January was a "beary" good month for us, pun intended. We were all ready to get back into a normal school schedule after so much time off over the holidays. Our brains were refreshed and we hit the new year hard!
Our science unit included bears, hibernation, migration, and what animals do in winter. We learned all kinds of facts about the 4 types of bears, got to see two of the types in person during our field trip to the NC Zoo, watched documentaries, and made our own Eric Carle-esqe bears.
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| We incorporated geography and learned where in the world you can find each type of bear. |
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We did a day of gummy bear math...which I do believe was their favorite part of the unit, ha! Graphs, guesstimating, patterns, addition, division...a bag of gummy bears is full of fun math lessons! Zoe's face when having her first taste of a gummy bear was priceless! |
Our composer of the month was Frederich Chopin and we listened to his music all month long.
Our author of the month was Eric Carle and we all enjoyed his colorful books. Ezra especially loved his comb painting technique and tried it out a million several times during the month.
We made sure to check out the Official Eric Carle website several times during the month as well.
We got together with other homeschool families one afternoon and made our own egg tempura paint out of egg yolks and chalk, in the style of the early Renaissance artists like Boticelli, Giotto, and Fra Angelico. Fascinating stuff, I tell ya. You can look up how to make your own here.
Ezra's reading is really taking off! It is such an amazing thing to watch things begin to click in an early reader. He is into the 2nd set of Bob books and loves the beginning Biscuit books.
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| Ella was helping out and listening to him read one of his books for the day...and eating her oatmeal at the same time, ha! |
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| I just started the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum with Eli and it seems to be a good fit for us so far! |
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| The boys are both working on their counting to 100, and Ezra is mastering counting by 5's and 10's. Our homemade smart chart is used almost daily. |
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| The boys really love when we get out these big number cards. There are so many good activities you can do with them...put them in order, reverse order, find the correct number of cars to put on each card, jump the correct number of times in each card, etc. |
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| Lessons on measuring, fractions, and working together...hidden into a fun rainy day activity works for me. Although I'm still looking for a good way to get play-doh out of carpet...sigh. |
Here's my favorite recipe that never fails and keeps for months:
3 cps flour
1.5 cps salt
2tbsp cream of tartar
3tbsp oil
Mix over medium heat until dough ball forms, then knead with hands on flat surface. Add food coloring or kool aid to color the dough.
And that's a wrap on January!
1 comments:
those are some great ideas! we love eric carle too. That is my favorite avenue for teaching sign language to the kids. we just add in some more signs with each reading. it works great because they get a nice well rounded exposure of vocabulary.
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