Hiatus

My son has decided that he'd rather take a more unschooling approach to his schooling for a while, so, unless/until he changes his mind, this blog is going on hiatus.  We're too busy living life to keep up with it!

Dinosaurs--week 3

A few of the books from previous weeks are still left, so we'll be working on reading those, as well as adding a few more shone below.  We will also be working on finishing the mural mentioned in last week's lesson and perhaps begin work on a papier mache dinosaur.  To bring the dinosaurs and the world they live in more alive, we will also be watching some videos about dinosaurs.  In addition to the nonfiction DVDs, we will also be watching Jurassic Park and discuss why it is fiction.

Books used this week:

























Videos to be watched: 
 

Dinosaurs--week 2

This week, we will continue the March of the Dinosaurs by continuing using the "funsheets" from www.learningpage.com on dinosaurs and reading the books we didn't get to yet last week.  We will also be adding a few more books (see below) and beginning to put together murals on the wall of this time period.

 

Monsters vs. Dinosaurs

Today, we will be transitioning from the talk of monsters to dinosaurs.  We'll be discussing some things that are similar and different between monsters and dinosaurs.  We'll begin discussing the Mesozoic era using this page as a focus/coloring page.  We will also be doing some "funsheets" from the Learning Pages Theme Unit on dinosaurs.  We'll be reading (or looking at, in some cases) whatever books we have around here on dinosaurs as well.  This should take us the rest of the week and may take us into next week as well.

In no particular order, some of the books we have lying around here on or about dinosaurs:

   

Monsters

Lately, S has been saying he doesn't want to be alone anywhere in the house because he's "scared".  Today, we will be addressing that through stories, discussions, and activities.  We will be reading the book selections listed below, then discuss his fears.  We will discuss things we can do to help deal with the fears, perhaps by making a batch of "Monster Spray" or setting policies to do chores earlier in the evening when he's not so tired and imaginations aren't running so wild.  As part of this discussion, we will also make an art project as described here.  We will also complete a worksheet on fear to try to gain control of it.  We will also be doing this worksheet on telling time.  We may also use play-dough or another medium to give shape to the fears so they can be squashed, literally and metaphorically.


 

Meatballs

Today, we read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Magic Meatballs.  Then we made a large batch of meatballs for freezing.  While they were cooking, we watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and then discussed the ways the book and move were different.

Raining Food

Today we continue our lessons centered around fun food stories with The Night It Rained Pancakes and Rain Makes Applesauce.  We'll then talk about the water cycle, using a coloring page for reference.  Then we'll do some weather worksheets from enchantedlearning.com, along with some from the Learning Page website (1, 2, 3, and possibly a couple more from this site, if his interest holds long enough).  Then we are going to make some basic applesauce.