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.

August 9-11

Trinity is on a roll with ANOTHER completion of her PreK books! I am so glad she is grabbing on and getting going with these. I do not like to move them forward until they get that previous year’s work completed. After all review is ALWAYS good.

I love that even on an overcast day or during a down period the kids will sit down and work together lately… Gavin and Trinity read through our National Geographic Kids animal cards!

Of course Echo is always game for a book with good pictures… this is the dinosaur book that later one of the twins read to Emanuel and then worked on a picture for his dinosaur binder. It is almost time to bring that out of its hibernation and get back going… I really need to work on posting all our back dino blog entries too!!!

The weekend was sunny so we grabbed as much of it as we could.

Dino dig!

And when it was time to go inside we had a craft symposium around the round table.

Then back outside to shuck corn! Nana and Baba found a little stand with some rather tasty ears.

Our weekend ended with us finally making it to a new church that is going to be our church family until we settle on our location and new home. Time to register for Sunday School!! Sadly we won’t make it to the church again until Sunday School sign up but it was fun to meet some new people and get a feel of a service.

After church we drove home and stopped at this lovely walking path at the end of our street to take our yearly photos. I do so love when we get a chance to dress ALL of them up and take pictures. So enjoy the surplus images!

Age 9, Zander and Gavin

Age 7

Age 5

Age 3

Oh and the fun in the sun…

The baby braid…

And the newest Target deals…

Hope your weekend was as much fun!!

our 3 littles

the intelligent dinosaur! In fact, it is believed this large brained (with imprints of the brain left on the fossilized skulls) dinosaur was the smartest ever with evidence of the brain beginning to fold (the more folds the more advanced). One of our videos even considered that had the dinosaurs not been wiped out this Cretaceous era carnivore could have evolved to the level of human intelligence. As is, they believe that the Troodon could have been as intelligent as the modern bird. A huge difference from the other small brained, large headed dinosaurs of lesser intelligence.

We actually had a 3 part video series to watch. I will post them all in order here. The Troodon makes for good video…



I found this dinosaur by looking through the list of the I’m a Dinosaur videos on youTube so of course I will post it here!

And now for the links of interest. There are TWO National Geographic ones, the main page HERE and the Kid’s HERE. Jurassic Park Wiki has a rather spooky picture and some information HERE. EnchantedLearning has a helpful fact sheet HERE. For 10 facts of interest on the Troodon check out Dinosaurs.about.com HERE. Test your knowledge with a question on Kidsdigdinos.com HERE. Charts and maps on Kidsdinos.com HERE. Of course Wiki has their article HERE, and  you can find our colouring page on Education.com HERE.

Joint effort