Tag Archive | Aliens

A Very Woolly Character

And now for something completely different… well sorta!

We have covered dinosaurs and reptiles that were NOT dinosaurs but this is our first mammal! With the fossils unearthed earlier this month I just could not resist teaching Emanuel (and in the end Zander as well) about the Woolly Mammoth! You can read all about the rather unusual find in France HERE with a video or a simply textual with the National Post HERE. Either way, a rather amazing find. The only dissapointment I found with the research on this creature is that the main focus of the videos was on a hoax of a debunked image of a so called living specimen (I do believe it turned out to be a bear with a fish or something) and another batch talked about ALIENS being the cause of their extinction… so we stuck with the I’m a Dinosaur video on youTube and the one about the French find.

As well as a rather good but short BBC Science one.

In addition I have a long list of links to share so I figure I should get right to that! Enjoy our information about our last Ice Age mammal! First off there are some AMAZING images of a frozen specimen found in Siberia back in 2009! You can find those HERE. There was actual fur, skin… all of that. What we found most interesting was the smaller ears and tail to keep warmth in and the more nimble trunk and long tusks to allow for food collection!

Discovery has another article on this amazing find but a young boy in Siberia HERE. Apparently this is not an unheard of occurrence, unlike the surprise in France. As the weather at the time of death for the Mammoth was ideal for freezing. National Geographic Kids has a nice printable card and article HERE (if we had colour toner I certainly would have, I plan to return to this site later and do so). eHow.com has a short blurb about the history of the Mammoth HERE.

A site called Interesting Facts has… well… interesting facts about the Woolly Mammoth HERE. Dinosaurs.about.com has their usual 10 questions HERE. Fossil Treasures of Florida has some information and what looks to be an example of fur HERE. AnimalsTime.com has a great article HERE. EnchantedLearning has an article about this late Mammoth HERE. Wiki has the usual article HERE. And you can find out print out that Emanuel coloured HERE

Such a cool character with his Woolly friend

 

A Very Thankful Beginning to the Week

November 5-6

We started talking about Thanksgiving and being thankful so here is today’s things we are thankful for:

Zander: having a mom and dad

Gavin: having friends

Emanuel: Jesus

Trinity: that we have lots of kids in our family

I am thankful that Trinity, with Ken’s help, wrote the word CAT!!

I was feeling poorly in the morning so I left Ken in charge with some worksheets and our usual morning things. The beginnings of Thanksgiving with Pilgrims to colour and wordsearches to do. All of which you can find in my Education.com collections HERE. And of course Activity Village HERE.

Trinity’s Pilgrim

Emanuel’s contributions

We got a decent start on our pen pal responses… With pictures to draw to go with each letter it is a bit of a production! We actually FINISHED our Halloween chapter story finally and the book joined the rest of our newly acquired Halloween decorations. Time to move onto those Thanksgiving ideas. So far there have been a few from people online. We just need to start assembling the necessary supplies.

The book

We had TWO sets of instructions from Art for Kids to work on! A turkey AND an alien!!! Zander created quite the picture using BOTH and Gavin decided he would send his turkey in his letter to Gammie. This site is a wonderful wealth of ideas! 

Gavin’s Gammie Turkey

Alien by Gavin

Zander’s picture… note the turkey in the middle of it!!!

Of course there was our dinosaur of the day which this time all 3 boys participated in. Again that post will follow later. The kids did another NetGalley book review for me… this time a wonderful upbeat book called Changing the World Before Bedtime. You can find our review HERE.

Tuesday’s Thankful Things!

Gavin: That I have toys

Emanuel: All the people in the world

Zander: For having Echo as a baby sister

Trinity: For my teddies

We actually had a few errands to run so less of a consistent school focus for the day. BUT we managed our usual basics AND since we are working towards Thanksgiving some more print outs. 

I had each of the twins work on writing their own sentences and illustrating them. I am planning on doing that once a week as right now they are rather dependent on me for creating full out sentences and such. Like with our pen pal letters (another kid down 2 to go). With it being a day that starts with T we had Minecraft time, that when you run errands first really does eat up your time.

I am enjoying asking the kids each day about something they are thankful for. I figured we will continue to do this right up until Thanksgiving. 

One of the many things *I* am thankful for! Echo’s continued health!

With errands came the missing colours of yarn (love coupons and teacher’s discount!)… I am working my way through Trinity’s present and figure I may have expanded my skill set enough to attempt a joint present for her and Echo.

My girlies

I have a dinosaur to blog about and another day to prep for, hopefully Wednesday will have more interesting things  to share! And hopefully, all Americans who CAN voted today! With an EDUCATED mind!

You spin me right round baby!!!