Found in South America, the Carnotaurus had a rather intimidating visage. The flesh eating bull had dangerous horns on its head and a yen for meat. Found in the Cretaceous period, this carnivore had near useless front arms and hands but powerful legs. Though there HAS been some debate as to what it DID eat… with both carnivore and herbivore teeth.
We found this dinosaur in our book
But, onto the videos… and we have an ADORABLE one that we had to watch TWICE! You will have to go TO youTube to see this animated short HERE. Our second video was much shorter…
There was also an interesting RADIO piece about our carnivore with CBC.ca (back to my roots)… Quirks and Quarks… a show I used to listen to with my dad as a child! You can listen in HERE.
So with our in depth examination of China the kids requested another country… Being all democratic (first mistake) I let them choose… even after extorting the amazing qualities of some European countries (ok so Mommy has some interests not yet tapped) I was out voted and we chose a month+ long focus of MEXICO!!!
This is another first for us. I the topics I thought would be interesting and made up pages for the twins (and the littles to a more limited extent) to chose from. Topics like Sports, Inventions, Capital City, the list goes on and on… so we shall see how giving some more independence and choices works with the kids… FINGERS CROSSED!
However I am still verifying all websites before they settle on them so I had some major work ahead of me. And of course I have some to share as well!! I will post them according to topic, the only order is the one chosen by the boys to cover!
GEOGRAPHY
What hemispere is Mexico in? Ask.com has the answer HERE
DINOSAURS… yup we went there… Emanuel and Trinity and I!
Our dinosaur list was found on EnchantedLearning HERE
Gorgosaurus: a wonderful picture on deviantArt thanks to SommoDracorex HERE. Dino Hunt Canada with their “breathing” image HERE. EnchantedLearning facts HERE. Raresource HERE.
Labocania: not a common dinosaur AT ALL… so this is the best I could do! Dinosaurs.about.com HERE, CoolDinoFacts Wikia HERE, RareSource.com HERE. BUT an amazing picture to colour thanks to deviantArt and hyphenatedsuperhero HERE.
For Hypacrosaurus we used one site as our launching pad and clicked their links. VERY helpful. You can find our link HERE thanks to Dinosaur of the Week.
Pterosaur: not so much a specific animal but a grouping of apparently NOT dinosaurs, so fun for the kids being as these were FLYING critters. EnchantedLearning HERE. SomeInterestingFacts.net HERE. And our colouring page on SuperColoring.com HERE.
Lambeosaurus: A duck-billed dinosaur we had a few good resources we used – KidsDinos.com HERE, EnchantedLearning HERE, and our colouring page was from IAmFritz.com HERE.
Apatosaurus: Our last dinosaur chosen to research… Science Kids HERE, Kids Dig Dinos HERE, EnchantedLearning HERE and our colouring page from Ducksters HERE.
PLANTS AND ANIMALS
The National animal/bird is the GOLDEN EAGLE… and the plant the PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS. We found that out using Wiki HERE. Learn more about the Golden Eagle thanks to Sandiego Zoo HERE. And all about the Prickly Pear Cactus thanks to DesertUSA HERE.
Of our list Zander chose TWO animals to research (online)… Axolotl was the first with three links: A-Z Animals HERE and National Geographic Kids HERE and Mother Nature Network HERE. It is crazy cool! The second was the Tigrillo or the Margay. We found various pages once we realized the secondary name so here is a quick list – Encyclopaedia Britannia HERE, SoftSchools.com HERE, PoC HERE, The Animal Files HERE.
TRADITIONAL CLOTHING
Education.com worksheet for traditional clothing for both genders HERE.
Facts about traditional clothing thanks to FactsAboutMexico.com HERE.
Gavin did the research and write ups for this one. First Frida Kahlo, mainly from our book list but also from Wiki HERE.
And her husband Diego Rivera, again mainly from our library finds and Wiki HERE. Our colouring page of one of his murals can be found HERE thanks to Scribble Blog.
LANGUAGE and PEOPLE
Learn Spanish at Duolingo.com (app available too) HERE.
Famous people born in Mexico list with links onward thanks to Biography.com HERE.
NATURAL DISASTERS
An article of interest on the examination of an area in Mexico that experienced a massive drought for about 650 years thanks to NBC HERE.
AGRICULTURE
Livestock numbers (from 2008) thanks to Answers.com HERE. We used this as an example of the types of common animals raised for food and other reasons.
Learn about the Cacao plant and chocolate thanks to Wilderness Classroom HERE.
A list of common plants to Mexico (short) thanks to ehow HERE.
Plants of Mexico list (long) thanks to Backyard Nature HERE.
Spanish word book and more HERE thanks to Homeschool Share.
Clothing colouring page HERE thanks to Coloring Book 4 Kids
BOOKS… boy did we have books!! I may have cleaned out 2 or three local library branches!! So enjoy the fruit of my requesting! I will try and point out the super useful or fun books with a bit of further information. After all, this is useful for me too when we chose to revisit a topic for the littles to learn more about!
Cactus Soup by Eric A. Kimmel. This is a take on the stone soup idea set in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1922). The kids picked up right away that it was a great lesson about sharing. Though the girls were VERY put out about the people lying about having things at first… not cool! Great book HERE.
