Brown Bear, Brown Bear & The Very Busy Spider

   

For our arts and crafts this week, we centered them around a couple of Eric Carle books. We chose 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?' and 'The Very Busy Spider'. We own and have read these books time and time again. My children love to hear them. The crafts we went with were very simple and easy to do (with very little set up).

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

For this first craft, we were trying to make a bear that looked like the one from the book. I had J paint a piece of white card stock completely brown. I liked the fact that you could still see the brush marks, as this is how the pictures are from the book. Then, I made a simple bear template (free hand) and cut it out. We glued it onto construction paper and TA-DA!! A bear that does a very good job of mimicking the one from the book.

The next craft we did for this book was a simple paper plate bear. Easy peasy! Paint a paper plate brown, add a couple of ears, and draw on a face.

  

The Very Busy Spider

We only did one craft with this book. And it, like the others, was very easy. I had J draw a spider web on her piece of black construction paper with a pencil. I drew little E's. Then we took glue and traced our web. And here's comes the messy part- cover it with glitter. Yes, I vacuumed up glitter for days, especially from the 2 year old. But they turned out cute and the kids loved their sparkly webs!

 

Enjoy!!

Kindergarten Science- Friction

Friction is next on our list of kindergarten science topics (relating to motion/movement) to study. Friction works against movement. We talked about how sometimes we want friction and sometimes we don't. And different ways we can add friction or lessen it. Here are the books we chose to help us cover this topic.

  

Once we went through the books, we wanted to do a couple of experiments.

The first one we attempted was to discover how different substances can add friction or lessen it. For this activity you will need:

- a marble

- an ice cube

-baby powder

- baby oil

-and a paper towel

 

I did the activity on a cookie sheet, but it could easily be done on a counter top or floor. Now, back to the experiment. Having the child use their thumb and pointer finger, have them pick up the marble. Now the ice cube. Which was easiest? This time, have them dip their fingers in baby powder (making sure to get a good coat on their fingers). Pick up the objects again (at this point, I discovered it would work MUCH better to make sure your ice cube is fresh, not slightly melted and wet). Was it easier this time or not? Use the paper towel to clean fingers. Now, dip fingers in baby oil. Pick up the objects again. Easier or harder?

   

I have J record all her findings in her science journal. She draws a picture of what we did/what happened, and I have her tell me a simple sentence explaining the results. Here's her entry from this experiment-

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For our next experiment involving force, you will need

-a small empty box

-a rubber band

-rocks

-pencils (maybe 8-10)

Attach the rubber band to the short side of the box. I poked a small hole in the side, slipped the rubber band through and put a paper clip on the inside of the box to keep the rubber band from coming back through. The rubber band basically works as the handle.

Have your child pull the empty box (using the rubber band). Notice it pulls easily. Now load your box with rocks (it is NOT a problem at our house to find rocks, J is a rock 'collector' so we always have an abundance...lol!). Pull again. Does it move as easily as before?

 

Line your pencils on the floor about an inch apart. Place the box on top of them. Pull again. How does this affect the way the box moves?

The difference is caused by the rollers (pencils) that are reducing the friction between the box and the rug. This experiment could also be used to help explain rollers as a simple machines.

Here is J's entry in her journal from this activity-

Hope you've enjoy this kindergarten science topic!!

Next up in this series, RAMPS!

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

This year, I've decided to base all our arts and crafts around children's books. I love using 'themes' and this seemed to be the perfect way to incorporate more fun stuff into our homeschool day.

We spent a few days reading the book, 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie'. This is a very popular and super cute book about what happens when you give a mouse a cookie.

 

After reading through the book, we made these adorable puffy paint cookies.

       

These were very easy and the kiddos loved them! Find the instructions and puffy paint recipe here at No Time For Flash Cards.

       

And who could read 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' without making cookies?!?! So we whipped up a batch of the most delicious chocolate chip cookies ever! This recipe was the best I have found so far. We've made two batches of these cookies and they never last more than two days.

So while we were waiting on our cookies to get finished baking, I found this idea over on The Preschool Experiment, and thought it would be a great game for little E. I made colored paper plates and paper cookies with colored 'chips', then put all the cookies on a baking sheet (which he uses for his magnet pages). He then could put all the cookies on their corresponding plate. He really enjoyed this and big sister J liked 'helping' even more.

(I know E is a blur in the picture, but anyone with an active little boy who doesn't stay still longer than 1 second knows why) 

TIME FOR COOKIES!!

Let me just tell you again how good these cookies are! They're awesome! And were gone fast.

