Little House in the Big Woods: Chapter 1 (part1)

This week, we started reading Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I had anticipated us reading one chapter per week and doing activities to go along with the story, but...this was a long chapter, full of a lot of information.  So, we will contiue this chapter's activities next week as well.
The story begins with Laura describing where she lives.  She describes her house, which is a log cabin.  We built a log cabin.  This actually was more difficult for Arin than expected, so it ended up being mom building a log cabin and that wasn't nearly as much fun as you might think.  We bought skills sticks (popsicles sticks made for building) and followed the directions included to make a barn, which we called a cabin :)

Laura described her house, the inside and outside.  Arin and Ella drew pictures of their house.   Then, Arin described her house to me, including details like house color, what the house is made out of, number of bedrooms, color of the walls, number of stories, etc.

Ella's drawing

 

Arin's drawing

We talked about different kinds of houses.  Laura lived in a log cabin, we live in a house, and we worked on an apartment themed map lesson in her Evan Moor Daily Geography book.

Laura described the place where she lived, nothing but woods and the wild animals that live there for as far as the eye can see.  Arin described where she lives...neighborhood, paved roads, near lots of other houses, close by family members, stores and restaurants, etc.  We also worked on a neighborhood worksheet in her geography book.

The story is set in the state of Wisconsin.  I purchased Road Trip USA from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  We started this curriculum by learning about Wisconsin.  I read facts to Arin about the state, she colored a worksheet (included in the curriculum), located the state on a map, and learned the name of the capital.

Little House in the Big Woods starts in the autumn, with Laura's family gathering food and preparing for the winter.  Arin worked on fall themed worksheets in her Evan Moor Daily Science book.

Laura mentions several different animals that have their homes near her home.  Arin's science workbook had a section on animals and where they live.  Love it when her workbook pages fit in with the books that we are working on.  Thanks Michelle for this idea :)

Laura mentions several different animals, both wild and domestic, that live near her.  If I remember correctly, she names about 15 different animals, including ones such as wolves, bears, horses, pigs, wild cats, otters, foxes, and a domestic cat and dog.  Arin started her animal journal this week, using these animals. This was by far the most time consuming portion of this unit study this week.  First, I downloaded (from freedigitalphotos.net) the different animals mentioned in the story (or at least the ones that I could find pictures of).  Next, I wrote a simple fact about each of the animals on an index card.  Arin used this for her copy work.

We also added artwork for each animal. Here are a few samples of the process, plus the finished journal pages.

Arin drew a wolf, using the instructions found here.

I gave the girls a lesson in symmetry and Arin attempted her first symmetrical drawing.



And some times it just made sense to add a coloring page of the animal as the artwork for that page of the journal.

Check back next week for more of our learning activities from the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods.

Sea World

Arin has been wanting to go to Sea World for the past year or so.  She was very excited to find out that her daddy's work picnic would be there this year.

The weather was awesome the day that we went, but there were a lot of people there.  We were able to see all the shows, but the lines were too long to ride anything, which disappointed the kids.  Other than not going on the rides, we had a great time looking at the animals, watching the shows and just being together.

Mud Crusade

On Sunday, Andrew and his oldest brother, Mike, ran at the Mud Crusade.  This is a 5k adventure run (it included about 18 obstacles and was run through the mud).  They had so much fun and are looking forward to running another one in the future.

Here's a picture of them before the race started.  Notice how they are nice and clean :)

Another of their brothers (Matt) was also there.  His wife was running that day too.

And here is a picture after the race.  Not so clean...

There were lots of areas for the spectators to stay during the race and take pictures and cheer on the racers.  I got exactly zero pictures of Andrew and Mike completing the course.  Why?  After Andy took off running, Matt and I found a spot along the sidelines...and only a couple minutes later, it started pouring down rain!  First, we hurried the kiddos and ourselves under a small tent that was set up.  The seven of us, plus two strollers just barely fit.  And that would have been fine, but of course, it was about that time that Kaelyn decided it was time to eat.  So we decided to make a mad dash up to the bathrooms.  Matt decided to take his kiddos to the bathroom as well so they would be out of the rain completely.  I am sure that we were quite the sight to see...two adults running, with two little kids running beside us and three little ones in two strollers.  Did you notice that I said "up" to the bathroom?  Yes, it was up a hill and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it.  I felt like we were the ones running the obstacle courses!

We stayed outside the bathrooms, under the overhang, while it rained.  In case you were wondering, it stopped raining just as Andrew and Mike were finishing their race.

And the kids were cold after getting rained on.  Luckily, my girls had started out with long-sleeved shirts and jackets, but they also had short-sleeved shirts too, so they shared their long-sleeves with the boys.  Isn't he so cute in pink? Haha!

Andrew and Mike ran the 9:30 wave and Jessica (Matt's wife) ran with our playgroup at the 10:00 wave.  We missed her take-off, but it quit raining soon after, so we were able to see them do a portion of the course.



While we were waiting for Jessica to finish, the kids were all having fun playing in the mud!

Playing with other kids from our playgroup

Matthew was so upset that it was time to stop playing in the mud.

Despite the rain, which honestly Andy said was better for running, it was a fun event and I hope to participate with him next year!

F is for Flower

We homeschool year round.  Arin has finished her kindergarten year and I have ordered her first grade materials, which she will be starting at the beginning of May.  When I ordered her books for next year, I also ordered a few things for Ella's preschool year.  Ella loves school and asks for it daily.  For this reason, we started her new materials this week, even though Arin is taking a short break.  Ella is loving all the one-on-one time and that all the school time is focused on her :)
She started her Get Ready for the Code primer A.

This book starts with the letter F.  We chose flowers as our theme this week.
Over a four day time period, Ella completed all of her "f" work in her workbook.  She would have loved to do it all in one day, but I have to pace her or she'd be done with the book in a week!

In addition to the above workbook, Ella did the following letter F and flower themed work.

Day One:
Ella worked on flower puzzles.  This is Arin's puzzle and it was Ella's first time using it.

She got frustrated that the pieces kept moving, so she asked to use her (much easier) flower puzzle.  This puzzle has grooves to keep the puzzle pieces in place and Ella liked that much better.

Day two:
Ella really loves worksheets, so we worked together on a few more of these.  She located all the Ff on the sheet and then wrote the letters.

She also matched upper and lower-case letters with this worksheet.

Together, we colored a color-by-shape flower themed worksheet.

I colored the picture on the left and Ella colored the picture on the right :)

Day three:
We took a field trip to our local, public gardens so that we could look at a variety of flowers.  We talked about the differences and similarities of the flowers, their colors, shapes, sizes and whether or not they were fragrant.

We also started the classic science experiment, showing how water moves through the flower's stem.  We did this by picking white flowers (we have gardenias growing in our yard) and putting them in water dyed with food coloring.  We left the flowers overnight, and by the next morning, they were no longer white.  Instead, we had a blue flower, a pink one, and a very pale purple flower.

Day four:
Ella worked on a sequencing activities, which also gave her cutting and gluing practice.

She worked on a few more flower themed worksheets.

And finally, we incorporated a little math into the mix.  I printed six flowers and wrote numbers 1-6 in the middle of them.  Then, I gave Ella plastic linking flowers and a dice.  She rolled the dice, counted the dots, linked together the correct number of flowers and placed the chain under the correctly numbered flower.  Later, Ella and Arin played this together, each with their own set of numbered flowers and linking flowers.  The first person to complete all six chains was the winner.