Blog Posts

Sea Creatures-Fish Ornament

10/23/2016

Who doesn't love a good CRAFT!? We try to add a variety of different lessons and crafts into our science curriculum. As we moved closer to Christmas time, we found a few fun ideas for sea creature ornaments on the internet. We took a few of the ideas we found and came up with this version.

Since I kept forgetting to take pics throughout the process, I will have to walk you through it.

Here are the supplies we had on hand:

Clear Plastic Fill-able Ornaments
Plastic Sea Animal Figures
String of any kind for hanging
Blue tinted Glue (or glitter glue to add sparkle)
Yellow or any color Sand
Thin thread (for handing sea creature)
Scotch tape
Green Sharpie
Paint brush
Scissors

First thing we did was tie the sea creatures on thread long enough that we could trim the string after we were all finished up.
The kids took green sharpies to color green sea grass on the outside of the ornaments for extra affect.
We painted the inside of the ornament (you can take the ornaments apart to do this easily) with the blue glitter glue.
We were able to sprinkle some colored sand on parts of the inside bottoms of each ornament to represent the ocean floor.
Then we place the thread between the 2 open sides of the ornament (this took 2 people; one to hold both sides of the ornament and one to hold the thread in the spot where you want your sea creature to hand inside the ornament.)
Once the 2 ornament sides are snapped into place, we placed clear scotch tape over the seams to just give it an extra seal.
Last step is to put pretty string in the hole at the top of the ornament so you can hang it from your tree! (Or on your kitchen cupboard knob where mine is currently hanging, ha)

After we finished our ornament, we had a nice relaxing movie time with this DVD!
Ocean Adventures, Volume 1

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

0 Comments

Beautiful Pearls

3/14/2016

0 Comments

Wow! I've been busy! I haven't posted much in a while but it has been a good busy! My girls are beautiful...I love them with all my heart! I love that they have other girls they are good friends with, that they can play and pray with and can be "girly" with.

They attend an all-girl, monthly bible study where they get to dress up, sing, have a lesson, craft and eat. They enjoy this time with the other girls and they feel beautiful and have such fun!

So a friend and I came up with an idea to host an "expo" event for a whole day. This was for moms (or grandmothers) and daughters to come and go to various booths, eat fun foods, enjoy tea, music, and make crafts! Each mom who signed up was to host a table where the girls could go and make something. Each mom also brought a snack as well for our food table.

Here was our initial flyer we posted and advertised with. It was super fun to plan!

The first few steps were to do the following:

Lots and Lots of prayer
Pick a date & time
Find a location
Decide on Age and theme for the day
Decide on cost & RSVP date

After this was finalized we needed to:

Make a list of possible Chinese Auction items
Keep track of moms/booth themes/foods coming in
Make a list of supplies needed

So what I'm saying, we had to organize, plan, organize some more and plan again...but it all came together beautifully!

We set this event up for the girls to just have fun in a Christ-centered environment, and just be "GIRLS". We planned for an amazing mom to come and speak with the girls, we lined up a local violinist to play for them during lunch and an area Christian Ballet Studio even asked to come dance for the girls. It was FABULOUS!

We had many, many stations. 12 in all! We designed the day around a "tea party" theme for fun decorations and even had a great Chinese Auction table filled with goodies from area businesses and donations from friends.

We named our day after the Beautiful Pearls we have as daughters! Our Beautiful Pearls Expo!

Here is a sample schedule from our day!

Here were the list of stations the moms chose for their tables. I think they are all so creative and the girls loved them all so much:

Perler Bead Crosses
Sculpey Clay pens
Headband top hats
Nail Design
Cookie Decorating
Scripture Bookmarks
Pearl Bracelets
Tissue Paper Flower Corsage
Planting Flower Bulbs
Hair Styling
Hair Bow making
Make a Picture Frame

and we even had a Photo Booth (I had my 4x6 photo printer to print them out right there for the girls)

Above shows our drink table (we had hot water and tea, lemon infused water, and punch),
our delicious array of foods, and our Chinese Auction Table.

Above are some of the tables hosted by a few of the moms. They all did an incredible job with their table ideas...the girls enjoyed them all so very much!

The photo booth was great too!
I used my Canon portable 4x6 Photo printer to print out the pictures for the girls right there.

