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.

October 2-6

I swear we are on the road to completions lately! Following up on Trinity’s math workbook finishing Emanuel wowed us with his Addition book being done! Well done my boy!

Sleepy smile and all

We have also started our story starters with the twins… I am hoping we can make up a nice series of stories all by the boys written by themselves. I simply check the spelling and correct it underneath. I am finding their creative spelling quite amusing!

I need to type some of these out… not too bad on the mistakes even!

It was rather exciting to actually finish our Lions unit! The assembly was not the quickest but we had a blast doing it! Be sure to check out our resource post HERE.

With October comes Halloween so we had to work on our black paper drawings. This time we are working on smaller images to include in our garland making.

Thursday was another rainy day so out came the rainy day fun bucket, folder games and anything else I could think of to spread across the floor and get the kids playing and learning and keep them from fighting!

Emanuel is working hard on his math! Friday had us working on the BIG math book… the same I did with the twins (a Canadian book), it is rather interesting to see how he picks up on some things faster just for watching his older brothers!

He even drew his own skull thanks to Art for Kids… again check out their link on the right side of my page.

Egypt made another showing with another story.

And Echo built us a house!

Our weekend was a special one! First Saturday of the month – HOME DEPOT! This month the craft of choice was airplanes! Talk about fun!

They were so excited I couldn’t get the pic to focus!!!

Gavin made me a slurpee out of Legos too!!

Sunday School had the twins bringing mustard seeds home in tiny adorable jars.

So not the most exciting weekend… but we make do and make memories! Oh… and eat a melon fresh out of the garden! 

September 11-12

It was a bit of a trick to really get through to the kids that it was a new year. Though using the kitchen table (with Nana and Baba gone it is freed up) to change things up a bit for now has helped.

On Wednesday we had a special visitor – Aunty Darcy! She had an errand to run in the neighbourhood so came by after it to hang out and to take yours truly out so we could enjoy a kid free lunch (one of the perks to having a hubby who can work from home!!). She was a gem and found us a caterpillar to check out. We would have kept it… until it escaped the cup and tried to make for freedom! So we examined it for a while and the twins returned it to the front yard intact.

We are working our way back to daily story time courtesy of our fantastic readers Zander and Gavin…

Checking in on science projects…

and enjoying our days as much as we can. After all learning is best when it is FUN!

Our first week of the “new” school year is an abbreviated one. We only set up to school Monday to Thursday as Friday was a special (super special) surprise for the kids. But Thursday was still school as normal. Working with the kids to see how they answer questions like – what you like, don’t like, favourite class… it is so fun finding out what runs through their heads!

The boys really went all out working on some of the new (and not so new) instructions off of Art for Kids (link on right). They are our go to place for drawing and art related ideas!!!

Miss Echo also had an absolute BLAST making her own series of messes…

The kids wowed me with a Lego Tree…

And Ken and I FINALLY made the two lunch boxes for two little girls back up in Canada… out of duct tape and some Velcro. I hope they work!

Thank goodness for Disney and our lion themed film – The Lion King! We even made rings to go with!

I can’t forget to share our Target stash… 50% off school supplies in the dollar section is AMAZING!