes and a construction paper nose, followed by a game of Don’t Break the Ice.

Walrus

Walruses are huge too! Did you know the babies alone weight 100 pounds?? They are whiskery guys and gals, but they are actually a very caring species. Walruses travel in herds for protection from those Polar Bears above! Aside from book, National Geographic for Kids is a great resource. Our fact files included a diagram of their body, a picture of a Mama and baby, a map, and a picture of a sunshine. The sunshine represents how walruses sun themselves. When they do this, the blood of a Walrus rises to its skin, making them a pinkish color. We experimented with the girls feeling the warmth underneath a lamp. During the summer it would be a great activity to take a cold bath, then sit in the sun for a few minutes. It’s much too cold for that this time of year!

My girls are obsessed with rocks, so we put together a rock Walrus after reading about how big they are! The girls scouted “just right” rocks and we used the glue-gun to put on eyes, pipe cleaner tusks, and whiskers cut from

…and There’s MORE!

We still have four more arctic animals to explore. Meet me here on Monday to get some ideas for the Arctic Fox, Arctic Hare, Caribou, and Snowy Owl! Then it’s on to the lower region of the world: Antarctica, a week from today!

Don’t forget to check out The Usual Mayhem, Journey 2 Excellence, Childhood Beckons, and Montessori Tidbits who each have posted about Polar Animals this week. We’d love to have you follow along with each of us!

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11Dec2012

Spicy Gingerbread Cut-out

Posted in 5 senses, baking, Christmas, crafts, fine motor skills, science by No Doubt Learning

Ever wonder where you spices come from? Introduce your kids to the origin of the spices used to make gingerbread!

You’ll need:

a gingerbread boy/girl cut-out in brown construction paper (Your children can trace a large gingerbread cookie cutter)
5 spices in powder form (ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg)
Glue stick
Pictures of spices (I used several Yahoo Images, click the spice above to see examples of pictures and be sure to check them out to see which one you’d prefer to use)

Introduce your children to one spice at a time. Show your kids the spice bottle and have them smell the scent. Show them an image of the plant or root form of the spice. Next, have your child sprinkle glue on a body part of their choosing and sprinkle the spice as they would glitter. The spice will stick! Continue with all 5 spices, discussing and viewing each as you go. Upon completion, children can add buttons to the “clothes” if they wish.

Store in a Ziploc baggie or inside a page protector in your child’s lapbook or notebook.

My children were excited to learn that the spices all came from living plants, just like the food we eat!

27Nov2012

Winter Hideaway Wednesday: Hibernation Games and Activities

Posted in art, books, crafts, games, hibernation, lower grades, science, theme, unit, winter by No Doubt Learning

I can’t believe we’re moving into December! If they aren’t already, many animals will be going into hibernation soon, so here are some games and activities you can do with your children using a hibernation theme. If you haven’t already, be sure to visit Erin over at The Usual Mayhem to see her hibernation activities for the week!

Go to sleep… Wake Up…Game

We started the week by reviewing some of the animals that hibernate from the books we’ve read by playing “Go to Sleep Children.” I used this game with a class full of first graders many years ago. To play the game call out, “Go to sleep children!” The kids pretend to go to sleep. Then you say, “Wake up (insert animal that hibernates, such as a snake).” When the children wake up, they act like the animal until you again say, “Go to sleep snakes, wake up hedgehog (or other migrating animal)” The kids act as if they are the new animal.

We also modified the game to include animals that migrate. For example, I would say, “Migrate south geese.” They would fly away and hide until I said, “Come back north geese!” It was great to add in some ordinal direction along with some physical activity!

Animal Homes Activities

First Grade Garden has a printable for students to color and match the animals and words to their winter resting places. You can change the settings of your computer to print it as an 8.5×11” instead of the larger size that’s indicated. My kids did this mostly on their own and it was great to see they could match the animals up, based on the books we’ve been reading. Matching the words provided great reading practice! To finish, we added cotton balls represent snow.

Make a Cave or Burrow

I enjoyed seeing the bear cave The Usual Mayhem began under the stairs last week. We made a burrow under the snow, created from a down comforter strung over a barstool and piano bench. The girls enjoyed having their own warm hideaway.

Hedgehog Craft

Did you know that just like groundhogs, hedgehogs hibernate? However, a hedgehog is not like a groundhog because it is more prickly and less fuzzy. I saw this cute art project on Pinterest and was looking forward to trying it out. Unfortunately, they look more like porcupines (which don’t hibernate), but I still think they’re cute! The girls enjoyed tracing their hands, even after we completed the project. It took a total of 4 handprints traced onto the inside of a brown paper grocery bag. Maybe try it with your children’s fingers less spread out.

For another craft idea, head over to Fantastic Fun and Learning. They have an adorable hedgehog craft to go along with the book One Stormy Night!

