Tag Archive | ladybug

Roald Dahl an Extended Unit Study

Sorry everyone I am not going to link the movies and books… I am rather sure it can all be googled and the Christmas season has me rushed! BUT! Roald Dahl… READ HIS BOOKS!

Roald Dahl’s birthday is celebrated on September 13th. He is best known for his books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda which have been made into movies. We chose to start reading his books on the 13th of September and then go from there. We managed to find quite the selection of books to enjoy as a family:

  • Matilda
  • The Twits
  • The BFG
  • George’s Marvelous Medicine
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  • Charlie and the Glass Elevator
  • James and the Giant Peach
  • The Minpins

Our main resource for printables was Activity Village. Lots of colouring pages and even some fun worksheets for a nice portion of our books.

For a more in depth activity I also found this site HERE. They had classroom plans for portions of the different books. Some we skipped and some we leisurely enjoyed. This unit quickly went from a celebration of a birthday week to as long as we can find books to read.

For the kids, while they listened to my reading I had them doodle portions of the book. It was so much fun to see what they picked out as interesting. They all had a different method and style to their pages (though at times Trinity was SUPER resistant to doing a doodle).

There were multiple movies to watch beyond just the original first come to mind ones:

  • Matilda
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
  • The BFG
  • James and the Giant Peach

I came up with some additional activities to go with our books and movies. For The BFG I had the kids write their very own dream labels, and then compare the book to the movie. For Charlie and the Chocolate Factory we did various levels of comparison depending on the ability of the kids – a movie review, comparing the book to the movie, comparing the movies. It was interesting to see who liked what. The same for Matilda. The realization that movies are not identical to books came very quickly to the kids!

Of course we had to do a short insect study for four of the insects included in James and the Giant Peach… We had ladybug, silkworm, glow worm and spider (we went with Black Widow) chosen out of the list (funny how there is no silkworm in the movie). I got some pretty good links:

  • Ladybug had all our questions answered with National Geographic Kids HERE.
  • I found the silkworm highly interesting. Did you know there are none in the wild and that we have domesticated them so much that the moth that results cannot fly??? EnchantedLearning HERE and Itchy Fish facts for kids HERE.
  • Black Widow spider was our distinct spider of choice and we went again with National Geographic Kids HERE.
  • Glow worm was a little rough, but we went with the Encyclopedia of New Zealand HERE and A-z Animals HERE.

Roald Dahl’s books are a blast for our whole family. I am so glad we decided to make them a family experience. Even Echo is in on the listen and has her minutes for the BookIt Pizza Hut reading club counted during the time. One of these days I will take pictures of the binder and share it in another post! We really did have fun with this author’s work. IMG_2844a

Blink and the Week is Over!

April 22-25

Once we finished our day out with zoo fun and egg hunting it was right back into the school fray. England was our topic over multiple days thanks to a combination of Little Passports, Activity Village print outs (on right) and library books.101_7219

Of course we are hard at work reading Treasure Island. Though the twins have suggested at times that MAYBE with all the deaths and mean pirates that this classic is not really kid friendly. Oh the world they have yet to experience!101_7220

We are, of course, keeping up with our reading.101_7221

But on advice of the always amazing Brave Writer and other inspirational homeschooling blogs, we have started to take advantage of the sunny days. So in the afternoon we dropped everything to enjoy sunshine and fresh air.101_7223

101_7226To celebrate all that spring and sunshine the kids had their last Pizza Hut reading program pizza for the year! We are already registered for the following year and are eagerly awaiting the summer program (though that one is online only with website rewards instead of pizza). We accomplished a lot of reading and together time over some really good books this year!101_7227

Our next big countdown is a short one… Trinity turns SIX on the 26th with her birthday party on the 27th! So we kept ourselves busy for the rest of the week cleaning and thinking happy nice day thoughts. After all the 26th is a bridal shower and the bachelor party for Gavin’s godfather Cory and his fiance Karen. Of course all of the adults were invited to these events so there was some kid juggling as we tried to work out ways to have the girls at the morning event and the guys at the afternoon… but that is skipping over a whole bunch of school and family fun!! So back to our week…

Tuesday had us watching Wild Kratts…

Bison

Bison

Reading about pirates…101_7229

And the girls hard at work on Echo’s ladybug mask thanks to her Easter stash from Gammie.101_7230

101_7231Middle of the week has our soon to be 6 year old completing her adding and subtracting book! I decided that since I already had a copy of our beloved Canadian math series for grade one that it was time for her to hop right into it! She is so pleased that she is on the same book as Emanuel… Emanuel… not so much!101_7232

We did spend some lovely quiet time with our Dirty Jobs episodes…101_7233

More Treasure Island… really the portions that stand out to them in a chapter are varied and interesting! Actually, we continued the trend with ANOTHER chapter the next day… I think we are ready for individual book reports in the summer!! At least by the twins! Exciting!!101_7234

101_7236And the decent weather is holding!!! And with that, our week is over and one of our busier weekends begun! Wish us luck!101_7237

Reaching a New Routine

January 22-23

Two more days and the kids are still settling into the routine of Daddy leaving each day and this is him leaving around lunchtime. The following week is going to take further adjustment! But it is a good adjustment.

We get creative to fill the time! I think those are zombies and ghosts on there???

So in the meantime I am packing our days with learning… and while the kids are not always on board we are seeing progress in many things. Just need to get science pushed on into our weekly schedule on a more regular basis. I cannot wait until it is warm enough to order our ants. We did get our time in on a special two part Wild Kratts. Dolphins AND Blowfish. I think we all learned a bit!

Blowfish

Dolphins

There was some spontaneous paper crafting with all 4 of our big kids… they made crowns!

Zander and Gavin

Emanuel

Trinity

And then Trinity and Emanuel took the stickers Aunty Karyn brought for us from Dollarama and made special space pictures…

Space… the final frontier

Add in the boardgames and we played our way to education.

Candyland for 2

Oh and the progress on Gavin’s Lego hour creation!!!

Legoland Gavin style

I treated myself to another snack thanks to Karyn – beloved Cheezies… bliss!!!!

CHEEZIES

On Wednesday we celebrated another month of reading… Emanuel got his first pizza coupon for working each day on sounding out and writing out a new word. I am so proud of their progress! This Pizza Hut sponsored program is great!!

NOM NOM

But before that lovely dinner we had a few things to accomplish… Starting with a more simplified how to from Art for Kids – a ladybug, note Zander’s hand holding his!

Lovely scene!

Gavin spent some quality time with his baby sister playing HER version of Skylanders… some sort of weird noised back and forth with various figures that would then end up in the line again!

So sweet with her big brother

And then there is our scissors practice – Trinity is getting rather pro with her S snake from Activity Village!!

All by herself!

And to round off our creativity Zander made a rather amazing sailing pirate ship out of Legos!

VERY yellow

It feels good to see them independently create a little more! And to see some passion in our work.

Daddy and his little darling

This entry was posted on 30/01/2013, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment