Designing a home-centered life: learning, exploring, and creating with our five littles
Art - Drawing StoriesMy children love to draw, color, paint, etc, but don't always follow along or cooperate with the art direction given on CC community days. For that reason (& because it's fun!), I've started reinforcing it at home. This week, I drew a 4 box grid on card stock & asked each of my 2 older boys to draw their … [Read more...]
Geography - Watching Planet Earth Today we watched part of the Planet Earth DVD series; specifically the "fresh water" portion. Our whole family enjoyed seeing the magnitude of God's creation on display & learning more about rivers in the process. It was a proud CC Momma moment, when my eldest son said, "That must be the … [Read more...]
On Our BookshelfDon't you just love bringing home a new stack of books from the library? The boys & I are so excited to dig into reading these titles. We've already gotten started in a few. The Periodic Table book has cool graphics, which my boys are enamored by! What books are you reading together this week? … [Read more...]
Art - Roy Lichtenstein ColoringToday my boys requested some art by Roy Lichtenstein to color. I quickly googled images and printed out 2 that were suitable in size. They are not true coloring pages, but full color images printed in gray scale. They are enjoying coloring them as we speak! My hope is this will spark their … [Read more...]
Science - Quick Six Elements Card GameI found this free elements game, Quick Six, via the blog Half A Hundred Acre Wood.I immediately thought it would appeal to the boys & printed it out. Even if we don't play the game, the flashcards would be great for review & for laying out the periodic table on our own. The … [Read more...]
Math - Area of a CircleWhat could be better than making & slicing a pizza for lunch to learn about the area of a circle? Understanding Pi is a little outside the boys' reach for right now, but learning about diameter & radius is not. It was a fun, edible lesson! … [Read more...]
History Read AloudThroughout this week we've been reading, If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island by Ellen Levine, to learn more about our history sentence for week 16. It's been very informative & led to many questions from the boys. I'm hoping we can follow up this new knowledge with a family field trip to Ellis Island … [Read more...]
Maple Snow CandyWe've been reading the Little House on the Prairie series of books to coincide with the American history we're learning in cycle 3 this year. So, today, I decided we should try our hand at making maple snow candy like Ma & the girls. Our second attempt worked, the boys loved it & it only took a few minutes to … [Read more...]
Ice & Salt experimentsToday we indulged in a little interest led learning. The boys watched me salt the driveway last night after some snowfall & wanted to know why/how that worked. So, today, we conducted a little experiment.We put an equal number of ice cubes into 2 separate containers. Each boy took a turn adding salt … [Read more...]
Learning about BaysWe started by looking on our large wall map to find the bays we're learning about this week. Next, we played a quickly handmade game that allows the boys to match the name and definition of a body of water with a simple drawing of it. We started with bay, lake, river, and ocean. For older children, you … [Read more...]