April 22-23
Well, with the ongoing battle of spring VS snow planting our Earth Day tree ON Earth Day simply couldn’t happen. So instead we made do with what we could do inside… starting with TWO books… the first Earth Day by Mir Tamim Ansary. The second a chapter out of our chapter book: Ready Freddy! #25… Save the Earth by Abby Klein.
Earth Day
We started our chatting about it with what we already knew about what we should do on Earth Day… plant a tree, turn things off… and then went on to write out what we learned from our books. The beginnings of Earth Day, what we could do… and then… we did! We looked at our lunch and saw what we could recycle if we took a few seconds and rinsed it out (yogurt cups)… we turned off more lights (like I like to anyway) and opened the blinds in the basement, we had short showers at night (again if only they would be so efficient usually).
Our Earth Week friendly world
The twins spent their afternoon crafting out of the craft bucket using at least ONE item that is recycled. Gavin used yarn bits for his person and a Kleenex box for its home with cardboard for the bed. Zander used a toilet paper roll judiciously decorated and sparkly to make a lantern for his sister that he then tried to convince his Nana to give him a candle to REALLY light it up.
Clothespin girl
Lantern WITHOUT candle
We talked about how important it was to walk away from the tv and computers… how playing outside uses up their excess energy and doesn’t use excessive household energy. So of course I pitched them outside TWICE to run around and enjoy the almost gone snow… that is now coming BACK. SERIOUSLY!!!
22nd of APRIL
We have collected some worksheets as well… of course after we finish our week long unit (or before), we will flip the sheets over and scratch paper, colour, give to Echo to create on… where ever the fancy takes us. Let’s see… Trinity enjoyed Recycling at the Beach HERE. We had to put a reminder poster over our recycling containers from an Activity Village poster HERE. I made the K worksheet a little more difficult by giving it to the twins and telling them to read it themselves and go from there HERE.
Recycle!
Ending our day with games with daddy!
GAMES
The next day we had our SECOND crafting day… more creativity but adding in the younger kiddos also meant more whining and confusion. It took Trinity most of our crafting time to come up with her idea… a little house for her small My Little Ponies (Kleenex box). Emanuel was first out the gate with his marble slide (Kleenex box, candy box, toilet paper rolls and Easter eggs), Gavin made a McDonalds for yesterday’s yarn people (toilet paper rolls, tops of a happy meal box, cardboard and paper from their spelling practices), Zander made himself a portable table with caster type things (box and Easter eggs). All very creative and rather amazing!!
Trinity’s house
Marble toy
Gavin’s restaurant
Zander’s table
We had a second craft that was a little more complicated for the twins and I to accomplish over naptime. Origami no less! Using newspaper to make garbage bins! You can follow Activity Village’s instructions HERE.
Garbage bins
We also discussed what is recyclable. The kids are are rather aware of what is and isn’t as here in our area the Recycling is only picked up every 2nd week. Unlike up in Alberta where we had it every week when we lived on our own. You can find an easy list pirintable HERE. Though I am sure areas differ.
We found some Dirty Jobs (a family favourite) episodes showing various ways to recycle. There is the episode Maple Syrup Maker (Season 4, Episode 17) that includes a trip to a paint recycling location. You can watch it on Amazon HERE. (free if you have Prime) Our second episode was Toilet Crusher (Season 4, Episode 9… I know, out of order) where toilets are removed and recycled. Again you can watch it for free on Amazon HERE (with Prime). I am sure we will watch another one the next day…
We are keeping it minor in the worksheets but I found an adorable tree related one with some facts about how wonderful they are for the world HERE. We were tipped off about an amazing math colouring printables site by our friend and now teacher Steven. Check out Coloring Squared HERE for a series of them with two difficulties. We did the Lion and the Monkey. It was a little simple for the twins but a good practice of addition and I saw improvement in speed of correctly answering the calculations.
We also snuck in a Wild Kratts – Sloth and the Sloth Moth.
Sloth and Sloth Moth
Add in a tea party and I think we did a good two days of learning and fun!
Tea Party!!!
