April 29-30

Sometimes we just get a slow start… Monday and Tuesday really was that for us. However, we ARE all done our Earth Week learning with the ending being focused on becoming a member of the “Green Team” just like Freddy in Save the Earth by Abby Klein.

Green Team

Getting in some workbook time

While waiting on Gavin to wake up the other 3 did their nature journal pages out in the sunshine.

Getting some sun

We were unable to take our much wished for walk on Monday due to a deep sleeper (Gavin didn’t get up until past 10 am and although not sick like he was expected to be, he was exceptionally well rested). and two coughers. BUT we did have two bikes repaired and ready to go for Trinity and Emanuel! Two out of four is not bad, though the twins were less than impressed.

First real bike

Emanuel on the go

Fixing with Baba

The twins found OTHER things to do in the yard… skipping rope, soccer (where IS our large ball??), tree climbing, baby in her coup pushing… sunshine sunshine sunshine!

The beloved Coup

Kick Zander Kick

Up in the tree with Gavin

Chalk!

Tuesday had the weather AND the kids cooperating and we were able to eat breakfast and get our way out on a nice long walk. First the walking path, over the bridge and then … PARK!

Working on the nature journals

Echo wore the wrong shoes for the park with her fake crocs falling off and getting pebbles in them but she and Emanuel had a blast playing pirates with their own theme song and everything. We also picked up our garbage for our last requirement on that Green Team I mentioned earlier. 

Park!!!

Yo ho ho

Babies at the park

There is a 2 yr old behind that sun shade… seriously!

We had a new penguin themed book to enjoy – Turtle’s Penguin Day by Valerie Gorbachev. The kids then drew themselves in penguin costumes! Even Echo had her brothers help her. Now that Trinity is 5 we are working on having her more and more involved in schooling. She is all for the workbooks now and hopefully will be more and more willing to sit with us as we do our books and extended projects. I HAVE found her a special Mother’s Day (sort of) themed lapbook that she will do one on one with Mommy.

I love it when all 5 kids do a project all together

I was able to find a polar themed movie from the library that we picked up on the weekend. Really Wild Animals: Polar Prowl by National Geographic was a hit with our family. We watched it on Monday while Gavin was sleeping and then an encore on Tuesday so Gavin could see it and put in his input on our pamphlet style sheet. It is fun to look at the differences between the Arctic and Antartica wildlife.

Followed by some rather interesting Electric Company

We also lucked out with enough adults that Emanuel and Trinity got a Mommy and Daddy bike ride…

By the second ride a pro!

Lovely evening for it

While Echo ran out the door with Baba well in hand. 

Walking with Baba

With my little helper when it comes to laundry…

FOLD

We have continued our penguin and earth awareness trend… and with a good night’s sleep on Monday night (Sunday was a sleepless for yours truly) we will ramp up the week and run into Mother’s Day, spring and walk walk walk outside. 

Me and my twins

April 18-19

Sometime tv lines up perfectly with schooling. Today we lucked out and the Wiki episode of Electric Company (the new version) dealt with tempo which we discussed in regards to music with Mr. Popper’s Penguins chapter 13. We had two pieces of music to listen to… The Merry Widow Waltz you can listen to HERE and Schubert’s Military March.

There was also the concept of training animals. After we discussed how each boy would train his special unusual pet from chapter 2, we also watched a short piece on how people in another country train their animals to do something special. We chose the cormorants in China who are trained to fish. Though the word SLAVE comes up in the video… the kids seemed to miss that one!

The secondary penguin book of the day was Life Cycle of a Penguin by Lisa Trumbauer. We used another print out and Gavin illustrated the portion that will show on the lapbook when folded up with a life cycle representation.

Life cycle of a penguin

This week we also made our own newspaper article. The kids told me their story, we worked on a title and “photographs” and put it all together to go in our lapbook.

Our article

Oh and shoveling, but that was MY job, well Baba’s, then mine and then Ken’s… so much snow.

Shoveling

Thursday is the new cousins with Nana and Baba day and this time they took the twins with them. So the littles and I took the opportunity to get in the workbook zone and bust out some pages.

Workbooks

We broke for snack before supper and had pre popped popcorn and cartoons.

Snacks

While it snowed and snowed and snowed.

SNOW in April??

