16
Jul

Butterfly Unit Study

We recently had a lot of fun doing a unit about butterflies. My kids don’t like the idea of doing school work during the summer, but we had so much fun that they didn’t even realize they were learning.
We started off by receiving some caterpillars in the mail. They are so tiny when they come! The day we received them the kids drew pictures in their nature journals of what they looked like and then wrote a sentence about what they observed.
Once they reached the chrysalis stage we moved them out of the little cup and into our butterfly net. We made new drawings in our nature journals and added a sentence about what was observed.
Lastly, we were able to observe the butterflies. We kept them for a few days and fed them sugar water.
The kids drew pictures of our painted lady butterflies in their nature journals.
Finally, we let our butterflies go.
We made these fun lapbooks from Around the Kampfire.
On one of the flaps they drew pictures of the life cycle of the butterfly and labeled what each step in the cycle is.
Inside the lapbook, there is a spot to label the parts of a butterfly, a place to write about how butterflies help plants grow, and a little flip book about butterflies. On one of the leaves we added some sesame seeds to represent the eggs. We did a fun activity to help the kids understand pollination. I forgot to take pictures, so I’ll try to describe it. I cut out flower shaped papers and put crunched up cheese puffs in the middle to represent pollen. Then the kids made a butterfly shape out of pipe cleaner. The butterflies flew to a flower and landed on the “pollen.” After walking on the “pollen,” they flew to a different flower shaped piece of paper and walked around on it. They were able to see how the pollen was left behind on the new flower.
Inside the leaves on the trees we wrote more about butterflies, like where they lay their eggs, what they eat, and how they protect themselves.

This was such a fun unit! My kids didn’t even know that they were doing science or practicing their reading and writing.

02
Jul

Bee Unit Study

How is it possible that it’s been three years since I last posted?  I decided that I am going to start trying to post again now that it feels like life has slowed down a little bit.

We finished up school a few weeks ago and one of our favorite units was learning about bees.  I hadn’t actually planned on blogging about this, so I only have a few pictures that I took with my phone.

Bee Unit Study

After we spent a few days learning about bees, we drew and labeled bees in our science nature journals.

Bee Unit Study

We also studied the life cycle of a honey bee.

Bee Unit Study

Hunter is looking at a sesame seed with his magnifying glass.  We learned that a bee’s brain is the size of a sesame seed.  It’s pretty amazing all of the things that bees can do with such tiny brains.

Bee Unit Study

We took a field trip to learn more about bees.

Bee Unit Study

Field trip- looking at the life cycle

Bee Unit Study

Field trip- looking at the different kinds of bees

Bee Unit Study

Field trip- doing activities with hexagons

Bee Unit Study

We made some bee art.  The kids had to make a queen bee, a worker bee, and a drone.  Each one has different characteristics that they had to represent in their bee drawings.

Learning about bees has definitely made us less scared of them.  Now when a bee comes near one of us we just say, “It’s not going to hurt me, it’s just trying to pollinate.”

13
Jul

ArtAchieve Review

Filed in Art, Curriculum, Review

ArtAchieve

Without a doubt, Hailey’s favorite subject is art.  She is also very good at it.  Me?  Not so much.  I can find cute activities for her to recreate, but as far as actually teaching art and art techniques- I don’t have a clue.  For most of the school year we attend a weekly co-op and she takes an art class there.  But, that ended at the end of April and Hailey has been asking me if she can take some art classes. For the past several weeks she has been using the Entire Level II from ArtAchieve for her weekly art lessons.

Art Lessons for Children ArtAchieve Review

ArtAchieve is an online resource of art lessons for kids.  The lessons are very complete and there isn’t much you as the teacher will have to do, other than gather supplies.  There are 5 different levels available at ArtAchieve.  The lessons can be used for any age from kindergarten on up.  Even adults can use these lessons!  You will just need to choose the best level to start at depending on the ability of the your art student.  Within each level there are several different art lessons.  We reviewed the Entire Level II and there are 14 different lessons on that level.

Art Lessons for Children ArtAchieve Review
The lessons are available as a video where your child will watch a teacher and follow the instructions.  The lessons are also available as a PowerPoint, which is how we chose to use the program so that Hailey could do the lessons at her own pace.

