We did a mini unit on Australia thanks to the monthly Little Passports mailing. We covered their letter and worksheet and then spent a couple days finding some interesting facts from the books I requested from our local library. The big one for me was that there are CAMELS in Australia. Not something I was aware of! We have not done our usual full out unit as we covered Australia when we did our in depth unit on the VERY interesting Platypus. You can find ALL our resources on that HERE.

Our book list is relatively short but interesting:

• Welcome to Australia by Mary Berendes HERE
• Australia by Ann Heinrichs HERE
• Destination Australia by Jonathon Grupper HERE
• Australia by Katie Bagley HERE
• A Year in the Life of Bindi by Bindi Irwin HERE

There was a neat scratch paper craft that instead of making your own pictures you can make the shapes they have printed on the black covering. The boys took turns exposing the colours underneath.

I found two fun print outs about Australia on the Activity Village site. They actually have a lovely list of activities, print outs and such there but I specifically printed out two for the kids:

• Australia Fact Page HERE
• Dictionary of Aussie Slang HERE

We watched a tourist video on youTube thanks to ellacottandewing.

We definitely enjoyed our brief foray back into the Down Under!

FOR PLATYPUS RESOURCES PLEASE GO TO “PLATYPUS IN DEPTH”

For all our Dr. Seuss resources check out the blog entry: Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

February 27-28

What is one of the most famous and well known Dr. Seuss books? Why The Cat In The Hat of course! And today, that was the book we started our day with. We had THREE crafty things to do, colouring pages and everything. Of course there is the tv show The Cat In The Hat Knows A Lot About That. I will try and connect this page (and the other Dr. Seuss ones) to our resource entry.

Dr. Seuss themed math

The boys and their rhyming words

Our second book was One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Gavin read the first half and I read the second. I have a couple food items intending to represent this book for our Saturday feast. Actually we are having a Dr. Seuss WEEKEND as I think there will be a party in his honour at the Novak’s on Sunday too! I am really looking forward to that!

Listening to Gavin

We continued our platypus assembly, the boys are taking turns choosing the page colours and we are slowly gluing all our bits like a rather giant and unusual puzzle. I am really amazed at how much we have to share in our lapbook!

We made up personalize Cat in the Hat faces… I love the creativity… note Emanuel’s is a DOLPHIN face and Zander’s a PLATYPUS!

Faces

As a family we did TWO crafts… we started on our Cat in the Hat table centerpiece and our Thing 1 and 2 hand pictures. Everyone was involved in everything it was so much fun!

Working together

Daddy and Echo

Paint and baby

Of course we ended the day with the cartoon The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That.

Tv

The book of the day for the 28th, the last day of February was the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. We had some worksheets and colouring pages. This was the first time the kids had heard this classic. I definitely want to add this one to our library!

Trinity’s Grinch page for what she learned!

I love Trinity’s what she learned: I learned you shouldn’t take things. Christmas is about being with the people you love, but not meany guys. You should not take presents. You should not let bad Santa take the presents. You should say no. 

Drawing the Grinch thanks to Activity Village (see the resource page)

I have started trying to get Echo to sit on the potty. We are going to have to cave and attempt the Easy Ups. Sadly they are for such a huge span of weight I am a little concerned about her swimming in them but attempting to convince Echo to sit on the potty when we have to remove her diaper each time is not easy!

NOT an enthused trainer… we may not quite be ready yet

Another new Wild Kratts, another poster. I have always love the giraffe.

Giraffes on the Savannah

We even finished our Thing 1’s and 2’s. But since we are FIVE we had 1 through 5. The kids loved them and the faces are a total giggle. I think these are a keeper for me to bring out each year. Maybe even frame on a wall in our future home??

Our Things 1 through 5

The kids were rather hard at work at the end of the month. Their reading goals were met AGAIN! And worksheets, math etc all done. 

Hard at work

We also got our table cleared of all things previous holiday and have the Dr. Seuss pieces ready and waiting for our party on the 2nd. 

Ready for the weekend, just need that blue tablecloth!

We ended our day with the new Grinch movie starting Jim Carey. It was better than I expected and the kids really enjoyed it.

