Tag Archive | recycle

Reuse, Recycle, RESPONSIBLE

April 24-25

Just like I promised, more Dirty Jobs today… Mattress Recycler (Season 4, Episode 7) where they… recycle mattresses (and remove old abandoned boats) can be watched (with Prime) for free on Amazon HERE. Our second episode was Chinatown Garbage Collector (Season 1, Episode 4) again Amazon (Prime for free) HERE.

Nana and Baba took just Trinity and Emanuel out for the morning, once they finished their letter and word practice of course!! It is so quiet with just 3 of the kids here! Especially when the twins are busy watching their Dirty Jobs.

We have continued our discussion with a list of things you can recycle…

  1. bottles and cans
  2. paper and cardboard
  3. glass
  4. metal
  5. toilets
  6. paint
  7. old toys/teddies… repurpose OR gift
  8. wood
  9. mattresses
  10. plastic
  11. food (compost)

We have always been aware of the good you can do by passing things along and have not only been a passer but a passee. (Is that even a term??) There is no reason that a handmedown should be refused if it is useful! When we use what we or someone else already has we are making a smaller footprint and extending the life of items that would otherwise fill up our landfills.

Our Earth Week related book of the day (and the last one I have that is not a chapter book) is Earth Day from the Let’s See company. This book is by Marc Tyler Nobleman. Today, in honour of conservation we did NOT print off anything specifically for this book or do a special page. Instead, we discussed what we learned and added to our list of things you can recycle on the back of our large brown paper page.. this paper is full up of information, both sides and once we are done will be used for a craft and then recycled. The kids are so proud of how we use BOTH sides of everything (scratch paper or scrap paper we call it here… so I can write out the sentences they tell me for them to in turn copy). We certainly cannot be paper free here but we are doing our best to make each scrap count! I am still determined to make paper with the kids this summer. We just need to get together our supplies and a sunny weekend for Ken to join in!

Earth Day

Our chapter book had a list of things the kids in the story needed to do to be a part of the Green Club… 10 things to conserve and clean the earth… Out of the 10 we have one left on the list to accomplish! Pick up 10 pieces of garbage. How many do you do on the list?

  1. Use recycled items to make crafts
  2. Turn off the lights, computers, etc
  3. Turn off the water when you brush your teeth
  4. Use reusable bottles for water (we use cups in the bathroom)
  5. Pick up 10 pieces of trash (our mission!)
  6. Bike or walk to school. We count this as done as we walk to parks, walk around the house and run outside for fun!
  7. Use cloth bags at the grocery store (we also added in that when we get plastic or paper we use them for other things… I have a ball of plarn waiting for time to learn how to make something with it!)
  8. Use BOTH sides of the paper… of course!!
  9. Use cloth towels instead of paper in the kitchen
  10. Take showers over baths (or if you are going to take a LOOONG time in the tub take that bath we agreed that a bath soak would use LESS water but showers ARE faster)
We did one of our two recycled 2 L bottle crafts… one will have to wait until the weekend and ken having more time. Our first craft is towards the end of the video list… a rain gauge. Now there are all sorts of problems with it, I am curious if we will keep up our initial water level… will it give a good reading? But that’s what an experiment is all about right???

With rain gauge

The twins and I took a moment to return to our penguin roots and look at an extra book. Without Emanuel I did not want to cover the next chapter in Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Our book was I am a Penguin by Karen Durrie. The twins took turns reading the book to me… we came upon a surprising fact that we had not seen before: “I keep my feathers dry with oil from my tail.” Definitely new to us!

I am a Penguin

Reading Together

We also made our very own penguin finger puppets. You can follow our instructions HERE. Though Ken winged it with his pieces and made his own pattern. Of course we had to wait to show them off properly until the next day.

Our pieces

Assembly

Penguins!

We had another penguin book as well… My Penguin Osbert by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel. We got together and drew an amazing penguin habitat!

Habitat

We were creative all over the place… the boys continued work on their boat… the girls made block towers…

Towers in pastels

I finished my infinity scarf and made it well… infinite! You can find the pattern I used HERE. Thanks to my Facebook friend Keith for the suggestion AND all the support while I worked it out!

Sorry about the picture.. I was so excited to finish it that I took it in my pj’s

We are certainly getting our earth facts down!!! I think next year when we do Earth Day/Week we will focus some time on what the earth is actually made of and its place in the universe as well!

Of course ECHO believes SHE is the center of the universe… and who are we to say she isn’t? hehe

Recycle on Earth Day

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!!!

This entry was posted on 25/04/2013, in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

Hello Dr. Seuss…

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