ArtAchieve

Each lesson starts out by showing the art standards that the lesson will meet.

ArtAchieve

 Then there will be a picture of the object that the lesson is about.  This picture is from the Japanese Goldfish lesson.  There are several slides with information about the object.  Not actually included in the PowerPoint presentation, but given on the website for each lesson, are ideas to make cross-curricular connections.  With the Japanese Goldfish lesson there are ideas to connect it to Social Studies, Science, Writing, Literature, Geography, and of course, art.

ArtAchieve

 Next you will find a slide with the materials that will be needed within the lesson.

ArtAchieve

 Next up will be a relaxation technique to help get your child ready to create art.

ArtAchieve

Relaxation is followed by a drawing warm up that will need to printed out ahead of time.  Music is also an important part of these lessons and students should listen to some quiet music to while they work.  Finally there are a few rules to go over before starting the drawing part of the lesson.

ArtAchieve

Now it is time to draw.  There are step by step directions to guide your child through the drawing.

ArtAchieve

When the drawing is finished there will be instructions to color or paint the drawing, depending on what is being used for that particular lesson.  There are some suggestions given, but the rest is up to your child.

ArtAchieve

Hailey’s finished fish.

 Here are a few other projects that Hailey worked on:

ArtAchieve

This lesson about the Czech Cat is available for free, so you are able to see how this homeschool art curriculum works and see if it would be a good fit for you.

ArtAchieve

Hailey’s finished cat.

ArtAchieve

Hailey also worked on the Swedish Dala Horse.

ArtAchieve

The completed horse. 

ArtAchieve

 Another lesson Hailey did was the German Nutcracker.

This art curriculum is perfect for us!  For the most part, the lessons are easy enough that Hailey can actually complete them without any help from me.  She has learned a lot and even asks to do the lessons during her summer vacation 🙂  That is a sign of a fun curriculum!!

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Art Lessons for Children ArtAchieve Review

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10
Jul

D is for Dinosaur

Our Crafts N Things

When learning about the letter D, what could be more fun than turning it into a dinosaur theme?  I can’t think of anything better for a 4 year old boy.  Hunter loved learning the letter D and all about dinosaurs.  This was definitely his favorite unit all year.

Our Crafts N Things

 Hunter’s letter D bin was full of fun things for the week.  Harper kept taking her diaper out and putting it away haha, she didn’t understand why it was in the bin.

Our Crafts N Things

 I printed out this letter D page from these preschool printables and then Hunter had to make the D using pattern blocks.

Our Crafts N Things

He spent lots of time playing with the little dinosaurs.  We used them for some math games too, like sorting, patterns, counting, etc.

Our Crafts N Things

Hunter and Harper enjoyed using the dinosaur stamps.

Our Crafts N Things

Hunter loved this dinosaur mat!  He has spent hours playing with this.

Our Crafts N Things

Hunter working on some dinosaur puzzles.

Our Crafts N Things

Finding and coloring the letter D.

Our Crafts N Things

We used painters tape to show how long some of the dinosaurs were.  Hunter was pretty impressed with how big they were.  We weren’t able to do the really big dinosaurs because they were bigger than our house!

Our Crafts N Things

At the end of the tape I put a little fact card about the dinosaur the tape was representing.

Our Crafts N Things

We made dinosaur fossils by pressing little dinosaurs into modeling clay.

Our Crafts N Things

What would a dinosaur unit be without making a volcano?  Hunter liked doing the volcano but when the “lava” came out of the mountain and touched his dinosaurs he was not happy.  So, the rest of our volcano fun had to be done without the dinosaurs nearby.

Our Crafts N Things

A representation of big a t-rex footprint was.

Our Crafts N Things

We had a little fossil dig to look for dinosaur bones.

Our Crafts N Things

Hunter working on finding some bones

Our Crafts N Things

Hailey helped too, it was actually really hard to get the bones out.

Our Crafts N Things

Then Hailey and Hunter took turns hiding some dinosaur bones in the sandbox and then searching for them.

Learning about dinosaurs was our favorite unit this year!



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