Day 37 / 101 - Legos

My children love Legos!  They have for years, because Legos remain the Best. Toy.  Ever.  And, for a variety of reasons, constructing with Legos still remain part of our school day.  There are countless educational benefits to Legos:

- Construction
- Design
- Manual Dexterity
- Creativity
- Lateral Thinking
- Problem Solving
- Spatial Reasoning
- Following Directions
- Development of Physics and Engineering Skills
- Visual Perception
- Cause and Effect
- And more!

Since today is Christmas day, it's only appropriate I post that my children, at the moment, are working on several different new sets totaling about 6500 pieces.  I'm hoping this keeps them busy for awhile.

Merry Christmas!

Day 36 / 101 - Rolo Turtles

I'm not sure how I came across the recipe for these (probably pinterest), but I'm so glad I discovered it.  It was a super easy way for the kids and I to spend a little time in the kitchen today!

Day 35 / 101 - Detective Senses

This morning our basic anatomy lessons had us reviewing our five main senses.  I made up this quick game, and my children donned their detective hats, while searching for items in our home.  They were to find three items that they could perceive with all five senses, three items using four of their senses, and finally completing the chart with items that utilized two or three senses.   It was a quick game to create and a fun way for them to review.

Day 34 / 101 - My Body

Throughout the fall, we've been studying some basic anatomy for our science curriculum.  We've been learning about different systems of the body (respiratory, circulatory, digestive, etc.), and completing some related science experiments and projects.  One resource I enjoyed was My Body by Patricia Carratello.

This book was designed to provide information about the human body.  Parts of the body are explained and illustrated.  Over the course of 6 weeks, we studied the various organs and other body parts along with their functions.  At the end of the 6 weeks, we assembled our own 'life-size bodies', using the illustrations from the book that we colored ourselves.  Unfortunately, the photo above doesn't do justice, because every organ or part is pasted and/or attached in layers, so that you are able to see the other organs underneath.  For instance, the top part of the face can be lowered in order to see the brain, and the liver can be rotated in order to see the right kidney, the stomach, the gall bladder and the pancreas.

Day 33 / 101 - Cleveland Police Museum

Before this week, I was unaware that Cleveland even had a police museum.  On Wednesday, we visited the museum with my son's boy scout troop.  We loved it!  This law enforcement museum is free and open to the public year round and definitely worth the visit.

One highlight from our recent tour included a history of Cleveland's organized crime.  There was a replica of the car door bomb that killed legendary mob boss Danny Greene in 1977. Naturally, there was an Eliot Ness collection, and pictured above is his 1920 Smith and Wesson.  Ness arrived in Cleveland in 1935, and at that time Cleveland was regarded as the most dangerous city in the country.

My children's two favorite exhibits were the jail cell that they could lock each other in (of course!) and the display of confiscated weapons, including a fully functional home-made shotgun constructed from galvanized pipe and pipe fitting!

Day 32 / 101 - Gingerbread Houses

Always a holiday favorite.

Day 31 / 101 - The Nutcracker

Over the weekend my daughter was fortunate enough to star in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of Nutcracker, which performed five shows at Cleveland's PlayhouseSquare.  Early in November she auditioned for a mouse role, and luckily enough, made the cut.  The past five weeks have been full of rehearsals, and more rehearsals, and even more rehearsals.  Once again, I felt so fortunate to be a homeschooler, because we were able to fit these into our school day with very little stress added to our family. Her cast performed in three of the five shows with the dance company.  She loved every minute of it. 

Because we have been immersed in a Nutcracker world, I took the opportunity to add in some Nutcracker themed learning activities.  Here are a few:
- We researched Peter Tchaikovsky.
- We researched the Ural Mountains (in Russia) where Tchaikovsky was born.
- We listened to and studied the music.  I'm impressed how well we know the score after five weeks.
- We studied where the nutcracker wooden dolls came from and how they got their name.
- We added in Nutcracker based assignments for all our Language Arts work (i.e. list 25 adjectives that describe the mice, the orchestra, etc.)
- We read countless Nutcracker books in order to really familiarize ourselves with the story line.

My daughter did an excellent job performing, but my post wouldn't be complete if I didn't praise my son.  He has very graciously allowed his sister to have the spotlight and all of the attention for the past several weeks.  And, I didn't hear a single complaint as he sat through the 2 hour ballet more than once!