Each girls took home apaper tea cup favor I found how to make on another website. We ordered some pearls from Amazon to place in each tea cup for the girls to wear home.

We were super thankful for the fun day and great turnout but most importantly is that our girls heard how special, precious and amazing they are. That Jesus made them beautiful even before He gave them to us moms, and that He has a plan for each and every one of them. He made them Beautiful and created in His image. We love our daughters with all our hearts, but God loves them even more.

It was an amazing day celebrating the "Beautiful Pearls" that God gave to us!

We look forward to planning another expo next year!

0 Comments

Sea Creatures-Fish

2/19/2016

1 Comment

This was a FUN chapter! There are so many fish in creation that we can't possibly study even a fraction of them all! Apologia covers them well by breaking down different fish by the most common characteristics.

The first week we really broke the notes down by talking about the 3 main kinds of fish.

Bony Fishes
Cartilaginous Fishes
Jawless Fishes

This helped the kids categorize some of the fish they have already learned. We also ended by briefly talking about buoyancy and the amazing swim bladder that God has placed in most fishes! So incredible!

We did the week 10 note page and then the kids completed their folder activity. They cut out the labels and glued them onto the fish diagram.

The last thing we did was complete the Ectothermic fish experiment. I was a super focused teacher and totally forgot to take pictures of this! It was pretty neat though. Here is what we did:

We purchased 2 goldfish (we bought our at the local fish store for .25 cents per fish
We collected 2 small fish bowls
A desk lamp
A large bowl filled with ice

Place one of the fish bowls into the large bowl of ice and then place the other one directly under the desk lamp. We discussed how fish are ectothermic meaning that the body temperature of a fish changes with the changing temperature of the water.

This temperature change does have some effects on the fish and how it behaved or moved in the water based on if the temperature was warm vs. cold.

(you can find this experiment in the Apologia textbook on page 101-102).

We used the following printout to help kids write down there original hypothesis and results throughout the experiment. The kids placed this into their "Fish" Tab in their research notebooks.

The 2nd week we completed our notebooking page and then moved on to our folder activity. We really focused on the fishes defense mechanisms and shapes. The kids were able to construct a wheel for their folder activity on the most common fish shapes and then we moved to our experiment.

We ended our chapter on Fish by doing a Buoyancy Experiment.

Here are the items we collected:

Rock
Domino
Grape
Apple
Potato
Paper clip
Eraser
Spoon
Fork

After the kids filled out their hypothesis about each item on their paper, they each took a turn testing out their guess to see if the item sank or if it would float.

The idea of buoyancy can be confusing so before doing this experiment, we talked about how God designed Fishes to be denser than water. Density tells us how tightly packed the matter in an object is. So if it is very dense, it has a lot packed tightly into it so it would be "heavier" than an object with less matter packed into it.

If the item is denser than water, it would sink.

The kids realized after hearing this that if fishes are denser than water, they would sink! God gave the fishes a specially designed "Swim Bladder" to help them with this. AMAZING!

This chapter came to an end right before our Christmas Break. The following week's class was a fun ending to the semester. The kids made a super cool fish ornament and then we watch an amazing video of sea creatures.

Stay tuned to see the post on how to make this ornament and also to check out the video we used in our class.

I'll end by sharing the last page we used. The kids who finished up early were given a chance to "design their own fish" and then share it with the class. There are SO many different fish and I can only imagine how amazing and fun it was for God to design and create all the fish in the ocean...even the ones we have never seen or have yet to be discovered!

Enjoy your study of God's Amazing Fish!

1 Comment

APPLE SUNCATCHER CRAFT

11/30/2015

0 Comments

My kiddos LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Crafts...most kids do, right?! My 3rd grade daughter really missed her Reading Enrichment class my good friend taught last year, so she sent home this craft they did in class today. So sweet! This is a great fall craft or one you can do along with an "apple" study or when reading about Johnny Appleseed.

First you need one sheet of red construction paper...trace the apple outline. The larger outline and then a smaller one on the inside.

You will also need a small piece of green and black construction paper for a leaf and a stem!

Cut out a variety of tissue paper in assorted colors.
We used Dark Green, Light Green, Red and White but you can choose which you would like to use!