Little Egret and Toro by Robert Vavra. This is not a MEXICAN story but we chose to read this book because it was set in Spain and about a fighting bull. The whole concept of bull fighting and the ending of the fight in the death of the bull is visited. It does have a happy ending though! HERE
Mexico by Gina DeAngelis (a common name for a lot of the books we borrowed but I will link each one if I can!): Many Cultures, One World. HERE
Mexico! 40 Activities to Experience Mexico Past & Present by Susan Milord HERE
Traditional Crafts from Mexico and Central America by Florence Temko HERE
AZTECS AND MAYANS – we only did a cursory discussion on these two groups but had a lovely stack of books for reading and enjoyment and of course the fact finding.
Ancient Aztec The Fall of the Empire (Ancient Civilizations for Children) HERE
I really enjoyed this unit and the kids seemed to learn and enjoy a lot too… Please enjoy the images from some of our finished work!
Our craft… This was traditionally started when the child was born and each colour added for each year. Birth Charms.. though the kids and Ken made theirs up in one day.
Here is a quick peek at our finished notebook/binder… sorry about the quality and the babbling!
So Discovery’s Shark Week has come and we got all caught up in the madness. I was liberal with my choices in taping for the kids and prewatched a few first (Submarine the massively huge shark special was deleted quickly) but we certainly got our fill on some excellent and not so excellent shows. I will include our watched list including one lucky Dirty Jobs find on Animal Planet that week. Just remember, some are more… ratings grabbers than truly educational pieces… though we found ANYTHING narrated by Mike Rowe was a goldmine for the kids. Of course, we fell in love with him on Dirty Jobs and the kids want to watch anything with him or his voice on it!
We watched quite a few shows
Bull Shark: World’s Deadliest Shark
Shark City
Monster Hammerhead
Shark Feeding Frenzy
Great White Highway
Lair of the Mega Shark
Great White Invasion
Return of Jaws
Dirty Jobs, Season 4 Episode 18: Greenland Shark Quest
Zombie Sharks
Deadly Stripes: Tiger Sharks
Sharkzilla (with people off Mythbusters)
Jaws Strikes Back
Alien Sharks
Alien Sharks: Return of the Abyss
Deadly Waters
We also branched out with some very brief reading on some lesser known sharks to write on the back of some shark images we printed from one of our saved files. I am including these sharks here:
The Thresher Shark thanks to Shark Sider HERE. Gavin was especially interested in this shark due to its unusual tail that we later found out it uses to hunt!
The Whale Shark is one of Zander’s favourites. We found facts thanks to Animals Time HERE.
The Nurse Shark thanks to National Geographic HERE. A rather interesting LARGE shark who really only eats microscopic items!
There was a print out error in the square pictures and we did not have one for the Mako shark even though it was featured in other lists in the same print out. So we made our own slightly larger paper with a hand drawing and information we found at the EnchantedLearning site HERE.
Of course we went to our usual sources for Shark print outs etc and while we did not DO a lot of crafts and settled instead for drawing our own pictures and having fun “what if” discussions we do have some links to help you out on your shark themed learning!
Activity Village has a little bit of everything. Though we did not use their how to draw a shark instructions. You can find their general list of resources HERE.
We used Art for Kids’ shark how to draw instructions for sharks HERE. The kids loved the expression on this shark’s face! They also have Hammerhead instructions HERE. I do wish there was a print out page for this one as we love including the instructions in our finished folders and adding them to our overflowing binder of Art for Kids print outs.
For spelling words we started out the week with 10 general shark words:
shark
swim
carnivore
eggs
fish
ocean
fin
gill
pup
teeth
For the second week I took the list of 10 most dangerous sharks from Angel Fire site HERE. For Trinity and Emanuel I just did two random shark related words a day. Emanuel’s favourite was hammer and head… the moment he said the two together he just lit up!
With some of the worksheets there were questions about shark anatomy. I found a decent list of fin information on the site KidCyber.com HERE.
We looked up two different terms for our studies… breaching where we took the definition off the top of our good search HERE. Out second term was opportunistic feeders. We found our definition on the Merriam Webster site HERE.
We also did a quick animal report on the Remora. We figured we wanted to know more about this fish we continually saw in almost all of our Discovery channel shows. Sadly not much is known about certain aspects of the fish, BUT the site Animal Diversity Web had some interesting (if not complicated) information for us to use on our report HERE.
Emanuel has had an interest in the Cookiecutter Sharks since he saw them on Octonauts (HERE). So we did up a colouring page thanks to KidsPlayColor.com HERE. We used the information on EnchantedLearning HERE to do a quick write up on the back of our colouring page to include in our shark book. With over 200 species I am figure we will continue finding sharks of interest over the years!
We didn’t do much in the way of books as there was SO MUCH Discovery Channel content, but I did pull what we had on sharks out of our personal collection:
Incredible Sea Creatures by Reading Discovery (a level 2 reader)
Amazing Sharks by Melvin Berger
Life in the Water – A Child’s First Library of Learning
I certainly hope all of this information can be of some help! Good luck!