Day 30 / 101 - Saint Nicholas Day

Yesterday was Saint Nicholas Day, so we added a few St. Nick activities to our regular routine.  We began our morning by reading the story of this historic saint and reminding ourselves that it is far better to give gifts than receive gifts.  Then, using the story, we identified the parts of speech in one paragraph, and my son and I diagrammed a few sentences from the text.  Our math consisted of 'money' activities since the most famous story of Saint Nicholas is one where he gives gold to a family in need.  We located his country of Myra (modern-day Turkey) on the globe, and did a little research on it.  We illustrated pictures of Saint Nicholas.  And of course, as the picture shows, we had to attempt to bake an authentic European spice cookie. 

Day 29 / 101 - We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

On Sunday we made a trip to the Cleveland Zoo.  We've always enjoyed zoo trips, and we've had memberships to our local zoos most every year since we've had children.  Apart from the Day-Out-Field-Trip experience, and getting to observe all the animals, there are so many learning activities that can be incorporated from a zoo trip.  Here's a few that I like to use regularly.

Creative Writing - Start a paper with, "If I had this animal as a pet, what would I need...?", or "If I was a zoo keeper, how would I start my day....?"

Math - There are always simple math problems to be completed throughout the zoo.  For instance, if you see that an certain animal weighs in at 600 pounds, and your child weighs 60 pounds, ask how many 60 pound children it would take to equal one 600 pound animal.  Same with height.  Or, amount of food the animal likes to eat.  Or, how much an average baby weighs, etc.
Try to count how many spots and stripes you see throughout the zoo.  Or estimate with word problems.  An average tiger has x amount of stripes.  There are 4 tigers in this exhibit.  How many stripes are there?
Make charts and graph the different kinds of animals you see:  Reptiles, Amphibians, Insects, Mammals, Birds, Fish, etc.

Geography - Take a blank map and indicate the different countries/continents animals come from. 

Research - Before going to the zoo, find and take note of different habitats: Deserts, Jungles, Rain Forests, Swamps, etc.  Upon arriving at the zoo, see if the exhibits are similar to your research.  Take note of the animals that live there.

Scavenger Hunts - I found a great one posted on our zoo's website.  I'm sure there are others out there.

Day 28 / 101 - The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist

On Wednesday, the kids and I toured The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist with my son's Boy Scout troop.  This historic cathedral was built in 1848 and sits in the middle of downtown Cleveland.  It is the 'Mother Church' for over 800,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Cleveland.

The cathedral is absolutely beautiful and uniquely different.  The photo above (which I admit isn't a great one) displays a painted mural of scenes from the book of Revelation, one of John's most famous books in the Bible.  It was also interesting to hear the history of the cathedral as to why and where it was built.  It gave us more insight on the history of the city of Cleveland.  I think when you try to remove faith from history (any faith) you lose a significant portion of history, since most decisions throughout history have been made on the basis of faith.  What we learned about Cleveland this week, we would not have discovered in a text book.  Yet another reason why I love homeschooling.

The cathedral is also full of relics, including a complete skeleton of St. Christine, which was brought over from Italy in the 1920's.  The 1700-year-old skeleton seemed to be the highlight for the majority of the boys on the tour!

Day 27 / 101 - Parts of Speech Bingo

My children have known for a while that there are eight parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, prepositions, adjectives).  And, they've even learned what each part of speech does (a noun names a person, place, thing, activity, or idea).  Realistically, the next step is to be able to identify the different parts of speech in written work.

Earlier this week, I made up simple Parts of Speech Bingo cards.  I placed the cards in page protectors.  Since there are only eight parts of speech, each part was on a card about three times.  My original plan was just to have a bunch of note cards with different words on them, and as I drew a word out of a bag, my children would write that word on the correct part of speech on their Bingo card.  I planned to get tricky and use words like that because that could be an adjective or a pronoun or yesterday could be a noun or an adverb.  Then my children would need to get strategic on how they used the words on their Bingo cards in order to find all the parts of speech.

However, as we were playing, I quickly realized that my children needed a little more context for the words, so I grabbed the closest book.  We began reading sentences from the book and identifying the parts of speech, from the sentences, on the Bingo card.  Also, we began adding parts of speech to different sentences, or making up our own.  For instance -- Sierra ate her bone.  Then we'd add an adverb.  Sierra quickly ate her bone.  Then we'd add a preposition.  Sierra quickly ate her bone outside.  Then we'd add an adjective.  Sierra quickly ate her white bone outside.  Then we'd add an interjection.  Look!  Sierra quickly ate her white bone outside.  As more parts of speech were added and identified, more words were written on the Bingo card.

It was a simple way to gain a better understanding of the parts of speech.  Plus, my children really enjoyed it.  I think we'll be adding the game into our curriculum several times a week.  Daily, I plan on having my children individually pick a few sentences from a book they're reading and identifying the parts of speech with the Bingo cards.  We'll continue the drill until we master the concept.

By the way....Sierra is our dog.  :)