FIAR-The Salamander Room

This week's row is The Salamander Room. Since we were already on bug themes, we decided to just continue on with it. We picked up a Butterfly Garden a while back, and we have been waiting for the weather to warm up enough to order our caterpillars. It finally started to warm up, so we ordered them! You can get a butterfly garden here: http://www.amazon.com/Insect-Lore-Live-Butterfly-Garden/dp/B00000ISC5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396181991&sr=8-1&keywords=butterfly+garden

The caterpillars are so TINY when they arrive, but they grow very fast. Lily couldn't wait to see how big they got before they started to spin their cocoons.

Our dog was very interested in the caterpillars, too, as we found out one evening. We left her out while we went to soccer, and came back to a cup with a hole in the side, and a caterpillar climbing down the outside of the cup. Luckily, we got it back in, and all caterpillars are accounted for. I don't really want them loose in the house. A little bit of tape, and we were good.

I had a LOT planned for this unit, but we had a death in the family, so we kind of ditched the 2nd week of activities. The beauty of homeschool-when LIFE happens, you can alter your plans for schooling, and it isn't a big deal. We may come back to this book later, we may not.

We had a lot of fun talking about different reptiles and amphibians. We took a trip to Animal Jungle-a pet store with lots of unusual pets. We specifically went to see the reptile room.

 For our sensory activity this week, I used green water beads, and some frogs/lizards from the dollar store. We love water beads! They got a little icky after a few days, though, and we switched them out for stones. Lily loved playing with her "pond" this week.

We talked a lot about butterflies. Our caterpillars went into the chrysalis phase, and Lily was very excited about that. We have 3 out of the 5 that have just turned into butterflies! (If you are doing a butterfly garden, make sure you put something under it to protect the table-the butterflies leave this reddish stuff when they come out)

We did a few art projects this week. We colored some salamanders. We made coffee filter butterflies, and bingo dauber frogs.

We found a really cute paint your own butterfly bank at the dollar store, so Lily worked on that this week. She loves to paint.

We found a butterfly memory game to print out, so we played that over and over again. :)

We found a frog that grows in water (again, at the dollar store). We put him in the water at the beginning of our unit, and left him there the entire time so we could see how much he grew.

I always try to tie in a fun food for each theme, and I found these really cute bugs on Pinterest. You make them just like pigs in a blanket, and use potato sticks for legs and antennae.

We also watched our Rachel and the Treeschoolers Insect episode again this week, and we watched the Magic Schoolbus butterfly episode.  It was a fun unit, even though it got derailed a bit. Next week, the circus comes to town, so our next row will be circus themed! :)

Spielgaben

I wanted to post a short piece about this incredible new educational toy that I found to use in our homeschool. It is called Spielgaben. It is a fantastic set of open ended, wooden educational toys. I had seen it on other blogs, and thought that it was just a beautiful piece. This week, I bit the bullet and purchased our own set, and we have not been disappointed!

It is 14 separate "sets" of toys that are meant to be introduced to the children one at a time. (Or, you can set the whole kit out for some free play) It follows the philosophy of "Froebel Gifts." Froebel was actually the inventor of Kindergarten.

Lily has been having so much fun just playing and exploring the set, and I can't wait to incorporate it into our homeschool!

This was our second day of owning the set, and as soon as she woke up, she decided it was time to start building.

In the evening, Lily was watching Spongebob Squarepants, and decided that she wanted to build Mr. Crab.

 So far, we haven't even scratched the surface of what we can do with this set! It IS expensive, but the recommended ages for this set is 3-12. The goldmine in the set, though, is the educational resources they send you to download with your purchase. Over 1,000 pages of inspiration cards, activities and curriculum come with this set! Check it out here: http://www.spielgaben.com/   I was not compensated in any way to promote the Spielgaben set. I am just excited about it, and the potential it has for our homeschool. :)

FIAR-The Bee Tree

 This week's row was The Bee Tree, by Patricia Polacco. This was a cute story about chasing bees to the bee tree and finding some sweet honey. I was hoping that we would be able to see some bees up close, so I posted on a local bee keepers page on Facebook. I asked if anyone would be willing to let us come by and see some bees up close. Just something basic. One of them messaged me, so we went by for a peek!

 Since the bees were underneath the screen, Lily got to get up close to them. It was still a little chilly out, so most of the bees are hiding in the middle layers of their hive to stay warm. We got to see a few. We could hear the buzzing when the beekeeper took the top layer off.

Lily got to see a real honeycomb up close, and touch it.

 

The beekeeper was even nice enough to give us some yummy honey! We were very excited about this. 

In our sensory bin this week, we had a bag of dry black beans and some mini bee erasers.

We did a lot of activities from http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2011/07/all-about-bees.html

This spin and graph bee activity was a hit for part of our math lessons this week:

We also played a Build a Bee game:

At the end of the book, everyone had some honey, biscuits and tea. Of course, we had to try that wonderful honey the bee keeper gave us, so we had biscuits, tea and honey! ( I cheated and used cinnamon biscuits that you find on the pancake/muffin aisle in the store)

We got a little derailed in the middle of this unit. Both Lily and I got hit with the stomach virus that has been going around everywhere. The beauty of homeschooling, though, is when I have a sick little girl, we can just take a break!

Once we recovered from being sick, we worked on some bee crafts. First, we did some potato prints:

 We made bees out of construction paper:

Honeycomb cereal made a fun (and tasty) art project:

I think Lily's favorite activity of the week was the Honeybee Tree game. You have to remove leaves slowly and carefully, so you won't wake the honeybees!

We finished up the unit with a yummy peanut butter and honey sandwich for dinner. :) Lily said that this was her favorite sandwich.

We also watched The Magic School Bus episode about bees, and the Rachel and the Treeschoolers about insects. I have a subscription to Discovery Streaming, so we watched some short videos showing bees in action.
 This was a fun row, even though we got sick in the middle of it, and I kind of lost my motivation. Oh well, it happens. We will just pick up and move on to our next unit: The Salamander Room. Lots of insects to discover in this one. We got a head start on it already! Our caterpillars arrived in the mail yesterday!