You’re a mean one… Mr. Grinch…

 I will leave you with a few pages of our FINISHED Platypus lapbook! We are so excited to have completed this project. You will be able to find ALL my resources etc by clicking on the link I will put at the top of all the platypus entries!! 

Platypus pages! We will be placing this all in a binder once I hunt down my box of them in the house somewhere.

FOR PLATYPUS RESOURCES PLEASE GO TO “PLATYPUS IN DEPTH”

For all our Dr. Seuss resources check out the blog entry: Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

February 25-26

and thank you for enriching our literature and helping the boys WANT to read even more! Yes, Monday marked the beginning of our celebration of all things Dr. Seuss. After all, his birthday is on the 2nd of March! What book to start with… well the library helped me choose that one with the one week rental of the newest Lorax movie. We have touched on recycling and conservation before but I think the kids were REALLY affected by this book. The ending is slightly different than the movie of course and really much sadder. Trinity was especially upset with Once-ler and his lack of care with the trees. She simply could NOT understand why people would be willing to destroy everything and chase away the animals. She felt that it lacked explanation and was just WRONG! I have to agree that is was wrong… and be glad that she sees that straight off. We are doing folders for this unit with activities, For the Lorax we had 3 specific pages… Like the platypus I will also be combining my resources in a separate blog entry!

Gavin and Zander with our starter book

Emanuel and Trinity with two of the worksheets

Echo had her own book too… but this one was only influenced by Dr. Seuss.

Boardbook

The twins made our theme coloured paper chain… the table cloth is blue to round out the Dr. Seuss colours.

Paper chain

Anyway, we also had our platypus to face… a book to finish! AND a video to watch. The Perry Files from Disney’s Phineas and Ferb was a ton of fun! TWO videos to share today! One a brief veiw at a facility where you can SWIM with a platypus!! If only we lived in Australia!

Our second video is a day in the life of a platypus at a national park.

Our book for the day was one that took us two sessions to get through entirely: Platypus, A Century-long Mystery by William Caper. We really enjoyed this one as it focused on the last 100+ years of research with all the problems and bumps along the way.

The last book

We lucked out and got our hands on the Wild Kratts video for the platypus, Platypus Cafe from the first season and while this will go into our Wild Kratts binder and not our lapbook it was a welcome addition to our day. You can actually purchase episodes from this series on Amazon.com or watch a few on PBSkids.

Platypus Cafe

The Perry Files

We had our Pizza Hut reading program pizza today as well!

Well done boys!

It was actually an away day for Ken who was off to work at the office. It was rather different… but I think we did just fine!

Snuggles with Daddy

Don’t forget our outside time!

They built that whole structure

Tuesday was the beginning of assembly day for the kids, AFTER we learned about the Echidna. Sadly most videos are dedicated to the unusual male anatomy they have BUT I got a REALLY cute video of a baby one in a zoo!

I am hoping we will finish our lapbook by tomorrow. I will share the pictures of the whole thing then. In the meantime we continued with Dr. Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham. A VERY timely lesson for Miss Trinity with her picky food issues. We all drew pictures from the book and wrote out what this story told us. Earlier in the morning Ken had the boys and Trinity do the same for the Lorax. We also did some word searches and colouring pages.

Playing Green Eggs and Ham tick tac toe

Then Zander read The Foot Book to Emanuel! For Echo it was Hop on Pop. I would love to do all the activities associated with these books online but there just isn’t time! Thankfully I have added the main page with those links onto our reference blog. I DID try and have Gavin read the Green Eggs and Ham book but with the kids all wanting to see pictures I read it to them and he read Echo her book.

Reading together

Tomorrow it is The Cat in the Hat! Should be fun!! We have a craft or two and everything. When we got through the bulk of schooling I let the kids watch PBS. We lucked out – Electric Company AND a new (to us at least) Wild Kratts. Who doesn’t want to know more about the Colossal Squid and the Sperm Whale?

Wild Kratts

So life is good where learning can be found and we are learning left right and center!!!

With a little fresh air as well… that is a jump that Emanuel built for the neighbours dog to jump off of