May 1-3

A new month begun and spring is… well I am told it is here but the weather is simply NOT working in our favour.

That did not stop garden progress though!

We had THREE Wild Kratts to enjoy!!!

Orangutan

Bird of Paradise

Jaguar

It was the first of the month so time to get our May poster put together!

MAY

And on our fact hunt about penguins realized that they can go up to 4 months without food, and are actually classified as seabirds, though unlike other birds their bones are dense and heavy instead of hollow… thus the amazing speeds in water! Penguins by Lynn M. Stone has been a great resource.

Penguins!

Our Thursday dinosaur was inspired by a library book: Neovenator and other Dinosaurs of Europe by Dougal Dixon. We have already had to move our dinosaurs from a small binder to a D ring!

Our Book

Monday’s had our intrepid learners drawing their favourite dinosaurs. Trinity had to have some help but we are working on getting her outside of the kitty and girl box.

Favourites

Gavin created us a little diorama style Lego scene… penguins, scientist, fish (gray) and even more interestingly – krill (pinky red bits).

Lego

I love it that from time to time we are even having some moments of silence and contentment WITH electronics in play!

Together quietly

We had a series of interesting drawing suggestions from Art for Kids as well – all about ROBOTS!! The boys worked together to complete them all and made a rather interesting robot selection.

Robots

Mr. Popper and his penguins started in Seattle so we had to take a look at a tourist video (that honestly they were not as enthused about as I would hope but loved parts of) and see what there is to see in Seattle NOW.

We ended the week with less than favourable weather… so I pulled all the stops for lunch – hot chocolate, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches!!

NOMS

Our dinosaurs ended the week as a marathon event of free (with Amazon Prime) season 1 episodes from Dinosaur Train alternating with schoolwork accomplished. Emanuel worked on a lovely full page scene.

Quite the well thought out scene

We created our own advertisements for portions of Mr. Popper’s Penguins!

BUY FISH!

And then for supper, the kids helped me make pizzas.

Kid assisted dinner

It was a rather good 3 days leading into what was going to be a busy busy weekend.

…and RINGLETS

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

April 15-17

Halfway through the week and we are most definitely filling up on our penguin knowledge. With 4 videos under our belt about 3 of the people Mr. Popper named his new baby penguins after!

Get well soon cards for Captain Cook

Christopher Columbus, the namesake of the penguin Columbus.

Ferdinand Magellan, the namesake of Ferdinand

And TWO on Robert Falcon Scott, the namesake of Scott.

So at home and in the learning mode… there is a bit to share… THREE extra books! First off Face to Face With Penguins by Yva Momatiuk and John Eastcott.

Future activists…

Then If You Were a Penguin by Wendell and Florence Minor. So much cuteness… I had the kids each draw what they would do if they were a penguin. Trinity’s was more impressionist… with the water and the fish indicating that is where she would BE if she was one, swimming in the ocean.

What would YOU do?

And Life Cycle of a Penguin by Lisa Trumbauer.

Life Cycle of a Penguin

The boys illustrated their special pets from chapter 2, this time how it would look if they took them for walks!

Walking exotic pets

Emanuel made his own how to with drawing a dinosaur.

Dimetrodon

Art for Kids just keeps inspiring us, Emanuel was inspired by Gavin’s instructions to make a special robot crab.

Lasers!

I was impressed by the Lego penguins!

Adorable

We worked on colour combinations and groups these past 3 days as well. I love that Zander’s is of a dragon from the app Dragonvale that he picked out due to the (to him now) obvious use of the warm colours. 

Colours!

We also discussed how snowflakes come about and made our own special snowflake page.

Snowflakes

Gavin has taken a real liking to pastels. He has been working on his shading and usage with the help of Art For Kids!

Shamrock

Of course, some of the family just wanted NAPS!

Zzzzz

And then some more creativity.

Colouring fiend

With alphabetizing to do…

Get those penguin babies in order!!

I think we have done rather well for 3 days at home!!! I am really looking forward to sharing everything we have found link wise, on penguins! It is a substantial amount!!

So much fun!