Archive | May 2018

Nursery Rhymes Uncovered and Continued

Just in time for us to restart this program. The kids are bugging me constantly to pull out the nursery rhyme book. We really enjoyed our look into history last year and with the twins one year older I am hoping their enthusiasm to find out the weird but true will help keep me on my toes!!!  

 

So, as I promised HERE… the further adventures (and really mostly resources) of our foray into Nursery Rhymes. I try to pick rhymes that I remember and that may be at least a fun challenge to learn for half of the kids. As I am sure those who are on my Facebook or Instagram have noticed, not all of our rhymes have gone over well with the minions.

Hush a Bye Baby/Rock a Bye Baby is another of those. While looking into cradleboards was fun and interesting and the multiple origin theories fun to explore some of the kids were put out by the “meanness” of the original rhyme. Echo espeically disliked the idea that ANY babies were harmed in the making of the story. After all for the rhyme to have been written she believed at least one baby had to fall. So of course we included the “not scary” version in our copy work. You can read about that version HERE. I didn’t make them memorize this vsersion as it is not common, but it was fun to read through the sweetened up version and wonder if it was necessary to do so.

We made sure to do some research about Cradleboards as soon as it was made clear that that is what the poem is referring to. And am I ever glad we did, they are BEAUTIFUL! And then, at the science museum, we found an actual example of one. You can read all about them HERE.

There is always Wiki for a brief write up HERE, try Song Facts for more information about various uses of this rhyme HERE, and Mom.me for a dark origin HERE.

MotherGoose.com has a cute colouring page HERE. We did a craft for this rhyme with Education.com called Baby Footprints. As you can see from the additional picture… we really didn’t stop there!IMG_20170809_133712_200

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3 Blind Mice was our next nursery rhyme. It was sadly much delayed with noise from siding construction. We could not get our video recorded and everyone was out of sorts so rather large amounts of work did NOT get done. BUT I do have links to share…

KidZone had an Itsy Bisty Book to share HERE. DLTK has a fun number sheet related to our rhyme HERE. A cute shaped colouring picture HERE was used by the kids. Check out Reading With Kids for another colouring page HERE

For research purposes check out rhymes.org.uk HERE or All Nursery Rhymes HERE. For a good joke page with animal related jokes, and most of the way down one specifically about the 3 blind mice head to THIS Activity Village link. Education.com has a list of brief information for various rhymes including this one HERE.

Hot Cross Buns came next with a lovely printable of pennies and buns that I printed in colour and laminated from Play at Home Teacher HERE. DLTK has a printable recipe HERE. Sadly we did not have time to bake buns but we saved the recipe for the holiday season to add to our cooking experience.

There is definitely religious significance to the rhyme in the subject matter, so if you are researching be aware. But the actual origins of the rhyme are as a selling tool. End of story. So not the most exciting. Though the kids loved singing it with the extended verse about having a daughter or son. You can read about it all on Powerfulwords.info HERE, Rhymes.org.uk HERE, Smithsonianmag.com HERE.

Kiddyhouse.com has both verses HERE.

Now as an additional bit of info Zander took some time and researched Mother Goose herself. Not an easy woman to pin down. But you can do your own reading with our resources. Bluebonkers.com HERE.

Back to the rhymes and Ring Around The Rosies (which does not have the origin story most people think it does). Echo really enjoyed learning the dance.

I will say straight off, I too thought it was about the plague. Wiki has a good run down HERE. Library of Congress has a helpful site HERE, Dictionary.com has information HERE. Dover Publications has a great colouring page with the lines of the rhyme in a traditional style HERE. And that is where we ended our series. Check back in the next months to see how we get on with our reboot!!

Zhejiangopterus

Yes, more dinosaurs… or rather not dinosaurs… enjoy my continuing deflation of any sort of pride in how caught up my blog is! But once it is… bam I will be on top of the world!!!

 

Now there is a mouthful! Pronounced ZHE-zhang-OP-ter-us (does that even really help much either?), this is not a dinosaur but a pterosaur found in the late Cretaceous period. Found in the coastal area of Asia (specifically China), this flying lizard subsisted mainly on a diet of fish. It was toothless and had an usually long head and neck without any sort of crest. Moderately large in stature it had extra long legs as well.

This flying reptile was impressive in size and number of unearthed portions as well as pretty much full skeletons. Quite the interesting character!

We have a few links of interest to share with this one:

  • Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
  • Prehistoric-Wildlife.com HERE
  • My Dino’s (title straight from site) HERE
  • Dino Dominion HERE
  • DinosaurFact.net HERE
  • Open Caching Beta HERE
  • Dinosaur Train Field Guide, just put the rather difficult to spell name into the search engine HERE
  • Dinosaur Train Wiki HERE
  • Wikipedia HERE
  • Our Google search for the images HERE
  • Our pictures is from deviantArt HERE thanks to Xezansaur called Zhejiangopterus Linhaiensis

Enantiornithine… Not a Dinosaur!

Back to rather old saved posts before I face the October resize. Enjoy this NOt dinosaur!

But a bird found during the age of dinosaurs. The enantiornithine died out at the end of the Cretaceous period but was common during the Mesozoic era. With feathers and teeth, this omnivore has been found as small as a sparrow and as big as a turkey. Toted as the possible origin of feathers and birds… this prehistoric bird has been a creature of interest for some time. They are thought to be found everywhere but Antarctica, virtually all over the Pangea.

We came across the enantiornithine on Dinosaur Train so of course we had to hunt more. This bird was a wonderful creature to restart our dinosaur odyssey. We had one good video that both Emanuel and Gavin enjoyed. PL3_Bird_Enantiornithine Birds by Walter Jahn.

Our second video was more a peek at a rendering on the Dinopedia for Walking With Dinosaurs. An image from their opening HERE. Of course this bird is also featured on Dinosaur Train. You can watch them on PBSkids.org. Or Netflix of course. We found our best images on Google WERE Dinosaur Train. I simply did a Google search for enantiornithine  or enantiornithine  dinosaur train and clicked images.

We had a few links. Some were too advanced for my current learners but I have included them here all the same out of interest sake.

  • Random Thoughts has a… random thought about our bird HERE.
  • Dinosaur Train’s Field Guide… click search and find our bird HERE.
  • Dinosaur Train Wikia HERE.
  • Answers in Genesis has an article HERE.
  • Phys.Org HERE.
  • Wiki article HERE.
  • A Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology HERE
  • Our colouring page came from deviantArt. We used it to trace out our dinosaur and paste it on a scene the boys drew… Thanks to Albertonykus HERE.