Kindergarten Science- Gravity

Following on the heels of our science from last week, this week we talked about the topic of 'Gravity'. Again, I don't go in depth with these subjects. This is really just an introduction of science that will be covered more heavily in higher grades. We're 'getting our feet wet' so to say.

Each of these books had a small section on gravity which I used to give a definition of what it is and what it does; a force that causes objects fall down when dropped and the force that hold us to the earth.

  

'The Kids' Science Book' gives an activity to show that gravity pulls all objects downward at the same speed, regardless of their weight. So we tried it. The activity is meant to be used with partners, but in our case, I used the power of the cell phone! I videoed to activity and let her watch it to see what happened. So, to begin, I had J stand in a chair holding a grape in one hand and an apple in the other.

 

Then, I turned the camera on and instructed to her drop them both at the same time. Then we watched the video back to see if, in fact, they both hit the ground at the same time. THEY DID!

The next activity we tried next was to feel the pull that gravity has. I had J hold her hand out, palm up. I then held the apple about a foot above her hand. I turned on the video once again to capture what happened. I dropped the apple on her hand, causing her hand to feel the pull of gravity from the apple thus making her hand go down. We talked about how heavier objects it the ground harder than lighter objects, just like a heavy apple caused her hand to be pulled down more than a grape would. Here's the video from that experiment.

I hope you have enjoyed our mini study on 'Gravity'!! Next, in our science series is Friction.

Kindergarten Science- Force

As I had mentioned in the post on our curriculum choices, we weren't using an actual curriculum for science. I'm choosing a few 'topics' that I think would be fun to learn about and then using books and experiments/activities to help explore the topics. This week we studied about forces. No, I didn't go completely in depth with this. I wanted J to come away knowing the simple fact that a force 'puts an object in motion' more or less. 

I found some great books at our local library to help explain force on a early elementary level.

  

First we talked about how we can put things into motion using force. We also took a look at strong force and gentle force. How the amount of force used could make things move just a little or a whole lot. 

Now it was time for a couple of experiments!!  We set up a ramp with a toy car at the bottom. I used a simple piece of cardboard with a small top portion of it bent down. But it kept wanting to slide down, so I placed a binder underneath the ramp and that did the trick. I laid a piece of yarn to the side of the truck, stretching most of the way down the hall.

Next we chose three different balls of different size and weight. A small bouncy ball, a baseball, and a foam ball.

I let J guess which one she thought would move the car the farthest. Then we tested. I let her roll one ball at a time down the ramp. It hit the car and moved it. Where ever the car stopped I cut the yarn to that length, so it was the same as the distance the car moved. Then we set the whole thing up again for the next ball. And continued the same way for all three balls. 

 

And what's a good science experiment without a graph, right? J drew the picture of each ball on our poster board. We then taped the cut piece of yarn beside the corresponding ball. So you can see by the graph that the baseball caused the car to move the farthest, then the bouncy ball, and lastly the foam ball. 

On our second day of science work, we talked about how there are 'invisible forces', forces that can move/change things that we can't see. The wind, as an example.

For this activity I set up a plain piece of cardboard. I put a 'starting line' (blue), followed by a line that was close to the starting line (red), and one that was on the other side of the cardboard (green). I grabbed a couple of straws and a few pom-poms and we were ready to go.

I handed each kiddo a straw and instructed J to blow her pom-pom to the red line (the closest). Then asked if it took a little bit of force or a lot of force to move her pom-pom. Next we put them back on the starting line and I asked her to blow hers to the green line on the other side of the board. Did that take a little or a lot of force?

  

And FYI- a two year old will just blow his pom-pom all over the place and leave slobber on the board :)

After each of our activities, I had J record what we did in her science journal by drawing a picture. I then had her dictate to me what her picture was, and I wrote a simple sentence under drawing

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Stay tuned...next week is 'Gravity'!!

First Week of Kindergarten..DONE!

We just finished our first week of kindergarten, successfully I might add. We both had such a great time! She has even asked me over the weekend to do school work. It makes me happy that she is enjoying it so much. It generally takes us somewhere around an hour and a half to complete a days work. Which is plenty of time, in my opinion, for a kindergartner. Our schedule looks a little something like this-

Calendar Notebook/Calendar time

Handwriting

Bible

Reading

Math

Science/Social Studies

Art/craft

I will be blogging more specifically what we have done in each subject area later on. Here's a few pictures of how our week went down.

Working on her calendar notebook

a little science

craft time

  

reading

and of course of little bit of cooking

You can refer back to my posts on the curriculum we are working on this year here and here.

Coming up- What little E does while we work!!