Fun with Bears

I fell in love with the primary color Mondrian Bears from What’s Happening in the Art Room? We studied primary colors at the beginning of the school year, but it was a great review – and by tying the project to Mondrian, we experienced art in a whole new way after looking at his artwork. Both of my girls really got into painting inside the lines, tracing the squares with paint, and adding the tassels. Not only that, but when a color accidentally overlapped, we could review the secondary colors!

It’s hard to create bears without singing about them. Going on a Bear Hunt by Tonya of Strings Keys and Melodies is a great song to sing with your kids! You can experience the song here and visit her site for other music ideas.

And, while your in a Bear Hunt, check out the Printable and PowerPoint resources to follow the book provided by Carolyn at the Wise Owl Factory!

Next week I’ll be focusing on math and language arts and activities surrounding hibernation. Feel free to click the button below to visit my initial post on hibernation with an outline of the unit and look forward to a document you can refer to for planning your own unit on hibernation!

Linking to:

7Nov2012

Wormy Wednesday: The Benefit of Worms

Posted in art, crafts, fall, field trip, homeschool, lower grades, nature, science, science experiments, spring, summer, theme, unit, winter, writing by No Doubt Learning

Welcome to Wormy Wednesday! Did you know that earthworms have been a significant creature through history? It seems that even Cleopatra held worms in high esteem as sacred creatures in Ancient Egypt. Today, many people can’t get past the image of a slimy, slithering creature, but worms are just as important today as they were many years ago! Before you read ahead, don’t forget to check out STEMmom and The Usual Mayhem to see what they’ve been up to this week!

As we learned last week, worms are decomposers, so they like to break down environmentally friendly materials. To demonstrate this, my girls visited the “Worm Diner” and learned that Herm the Worm loves to snack on. Using pages 25 and 29 of a printable offered from SFEnvironmentKids.org, we learned which foods Herm preferred and then tried to pick the favorite foods out from a Take-Out Menu.

Knowing these foods was super important because we began our own vermicomposting bin in our own backyard! Our compost bin has been going for about 6 weeks and we’ve seen the worms take our food and turn it into castings. These castings we plan on spreading out in our garden (particularly the girls’ potted plants).

In September, I had the opportunity to attend a free composting workshop put on by the City of Sacramento. At the workshop I was given specific composting tips, but was enthralled with the presentation from Worm Fancy, who does vermicomposting (composting with worms). Determined to try it out, I went about building my own worm composting bin.

The bin is actually two bins constructed from the directions on the Worm Fancy website. You will be surprised to find that it’s not smelly. In fact, it has a fresh woodsy smell to it.

Here’s a general tour – my first attempt at video – a little cheesey…yes!

And, here’s a look at the bottom bin at work. This bin collects the extra liquids, which is endearingly called, “Worm Tea.” Don’t drink this tea though – dilute it 50/50 with water and let your plants soak it up as a good vitamin bath!

I actually bought my worms from a worm farm on www.findworms.com because the location of the farm was accessible to me. The man who owns the farm is incredibly nice and gave the girls and I a tour around. Too bad I didn’t know I’d be blogging about it, or I would have taken pictures! I highly suggest checking out the link so you can see just where your worms come from and to learn a little at the same time!

Now I’m sure you’d like to run out and start your own bin, so you can reduce your garbage and get rid of your used coffee filters, tea bags, and all the political junk mail, right? Well, before you get started, here are some tips I’d like to offer. Being the first in my family to attempt this, I’ve learned from some mistakes, so I’d love for you to avoid making the same ones!

Have fun! Start a worm bin as a learning experience for your whole family!
Read online and through library books, everything you can about vermicomposting.
Enjoy the woodsy smell of the worm bin. You’ll be surprised that it doesn’t stink!
Keep your worm bin in a cool area – worms don’t like 100 degree weather (whoops!)
Try giving the worms different kinds of food to see what they like and dislike.
If something doesn’t look right, ask! Look up your question online to see if you can find answers. I bet someone has had your same experience.
Zap fruit peels (like bananas) in the microwave before placing in your worm bin. Many banana peels are brought home from the store embedded with fruit fly eggs. Learned this the hard way!

Don’t

Don’t give up, no matter what mistakes you make. You’ll get it down right!
Don’t fret if you get larva from other bugs inside. With hard work, you can rid your box of them (yes, I had to do this with both fruit flies and fly larva…ewww!)
Keep your worm bin inside, unless you are very diligent about preparing the waste that goes into the box.
Get possessive over the worm bin. Remember, it’s a learning tool, so let your kids experience the worms and peek in on them frequently.

I’ve been really impressed with the enthusiasm of my girls and the integration of all they’ve learned into their playing. Each of them shared their favorite part of the unit and/or what they learned for our worm Stand-Up Book. My three year old said, “My favorite thing about worms is that I love them. They are pretty. They live in a burrow underground.” My kindergartener said, “My favorite thing about worms is that I learned worms don’t have bones.”