Tag Archive | BBC

Geocaching is Infiltrating Our Lives!

I swear I intend to catch up but we really followed through on our pledge to make every day count in May as much as possible. Living in the moment and finding the amazing in every second!!!

May 12-17

We are very blessed with our main penpal… Gammie has become instrumental in our writing and letter practice. We get more letters some months than we can almost keep up with but every one is answered! This newest installment came not only with letters but with a rainy day (and we have had a few) fun craft using pom poms.101_7444

101_7445She has added a new incentive for our school work… sending the girls their own work pages to mail back to her. Echo calls it doing her mail and I am happy to say she was VERY interested in doing it. We actually budgeted in curriculum overview books for the kids this month which includes one for her that she will start later in June or July.

101_7446There was also a new card game … whack a mole in card form?? The kids LOVED it!

101_7447Geocaching is going to be life changing for this family! Now even and every day trip to the store could be expanded to include a treasure hunt as well! We quickly are doing up all the local (walking distance) ones.101_7448

101_7450And on these outings we are finding more and more examples of winter being truly done and gone. After such a horrible winter each and every little indication is so AMAZING!!101_7451

Tuesday Trinity was teaching Echo how to concentrate on her pages…101_7453

101_7454Zander finished ANOTHER journal. Each book has higher expectations of the writer. This newest book means he has to have a title for every entry, the date and around 7 sentences! Anything to get the creative writing juices flowing! Well done Zander!

101_7455Another chapter of Treasure Island later…101_7456

And later in the day we made another trek out into the parks of Minnesota to find more Geocaching locations. This time we took Echo and while she and Mommy did not venture into the wooded area we did enjoy our walk. And met a nice puppy.

101_7459101_7460101_7461Wednesday was full of paper work.101_7464

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Osprey

Osprey

With the boys in the pool in the evening. I am not sure when we will sign them up for the next series of sessions but man are they improving. We honestly  cannot afford the large number of sports a lot of kids are in right now but what we do do seems to be so appreciated lately that I feel like as long as we keep taking advantage of what we can afford and maybe create our own opportunities we will do just fine!101_7468

101_7471101_7478On Thursday we were indoors and watching BBC nature shows. The kids made a lovely poster after.

101_7479The boys assembled some amazing Texas mini lapbooks. The links to these will be in my Texas Resource entry at the end of May.101_7480

More Wild Kratts…

Roadrunner

Roadrunner

And reading…101_7482

And a Dirty Jobs about mosquitoes (I had to share Gavin’s picture… that is one HAPPY insect).101_7483

Emanuel learned about South Africa as well.101_7484

On Friday since everyone BUT the kids and I were out and about I snuck out with Ken and brought them home CHOCOLATE DONUTS! Yup we miss our Tim Hortons!!!101_7485

And I mean we REALLY love the geocaching. I would totally suggest it to any family (or person for that matter) that wants something to do that is really on your own terms. We have downloaded an app for our smart phone but you can get a GPS unit (we want one one day). We have been picking an area that has multiple caches to find and do our best to get them all. We have our own special bag of things we need (that is still evolving and I will share the total list in the future I promise) and try to keep the kids as involved as possible.101_7488

101_7490Nature was out full force as well. Amazingly enough all this was close to Sam’s (ok so we combined a  good trip Geocaching with shopping…). A Saturday well done.101_7495

101_7496101_7497Spring has sprung full force here… and this is our best year yet for taking advantage of it!101_7492

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Lions, Our Resource Entry!

Zander’s animal choice was LIONS! So of course we had to find all that we could about where they live, what they do and how they survive. I hope these are helpful!

BOOKS:

  • Magic Tree House #11: Lions at Lunchtime HERE
  • Lions by Tammy Gagne HERE
  • I am a Lion by Karen Durrie. This AV2 book has a website you can visit for supplementary activities and some print outs. HERE
  • Mouse & Lion by Rand Burkert and Nancy Ekholm Burket HERE
  • Welcome to Kenya by Patrick Ryan HERE
  • Tanzania by Patricia J. Murphy HERE
  • (We also made use of various magazines… National Geographic, National Geographic Kids, Ranger Rick… all thanks to Nana and Gammie!)

TV:

  • National Geographic’s Big Cat Odyssey
  • Wild Kratts Bad Hair Day (Season 2)
  • Lion King

WORKSHEETS:

  • Daniel in the Lion’s Den with Bible Story Printables HERE and game HERE
  • DLTK’s lion printables including a story HERE
  • Colouring page with PreschoolMom.com HERE
  • Letter L printable with Activity Village HERE
  • Grassland Food Web printable (no activity) with Exploring Nature Educational Resource HERE
  • EnchantedLearning printable HERE
  • First Palette animal printables HERE
  • Lion King official printables HERE with Family Go
  • Africa Resources with Homeschool Creations HERE
  • Africa Theme unit with edhelper.com HERE

LAPBOOKS:

  • HS Highlights Lions lapbook for purchase HERE

CRAFTS:

  • We watched the Lion King in the end and of course had to do some of the official crafty stuff found HERE on DisneyFamily.com

KENYA:

  • We had a series of maps we looked at to answer some questions: Ducksters (HERE), The Forestry Department for a mountain location (HERE), BBC for the equator line (HERE)
  • Kids 4 Kenya HERE
  • Activity Village section HERE
  • National Geographic Kids with printable HERE

Tanzania

  • National Geographic Kids with printable HERE
  • A map with Ducksters HERE
  • Activity Village section HERE

VIDEOS:

Esther found this one for us on the Lions and the Masai…

And I came across this lovely ones of Kenyan children dancing.

We had two more from Esther that she deemed interesting… the kids agreed! First, A Lion Pride – Introducing Daddy to the Cubs by BBC Wildlife

And the other… Lion Pride in Kenya, Africa by Brian’s Art for Animals.

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This entry was posted on 16/10/2013, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Elasmosaurus

Not so much a dinosaur as a marine reptile, Elasmosaurus is all that and more. Found in the late Cretaceous period, this “thin plated” lizard had 4 fins instead of legs and had a long, thin neck and short tail. Feeding on fish in the ocean this monster was found in what is now Wyoming, USA. There is some that think this animal may have given birth to live young. With good eyesight it would have been quite the predator.

Our video came from the series Dinosaur Train. Nana has an Amazon Prime account so we were able to watch for free. But you can purchase it and the whole series on Amazon HERE.

Watching together

And then of course, our link list… it is getting harder and harder to find common dinosaurs that have a selection of videos. Time to delve into the increasingly obscure.

  • EnchantedLearning HERE
  • KidsDigDinos.com HERE
  • Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
  • Prehistoric Wildlife HERE
  • Land Before Time Wiki HERE
  • BBC HERE
  • RareSource HERE
  • Alldinosaurs HERE
  • Wiki HERE
  • And our colouring page of unknown origins HERE