The Story of Little Babaji

During the letter B week, we read The Story of Little Babaji, written by Helen Bannerman.  The original title of this book was The Story of Little Black Sambo.  It can be read online here.  This was Arin's favorite book for the week.  She wanted me to read this story over and over and over.

The story is set in India.  We put together our world map floor puzzle.  We love this puzzle!  We take this puzzle apart and put it away each time we use it, so now Arin is getting very good at putting it together.  Once the puzzle was together, we mapped out the route from Florida to India.  Then, we talked about sizes.  I asked Arin which was bigger, India or the United States. 

Arin also colored a picture of India.

The story is about a little boy who meets tigers in the woods and has to give up his clothing to them.  I found a good lapbook lesson about tigers, (it can be found here), but it was a bit too advanced for Arin.  So she ended up just coloring a tiger picture from her coloring book.

At the end of the book, the tigers turn into butter (sorry for the spoiler!).  Babaji's dad, Papaji, finds the melted butter and takes it home to his wife, Mamaji, who uses it to fry pancakes for dinner.  The girls and I made homemade butter.  I remember doing this activity when I was younger and I really enjoyed it.  Arin was amazed that you can turn milk (she doesn't understand the difference between milk and cream) into butter.  The girls did enjoy this activity, but they are still a bit young to stick with the jar shaking for the whole time, so we took turns, a lot!  Once we had made the butter, we made a pancake dinner, which was a hit!

Also in the book, it names the color plus the article of clothing (red jacket, blue trousers, etc.).  We are working on colors with Ella, so I made a pancake flipping game for her.  I cut six circles out of brown cardstock.  Then I cut out two red, two blue, and two green circles out of cardstock.  I glued one colored circle to each brown circle.  Then, I put three plates in front of Ella (blue, green, red).  I gave her a spatula and laid each circle or pancake brown side up.  Then, Ella would flip the circle to reveal the new color.  After she saw which color it was, she'd scoop up the pancake and serve it up on the correct colored plate.  She loved this game.  She did need a little help since she isn't completely coordinated with flipping, but I encouraged her to use the spatula rather than her hands.  It was a quick, simple game to put together, but it provided a lot of entertainment over several sittings/days for Ella.

We also played The Story of Babaji game, which can be found here.  I think Arin enjoyed this game every bit as much as she loved the story.  She wanted to play it with everyone that came to our house!

Letter Bb Toddler Activities

Is it a B or a b?

During letter b week, Ella was introduced the upper and lowercase versions of the letter.  We also worked on color recognition of blue, brown and black.  I created a "B or b" birdhouse game for her.  We played it a few times with her matching the uppercase B birds to the uppercase B birdhouse and the lowercase b bird to the lowercase b birdhouse.  We also played a second version of the game where she matched the blue birds to the blue birdhouse and the brown birds to the brown birdhouse.

Blue, Black, or Brown?

I cut pictures out of a magazine of objects that were either blue, brown, or black (a black dog, brown bears, etc.).  Then, I had Ella match the color of the picture to a blank piece of paper of the same color.  Arin loved these categorizing games when she was little.  Ella also liked it, but because the pictures had other colors in them too, she was a bit confused at times and I had to show her which part of the picture to look at and match to the paper.

Matching Birds

Ella really liked this game.  Using Microsoft Word and Microsoft clip art, I created bird matching cards for her.

And even though it is not a "toddler game", we used these same cards for a memory game that I played with Arin.  She also liked these cards :)

Beading

I also introduced Ella to beading (using these beads) this week.  She really liked this activity and asked to do it several other times during the week.

Letter B Week

Bravo for the Brilliant Letter B!

We had a great second week of school.  We still have not added in all of our subjects, but we are increasing at a pace that seems right for Arin.  She is loving school.  She asks for school everyday, which is a great thing!  She loves our hands-on activities and she loves her book work with the exception of Explode the Code.  She does not care for this work too much.  We still do it, but on a slower pace than if she loved it. 

This week we worked on the letter Bb.  We chose birds as our main Bb subject.

