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Monday, November 26, 2018

Eyes and Vision Unit Study and Lesson Plan

This was a pretty short unit, and we have learned about some of these concepts before, in our Nervous System and Light and Optics Units. (And even way back in our Illusion Unit!) But it was a fun review, and we loved all the cool Optical Illusions books we got from the library!
The best part of our unit was visiting an optometrist's office. He is a homeschool dad, and he was wonderful at explaining to the children what he does and how all his cool equipment works. We loved it!

A couple other links of interest:


Thursday, October 18, 2018

Zoo Field Trip

We ended our Elephant Unit with a trip to the zoo, of course!
It was a quiet day at the zoo, so we stayed a little longer than usual and rode the carousel, and played on some of the playgrounds we don't usually get to play on. 
Taking a little rest
Some people are happier than others about being eaten by a lion.
Some people appear not to even notice.
Baby giraffe!
And this zebra's name was Ziggy!

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Elephant Unit Study and Lesson Plan

Goldie loves elephants, so we did an Elephant Unit for her first "official" unit of Kindergarten! She had just seen real elephants for the first time on our trip to the Wild Animal Park, and then we ended this unit with a field trip to the zoo, so it was an exciting couple of months for her! She was so happy.
Here are some fun elephant activities we did:


Asian vs African elephant coloring pages



This elephant puppet craft was super cute too
You can find the elephant finger puppet template here
 Another version of this craft is here. It's cute to do it with party blowers (like in this picture) because they make a trumpeting sound when you blow them out to extend the elephant's trunk!

Monday, May 28, 2018

Making (tiny) Tiny Houses

As I said, the Tiny House movement is apparently a big thing in some places, and it was fun to learn a little more about it. Not sure it's compleeeetely practical with 8 children, but I'd love to live in one by myself! Ha ha. So, this assignment was for each child to make a tiny Tiny House—by which I mean, we used floor plans for real-life Tiny Houses, but we made them truly tiny! Dollhouse size.
My wonderful friend Carrie Ann, who teaches Interior Design at BYU, came over to teach a model-making workshop. She showed us how to cut foam board and make corners, how to attach flooring, how to use architect's scales, and so forth. She also brought examples of some of the models her students have made for Interior Design assignments.
After the children had some idea of how to go about constructing models, they went online and chose floor plans from real tiny houses. They converted the plans to 1/2" scale in Photoshop, and then printed them out and pasted them onto foam board.

The assignment was for each child to design a house that he or she could personally live in. (Daisy and Junie's house was for both of them.) They had to consider storage needs, cooking, bathrooms, etc., and use actual appliance dimensions, but they were allowed to customize the house to contain the things that they needed most (and leave out the things they didn't).
Two of the floor plans
It was so helpful to have already made a bunch of mistakes during our workshop with Carrie Ann, so we knew what to watch for when making our actual model houses!
Yes, there were still hot-glue-gun burns. But fewer of them than there might have been!
I was truly amazed at how well the children did with this assignment. They all got really into it (except maybe Malachi, who needed lots of help from Abe at the beginning—but he did a great job once he got going!) and I couldn't believe the darling, creative little touches they added to their tiny houses! We worked on these for about a week and half in all.
Malachi's house from above. He has a bedroom, a kitchen, a living area with couch, a desk, and a bathroom.
Malachi's toilet, sink, and desk with computer.
Sebastian's house from above. Seb's was probably the most meticulously constructed of all the houses. All his corners were tight and perfectly square, and his measurements were exact. He had a little shed with a separate entrance at the back of his house, plus a bathroom, kitchen/living area, and a computer area. ("I just sleep on the floor, or in my hammock," he said.)

More details: we took pictures of the girls (front and back) and printed them out tiny (to scale) and glued them onto foam board. • Here is Daisy standing at the sink washing dishes and looking out the cute little curtained window. • The girls have bunk beds with a ladder, and two tiny stuffed animals (a pig and a penguin) to snuggle with. • In the laundry room, you can see a washer, a clothesline, and two folded towels. The pink thing at the bottom is a bowl sink Daisy made, with a faucet over it.

A house fit for a queen—or two! Such a fun, fun project!