Friday was a snow day for many areas around us due to a massive dump of snow and the plows not keeping up. So we went bare minimum with our spelling, nature journals and regular journals (the twins had to journal their evening with their cousins and Nana and Baba) and then it was a mix of gaming and outside fun. The snow was PERFECT for creating.

Table and chairs

Miss Trinity coloured us a special penguin… an adorable penguin. AND made a beautiful bracelet. Craft bucket win!

Bracelet

Penguin

Sometimes we just need a lazy day… thanks to the Novaks for suggesting the snow day!

Fun in the snow

FOR PLATYPUS RESOURCES PLEASE GO TO “PLATYPUS IN DEPTH”

For all our Dr. Seuss resources check out the blog entry: Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

February 25-26

and thank you for enriching our literature and helping the boys WANT to read even more! Yes, Monday marked the beginning of our celebration of all things Dr. Seuss. After all, his birthday is on the 2nd of March! What book to start with… well the library helped me choose that one with the one week rental of the newest Lorax movie. We have touched on recycling and conservation before but I think the kids were REALLY affected by this book. The ending is slightly different than the movie of course and really much sadder. Trinity was especially upset with Once-ler and his lack of care with the trees. She simply could NOT understand why people would be willing to destroy everything and chase away the animals. She felt that it lacked explanation and was just WRONG! I have to agree that is was wrong… and be glad that she sees that straight off. We are doing folders for this unit with activities, For the Lorax we had 3 specific pages… Like the platypus I will also be combining my resources in a separate blog entry!

Gavin and Zander with our starter book

Emanuel and Trinity with two of the worksheets

Echo had her own book too… but this one was only influenced by Dr. Seuss.

Boardbook

The twins made our theme coloured paper chain… the table cloth is blue to round out the Dr. Seuss colours.

Paper chain

Anyway, we also had our platypus to face… a book to finish! AND a video to watch. The Perry Files from Disney’s Phineas and Ferb was a ton of fun! TWO videos to share today! One a brief veiw at a facility where you can SWIM with a platypus!! If only we lived in Australia!

Our second video is a day in the life of a platypus at a national park.

Our book for the day was one that took us two sessions to get through entirely: Platypus, A Century-long Mystery by William Caper. We really enjoyed this one as it focused on the last 100+ years of research with all the problems and bumps along the way.

The last book

We lucked out and got our hands on the Wild Kratts video for the platypus, Platypus Cafe from the first season and while this will go into our Wild Kratts binder and not our lapbook it was a welcome addition to our day. You can actually purchase episodes from this series on Amazon.com or watch a few on PBSkids.

Platypus Cafe

The Perry Files

We had our Pizza Hut reading program pizza today as well!

Well done boys!

It was actually an away day for Ken who was off to work at the office. It was rather different… but I think we did just fine!

Snuggles with Daddy

Don’t forget our outside time!

They built that whole structure

Tuesday was the beginning of assembly day for the kids, AFTER we learned about the Echidna. Sadly most videos are dedicated to the unusual male anatomy they have BUT I got a REALLY cute video of a baby one in a zoo!

I am hoping we will finish our lapbook by tomorrow. I will share the pictures of the whole thing then. In the meantime we continued with Dr. Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham. A VERY timely lesson for Miss Trinity with her picky food issues. We all drew pictures from the book and wrote out what this story told us. Earlier in the morning Ken had the boys and Trinity do the same for the Lorax. We also did some word searches and colouring pages.

Playing Green Eggs and Ham tick tac toe

Then Zander read The Foot Book to Emanuel! For Echo it was Hop on Pop. I would love to do all the activities associated with these books online but there just isn’t time! Thankfully I have added the main page with those links onto our reference blog. I DID try and have Gavin read the Green Eggs and Ham book but with the kids all wanting to see pictures I read it to them and he read Echo her book.

Reading together

Tomorrow it is The Cat in the Hat! Should be fun!! We have a craft or two and everything. When we got through the bulk of schooling I let the kids watch PBS. We lucked out – Electric Company AND a new (to us at least) Wild Kratts. Who doesn’t want to know more about the Colossal Squid and the Sperm Whale?

Wild Kratts

So life is good where learning can be found and we are learning left right and center!!!

With a little fresh air as well… that is a jump that Emanuel built for the neighbours dog to jump off of