You'll also need to have clear laminating sheets to make this. You will need 2 of equal size that is larger than your apple cut-out pattern. We used the "Duck" brank but you could use any brand...I included a link to the kind we used.

Once you have all your supplies ready, it is time to have fun and create your project!

Here is my daughter putting hers together!

First cut out the outside line of the apple (keeping the paper folded. Then cut out the inside line. Once finished, open up your full apple cut-out!

Second, it is time to place your apple cut out pattern onto one of the laminate sheets carefully. Then start adding tissue paper. Fill it up!

Once all the tissue paper is in place, carefully place the second sheet of your laminating paper on top of the apple pattern (sticky side down so it attaches to the sticky side up on the bottom).

Once the laminated sheets are in place and smoothed out, start cutting around the outside of the apple leaving a small edge of your laminating sheet around the apple.

Finished product! So fun!

Looks GREAT in my kitchen window!

I hope you enjoyed this craft idea!

Have a happy fall and yummy apple harvest!

0 Comments

God LOVES us and gives us good surprises!

11/29/2015

0 Comments

It was the month to learn about Abraham for our church's preschool class in November!

Here are the topics we learned for all 4 weeks:

1. God kept Abram safe on his journey.
2. Abram shared with Lot and God blessed him.
3. God made a promise to Abraham & changed his name.
4. God kept His promise and blessed Abraham and Sarah with a GREAT surprise!

WEEK 1 was when Abram built an altar to Thank God on his journal to the new land. Since it is November, I put up a large tree on our classroom wall and the kids attached leaves with things they were thankful for written on each leaf!

WEEK 2 was when Lot and Abram had to split up since their shepherds were fighting. Well, I showed ya how we made our sheep for that lesson. Check them out HERE!

WEEK 3 We talked about God's promise to Abram...then God changed his name to Abraham (which means "Father of Many"). The kids made STARS and we also placed STARS on the wall with each kid's name and names of others they LOVE. This helped show the kids how many people we all know in our own lives...there are A LOT of people in the world!

More than we can count, just like the STARS!

WEEK 4 was our final week! God loves us and gives us good surprises! He kept HIS promise and blessed Abraham and Sarah with a baby boy!

The kids made tents out of paper showing Abraham and Sarah holding their surprise baby when you open the flaps!

This was the take home page from the curriculum our church uses, which is "Group Publishing, Inc."

Here is my daughter's tent she made in class.

We also counted out how old Abraham was when he had his first baby...100 years old!

We used kidney beans...after doing this, I knew that I couldn't just put them away! haha...they were able to play with them for a bit before moving on to our next fun activity!

The kids finished by making play doh creations of all they had learned over the 4 weeks of class!

Here is the recipe we used.

We LOVE this homemade play doh recipe! It is super easy and can be made in under
5 minutes...super simple!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and craft!

God has so many great promises to show us through HIS WORD!

0 Comments

Sea Creatures-Aquatic Herps

11/28/2015

3 Comments

There was so much information to cover for chapter 4 in only 2 weeks but we got as much in as we could!
Week one we covered a lot of the basic information from the differences between reptiles and amphibians down to the life cycles of amphibians...we saved sea turtles for week 2.

The Folder Activity we did was on the Life Cycle of Frogs. The kids had their pictures and descriptions cut out when they received them and they were suppose to glue them in the correct order onto their folder page in their research binders.

You can find this print out below by clicking on the picture!

We wrapped up week one by observing our tadpoles that we purchased at our local fish store in town. The store owner wasn't certain which type we received but I'm guessing bullfrogs because almost a month has gone by and they still look like tadpoles!!! haha...well, they'll be fun to watch even if it does take a year or two!

We purchase tadpole food and the kids are having fun seeing them week after week!

Week 2 was all about SEA TURTLES! They are just sooo incredibly fascinating! We watched a few YouTube Videos and then completed our research journal page. Then the kids worked on our folder activity on "Sea Turtles of the World" wheel.

We discussed the 7 main Sea Turtles:

Green Sea Turtle
Leatherback Sea Turtle
Loggerhead Sea Turtle
Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Kemps Ridley Sea Turtle
Olive Ridley Sea Turtle
Flatback Sea Turtle

We finished off Aquatic Herps by making our own Sea Turtles! You can find this printable HERE. I printed out the Sea Turtle parts on GREEN PAPER and the kids stapled them onto their paper plate after designing the turtle they liked best!

