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

In honour of it being Valentine’s Day today we decided to deviate even further from our regular activities. With the traditional red, white or pink outfits and Valentine’s day photographs first. We have limited photo friendly areas in our very busy and full house, but we managed. 

My fabulous 5

The twins

My 3 boys

So cute

Just the girls

Miss T

Miss E

Me too!

And then there were the worksheets I found and printed out for the kids. The little ones enjoyed a couple sheets from Education.com. Trinity’s rose tattoo feeling colouring page can be found HERE. There was a math sheet from tlsbooks.com that you can find HERE. I actually have a collection at Education.com that you can access that is full of the Valentine’s day themed sheets we printed for the kids. I plan on reviewing them all tonight. You can find the two math sheets the twins did HERE and HERE. Gavin is slightly more confident so I had him do the one with 3 digits. You can find a variety of seasonal worksheets if you head to this portion of their website HERE.

Hiding behind worksheets

The little ones worked on GeoTraxs of course. Our kitchen is a lovely sunny place in the daytime and deemed a perfect place to build their city. I am amazed at how well the two of them shared, though sadly they both can’t seem to kick this cold! 

GeoTrax

Today’s big crafting project was to make a felt tic-tac-toe board with a Valentine’s theme. You can find the original idea I worked from HERE. Each of the hearts were sewn by the boys (twins) with minimal assistance. We used the felt sheets with adhesive on the back for the board itself and the pink cross hatches. I think they turned out wonderfully. 

Sewing hearts

Completed board

Ken and I had a special Valentine’s Day lunch! He surprised me with Pizza Hut delivery – Calzones and Pepsi. Nothing super fancy but sitting together, watching an episode of my newest anime (Black Butler) and chatting was more than enough for me! The kids were sent to quiet time or naps in their rooms with the doors closed (the twins were more than willing with new toys to take an enjoy and a break from schooling) so it really was JUST US and in the DAYTIME no less! Fancy glasses for the pop (Harp beer ones, Ken’s) and all!

Lunch!

We still have a few more worksheets to accomplish that have a Valentine’s Day theme (and our Valentines to complete for the weekend’s cookie party). I figure we can spend the rest of the week to do those, as well as our Inuit studies. As it is we have a lovely stack of finished bits to go into our lapbook already! What we did do is have a lovely visit with Karyn and her mom who is up for the week. They stopped by with Valentine’s … My Little Pony Valentines! 

Visiting

While they were here Gavin created a castle out of magnets which we OF COURSE had to take a picture of!

Magnetic castle

And now we are enjoying out house guest once again. Sean got bored at home and decided to come back. A broken foot apparently means little or no entertainment when you live on your own. 

So, nothing extravagant for me over Valentine’s Day… but then again why do I need ONE day to express my love for Ken? We had that one day almost 11 years ago when we pledged to love and be faithful to each other for the rest of our lives. Each day from there on is a reflection of that promise and that love. Something I want to be more aware of. No, I don’t need ONE day, I have ALL my days for the rest of my life to remember and recognize and celebrate that decision and pledge. We may not have much but we have each other, the kids, our love and our faith. Well… come to think of it, that is a whole lot! 

One more of Echo cuz I can!