I printed out an uppercase letter B for both girls.  You can find the worksheet here.  Then, the girls painted the B with white school glue and sprinkled birdseed on it. 

We read the following bird related books:

Crinkleroot’s 25 Birds Every Child Should Know by Jim Arnosky

Ben, Billy, and the Birdhouse by Cecilia Minden

What Do You Call a Group of Turkeys? by Emma Nathan

I Like Weird Animals: Weird Birds by Carmen Bredeson

Birds by Adele Richardson

Mouse & Mole: Fine Feathered Friends by Wong Herbert Yee

We learned some fun facts about birds:

- they are warm-blooded

- they are vertebrates

- they do not have teeth

- birds that fly have hollow bones, birds that do not fly have solid bones

- they lay eggs

- birds have more neck vertebrae than any other animal

- the hummingbird is the smallest bird and also the only one that can fly backwards, up, down, and even hover in mid-air and it lays two eggs at a time

- all birds have feathers and they are the only animal that does

We also watched a bird dvd several times during the week.  We watched Animal Life for Children: All About Birds.  My girls both loved this movie.  It is the second movie that we've watched in this series and they have both kept the girls attention.  I love enjoyable educational videos!

Arin completed a bird maze (help the flamingo to its food).  The maze can be found here.

I printed out a Bird Skeleton fact sheet from here.  I read the worksheet to Arin and we talked about the different bones and their names.

We also read a little about eggs from here.

Then, we worked on an egg experiment.  Arin filled one glass with water and a second glass with white vinegar.  Then she dropped one egg in each glass.  We kept an eye on each egg over the next 24 hours.  The egg that was dropped in the vinegar was covered with tiny bubbles and was floating, the other egg was sunk to the bottom of the glass.  After the 24 hours was up, we removed both eggs (not sure why I didn't take a side-by-side of the eggs).  There was no change in the water soaked egg, but the shell of the vinegar soaked shell was much different.  The egg felt rubbery, much like a water balloon.  We found this experiment in the book called 365 Simple Science Experiments. In the book, it said that if the egg was dropped in the sink, it would bounce.  We had six people here wanting to see the experiment, so Arin dropped the egg on the kitchen counter so everyone could see.  The egg did not bounce (perhaps we should have removed it from the vinegar sooner???).  It immediately went SPLAT!  It felt like a water balloon and it popped like a water balloon (and check out the shell once it was busted open).  If you do this experiment, I suggest dropping the eggs in the sink, so you don't have the mess on the counters.

We also printed some bird guides for the girls from here.

B is for Butterfly

Yesterday, Arin and her cousin did school together. Unfortunately, the first chance that we had to do school was very close to naptime, so school time did not go as smoothly as we had hoped.

What we read:

Butterfly Eggs

Goodnight Sweet Butterflies

Butterflies

Butterfly Count

The Butterfly Alphabet

Then, we did some butterfly crafts. We made a handprint butterfly - which really doesn't look that much like a butterfly. So we redid it today and it looked a little better.

Then, the girls put butterfly stickers on the letter B.

Our Homeschool Alphabet: B (part 2)

(continued from Our Homeschool Alphabet: B (part1))

B is for...

...beanbags


...beanbag block bowling. This is a new favorite game. We stacked her beading blocks and then she pushed a beanbag across the floor to the blocks. The bean bag would knock down the blocks, just like a bowling ball would knock down pins.


....balloon tricks. First, we gave Arin a balloon and a straight pin. We let her put the pin into the balloon. Pop! (check out her stunned look!). Then, we criss-crossed tape (in a 'x') and put the tape on the balloon. Then, Andy put the pin into the center of the balloon. It was able to go in without popping the ballon.

...balancing and

attempting to balance!

...bananas. They make great snacks and are fun to use as phones. They are also great for science/counting. Every banana has three equal sections.

...brown. Ella is wearing her new brown hat that I made for her with the help of my mother-in-law. Even I am homeschooled :)

...bandanas. They make great aprons, hats & blindfolds.

...bridges. Arin has an obsession for bridges. She always tells us when we are on one or on an overpass or she sees a bridge.