For the kids who finished early, they could color their "Eight Turtle of the Sea" Coloring Page!

I hope you enjoyed our study of AQUATIC HERPS! Here is a pic showing our co-op classroom wall...sorry our bottom ocean zone fell off! haha!
We added our Sea Turtles to our Ocean Zones! Hoping to have our wall filled up by the end of our
Sea Creatures Study!

Happy Homeschooling!

3 Comments

Science-Sea Creatures: Whales

11/27/2015

Whales, Whales, Whales! We could spend WEEKS on whales! They are just so interesting, smart, perfectly created! The kids REALLY enjoyed them.

We did do a super fun blubber experiment...we got the idea from www.briebrieblooms.com and modified how we made the blubber bag a tad. The kids were super thrilled and amazed when they learned how warm their hands were in the ice water with the blubber packet.

Our first folder activity was on toothed and baleen whales. The kids used packing tape and straw to make baleen for their folders and glued on pre-cut shapes of teeth to represent the whale's teeth. We did this on week 1 along with the journal page and blubber experiment.

The kids also used whale pictures below to guess which whales were baleen and which ones were toothed.

Here are the Whale Folders for our class!

Over 2 weeks, we covered the Journal pages on whales and also completed our baleen and toothed whale "folder activity" page. See below (sorry I am missing the baleen....we used packing tape and straw to show a visual of our baleen works).

We finished up week 2 by going outside to measure how big whales were. We had a HUGE 100 ft. tape measure and each kiddos had a 10 ft. piece of string.

The Awesome teachers we are would stretch out our tape measure to show various average whale lengths and then the kids had to team up to match with their strings to get those same lengths. So if we measured an orca that averaged 30 feet, then 3 kids would have to match up their 10 ft. strings. Here are some of the whales we measured out:

Narwal 15 feet
Beluga 15 feet
Orca 30 feet
Gray Whale 50 feet
Humpback Whale 50 feet
Sperm Whale 60 feet
Blue Whale 100 feet

This was so fun to see how BIG some of the whales in our Seas actually grow to be! WOW...our GOD is so BIG to create such magnificent creatures as the whale! After this activity, the kids put their strings in baggies that we stapled into their folder page for whales (see pic of the folder page below).

They also got to put in a big whale sticker to go along with it (see the sticker link below...we love these stickers).

Here the kids are all stretched out with their strings across the church parking lot!

Below is a pic of the string stapled into the folders with a description of the various
whale lengths we measured outside!

These are incredible real life looking stickers...the kids LOVE picking them out and there were
enough whales for each kiddo to place
one on their folder page!

I hope you enjoyed this week on Whales! What an amazing animal God created!

Check out the other lessons on Sea Creatures to learn more!

Honest Abe

11/24/2015

During our Civil War Study in our homeschool co-op, we had a few extra weeks to study some additional topics. We chose to do 2 weeks studying Abraham Lincoln. I saw this idea on-line to make a life-sized Abe Lincoln so the kids can see how tall he really was! He was a tall man!!! He was 6' 4" tall, withOUT his hat.

So I drew up this Lincoln to hang in our hallway at our co-op as a visual for the kids. Here is a pic of it on my living room floor (don't mind the big black piece of fuzz, haha or my daughter's cute Arial p.j.s & mismatched socks).

We read a bunch of stories on Abe Lincoln in the class but this one, "Abe Lincoln's Hat" was our favorite one! The kids learned one of Abraham's favorite things to use his hat for was for storing letters, so they made their own hats!

Here is the book we read...I had a copy of my own but I'm sure the local library would also have a copy of this.

I don't have a pattern for these crafty Lincolns since I just happened to whip them up real quick with a few modifications after seeing various pics similar to this one on-line.

They are super easy to make though. Here is what you'll need:

2 pieces of black paper per kiddo
1/2 piece of cream colored construction paper (for face)
tape, scissors and glue
crayons
Abe Lincoln's Hat writing handout

It was fun to read what each student would put in their "Lincoln" hat if they had one...I had answers from food to pets to football cards!

