April 24, 2012

10, 9, 8, 7, 6...BLAST OFF!

We made these cool looking rockets out of a piece of contruction paper, tape and some felt pen decorations. Hidden inside of these fabulous rockets is a clear film canister. Today we are attempting to launch our rockets into space.

The film canister we filled with warm water...then quickly and I mean quickly we dropped the alka-seltzer tablet into the canister and put the lid on.

Then we waited for it to shoot up into the air...

But the most we got was a little 'pop' and then the rocket fell over. As T.J. oberved the 'failed' launches of his brothers rockets and saw how wet they got he would not even give his a try. He was too proud of the rocket he had made to see it get ruined. Maybe another day T.J.

April in Oregon

We are spending the next few months traveling around to see family and friends. April we are in Oregon visiting grandma and grandpa. Above is Zak riding through the grass sprinkled with daisies on the first day of sunshine for a week. Yippppeeee!

A view of the daisies from an ant's point of view.

Beautiful tulips in a nieghbors front yard.

TJ and a tree full of blossoms.

Have a great Spring Day where ever you are!

Making an Egyptian Temple

Island Temple at Philea by David Roberts

Building an egyptian temple out of paper is not as easy as we thought, even with our pre-planned punch out and glue together model. We found that gluing together the many paper pieces didn't work so well and so we opted for clear tape instead. Though it makes the end result look a bit tacky it was more within our range and abilities so we went with it. Building this temple was a big hit with the boys who were so deltighted to see the temple come alive as we completed first the pylons, the obelisks and flags and then on another day the courtyard.

Each day we added another section.

After the hopstyle hall we constructed the sanctuary and the priests house

And that completes our temple building project!


Just so you know....all the pictures for this post were taken by Max (except this one). He is becoming quite a good photographer.


April 7, 2012

The Artist Study Helper: Henri Matisse

This last week I set out to put together some montesorri cards for all the post-impressionist artists and some of the modern artist for our artist study next year and I ended up creating The Artist Study Helper for Henri Matisse instead. I am sooo excited about it, and I hope to be able to make Artist Study Helpers for all of the impressionist artists that I have made Montesorri cards before. Now to just get some time....(smile).
The Artist Study Helper is a resource packet of tools and ideas to help you as you study a specific artist, this one is on henri Matisse. At the front of the e-book I have included some ideas for using these materials and a sample seven week plan for implementing some of the resources. There is so much in this little e-book you could spend a whole year on it, or you can just choose one or two activities you enjoy and do those. Whatever you do your children will love looking at this colorful artist.

Come have a peek inside...

There are twelve montesorri cards to use for playing concentration or go fish or whatever creative ways you use them.

There are notbook pages to be filled in. For one of the pages I have made small replicas of the art work so you can print, cut and glue them to the bottom of your Artist bio sheet. Using these same replicas you can add it to the page at the top and your copy of that painting below it. There are also pages for each of the twelve paintings chosen for your student to write about the work of art.

There is a short biography of Henri Matisse you can display on your wall or in your notebook.

There are five coloring pages for you to color.

There are three art lessons. One designed so you too can draw with your scissors like Matisse.

There are six large pictures which can be used for picture study. I also included instructions for how to do a picture study and a list of books introducing Herni Matisse for children that can  be checked out of the library or bought.

The Artist Helper: Henri Matisse and The Artist Helper: Vincent Van Gogh are now available at Currclick.


April 3, 2012

Astronomy Catch Up

Well I am about three chapters behind in chronicling our events in Astronomy. We have had a lot going in our neck of the woods and we also plan to do some traveling soon, so here is a very short nut shell version of our recent pages and project.

Space Rocks Title page by Max 
Each time we begin a new set of pages we try to think of a color or in this case a way to decorate the page so it reminds us of the planet we are studying. We had alot of fun splattering paint to make these pages.

Space Rocks Title Page by Zak
Two page Spread by Zak

Space Rocks Title Page T.J.
Two Page Spread of Jupiter by Max

Jupiter Fact Pocket by T.J.


 Saturn Two Page spread by Zak
 Because Jupiter and Saturn both rotate so quickly they have strong winds, or hurricanes. We made this hurricane in a bottle to see how this happens.

All of our lapbook mini books came from these two sources:



And the solar system map drill which we do at the end of each chater is found here.