It was fun having the kids read their answers to the class!

We finished up our Abe unit by watching this animated DVD. We enjoyed all of the fun facts about this great American President that served during a crucial time in our nation's history.

Here is my daughter's Abe Lincoln! She wrote she would keep a family picture in her hat!

Hope you enjoyed this! Stay tuned for more information on our Civil War Study...we used the History Pocket Curriculum! This is one of our FAVORITE ways to study History!!!

Hamburger Paragraph!

11/24/2015

1 Comment

The various components of writing a paragraph can be confusing for kids. This neat concept of "building a hamburger" with your writing can be super helpful. A friend of mine gave this to me to share with all my online friends! You can also check out the Reading Rockets website for some more information that is helpful too!

The Top Bun: This is your topic sentence. The topic sentence is usually the first sentence in a paragraph. It also summarizes the main idea of a paragraph.

The Filling (we have lettuce, tomato, cheese and the burger but you can add more if you'd like): These are the supporting sentences & body of your paragraph. They discuss the idea & topic sentence using examples and important information.

The Bottom Bun: The conclusion is "summing" up all you have learned about the topic you stated in the topic sentence (top bun). It is not simply re-writing the sentence but really stating it in a way to show all you've learned about the topic in a clear and simple summarizing sentence.

We were writing a paragraph about the importance of Thanksgiving. We read some books and watched some neat videos on YouTube about the history of the Pilgrims and their brave journey to the New World.

My daughter then started filling out the Hamburger Worksheet. Tomorrow we'll put it all on notebook paper for our handwriting class. She enjoyed coloring the hamburger parts too!

1 Comment

Apologia Science-Primeval Reptiles

11/24/2015

0 Comments

We completed our Chapter 5 Research Journal page in class.

We spent one week on Primeval Reptiles and had so much fun! It was very interesting to learn about the discoveries of these great creatures God created long ago and that we are unable to see with our own eyes today. This is where science comes in...even though we don't know much about them, we can make educated "guesses" on what we think they may have looked like based on evidence found from their fossils! Fascinating!

We learn much from the Bible on these as well! The Leviathan, for instance, is mentioned in the Old Testament a few times so we also read up on that. God's Word is filled with so much science! (check out Job 41 & Psalm 104) The GREAT DELUGE was a big part of our lesson to explain why these reptile's fossils have been found in weird locations like the desert and on top of mountains. Apologia does an incredible job explaining this for the kids to understand and they were filled with complete enthusiasm on this topic.

Here is our "match up" game...mine is the answer key so this one is not cut up but this is what the kids would look like if they matched them properly.

We talked about the 4 main "saurs":
Nothosaurs-"spurious lizard"

Means "Spurious Lizard"
Long neck & tail with 4 webbed feet
They can walk on land and swim
Eggs hatch on land (like a turtle)
The Lariosaurus is one type-these were thought to be around 2 ft. long.
They can range in size from 2 ft up to 20 ft.

Plesiosaurs

Long necks and turtle shaped body with no shell
Probably ovovivaparous
They had 4 flippers and up to 24 different bones in each finger!
The Elasmosaurus and Pliosaurs were a type of Plesiosaur.

Mosasaurs

These resemble sea snakes: tiny flippers and paddle shaped tails
They can range from 10 ft. up to 50 ft. long
Swallow prey whole (unhinged jaw)

Ichthyosaurs

Means "Fish Lizard"
Looks like a large fish but with a lizard skeleton
Shonisaurs were a type of Ichthyosaur

We ended our lesson by talking about what "articulated" means and how sediment can help preserve some fossils! The students each took a ball of Crayola Air Dry Clay and also one of the small sea creatures. We found that the lobster, sea horse, crab and the swordfish made AWESOME imprints. We also used plastic dinosaurs to make footprints and seashells for our fossils. We let them dry for the week and then attached these wooden tag keychains to each one (don't forget to make holes in the clay BEFORE it air dries though).

To finish them off, we printed these clear labels for each keychain!
The kids LOVE these and they were fun to make.

Here are some of the products we used for this project! We already had the plastic sea creatures from back when we made the ocean zone bottles! Click here to go to the Ocean Zone Bottle Youtube video!