Cave Unit Study and Activities

We started the school year off learning about Caves because I wanted something I knew would be engaging for Ziggy. There are some really fun field trips to go with caves and I just thought he would love the geology! And he did!

This unit lasted until Halloween so we got to do some fun Halloween tie-ins with bats also. Our previous Cave Unit can be found here (this went along with a trip to New Mexico and Carlsbad Caverns! I wish we could go there again!).

Some miscellaneous resources:

An interesting website: https://www.design42.com/caving/home.htm

Cool movie about The Deepest Cave

A short film about Carlsbad Caverns

Interesting film: Inside Hidden Caves

We also watched a good video called "Hidden Forests" which I can't find right now.

There's a Planet Earth section on Caves: (Season 1 Episode 4)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09226TR6X/ref=aiv_DVAPI_watchlistToggle

I've always been fascinated by this giant crystal cave. They've learned a lot more about it since I first learned about it ten years ago in our first cave unit!

We learned about the Lascaux caves and other prehistoric cave art and did these "cave paintings" on paper bags. (Something like this.) We used chalk and crayons, and even burned the ends of some skewers so we could use "charcoal" like the ancient people did.

Gus and Clementine joined in too

Clementine (she looks so young here!) was very pleased with herself

Big kindergarten boy

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This was a little activity on dissolution when we were talking about how stalactites and stalagmites are formed. Ideas here:

Dissolving M&Ms and Amazing Solubility

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This was a fun activity (idea from here)—we put a soluble mineral (sugar cubes) under an insoluble mineral (clay) and dripped water through a small hole in the clay. The sugar dissolved in the water, leaving cavities underneath the clay.

We could see how some caves form in the sides of cliffs, and other areas form sinkholes beneath the ground level

Lots of little caverns here—I wish I could shrink myself and go in exploring!

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Best of all were the multitude of drawings of spelunkers Ziggy did during this unit! We watched some movies about cave divers and cave explorers and his imagination was really caught by that. He drew his poor little explorers squeezing through so many tight and winding caverns! (They didn't mind, though, because they were so prepared with lanterns, ropes, hooks, and so forth! And because they got to see so many wonders!)

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For our culminating activity of this unit, we decorated our trunk (for the ward Trunk or Treat) like a cave! We made stalactites and stalagmites, and hung bats from the ceiling. It looked cute, and we were rather proud of it…but then we saw a bunch of other amazing trunks other people had decorated and realized it was not quite as impressive as we'd thought. :) But we had fun making it all the same!

A Place of Refuge

I can't believe how long ago the beginning of last school year feels! And here it is time to start the school year again and I'm just barely getting to posting about it! We had a great year. It was Ziggy's first year, his kindergarten year, and (once he got used to the idea) he was such a fun and happy little student! He always wanted to know what we were learning about next and what our activity was for the day, and was very disappointed if there wasn't one!

Anyway, we had a nice High Tea for our back-to-school dinner, and it was so delicious! The girls and I have been out to a few Afternoon Teas and we always feel they are lacking something. Quality or quantity. So this time we did it right—made all our best homemade tea foods, and enough of them that one could finally have one's fill!

Our family theme for the school year was "A Place of Refuge." I talked about how we could make our home a place of safety and love. We decorated with Wildlife Refuge and Bird Refuge signs and animal balloons.

The tea was SO good. We had cucumber, chicken salad, and egg salad sandwiches, homemade scones (I've never made English scones before! They were good) with lemon curd and raspberry jam, little lemon curd and chocolate mousse tarts, and cream cheese brownies. We also had hot chocolate and raspberry-leaf tea.

Scones

To help us remember our theme, I gave the girls little bird necklaces and the boys socks with manta rays (and other animals? Now I'm forgetting what they were!) on them.

It was a great start to the school year!

Civil War Celebration

Our culminating unit Celebration was lots of fun! Earlier in the unit we'd talked about the new art of photography and photographers of the Civil War. Then I'd had the children take photos that told a story. We displayed them at our celebration.

Here's the invitation to our celebration, which was modeled after Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball.

Here are the tickets—each admits one gentleman and two ladies! (These are pictures of the actual documents. It's cool to see how they really looked.)

We had one hoop skirt already, and I bought two more so all of the girls could dress up. They LOVED that! There was a great flurry of preparation all day long, doing their hair and getting all dressed.

They were lovely Civil War Belles!

Daisy did such pretty hairstyles for everyone.

And at the last moment they decided Clementine must be dressed up too, so they put her in this rather…Medieval-looking dress and a too-bit petticoat. She felt very grand!

Here are the guests arriving at the ball, the ladies on the arms of their gentlemen.

For some reason Gus felt this was appropriate attire.

We had a program to start everything off, where the children presented their Civil War Final Projects.

Ziggy hopped in at the last moment with a nice presentation on "what's in a Civil War Soldier's backpack."

Clementine added her two cents

Malachi presented "Babies of the Civil War"

And the other presentations can be read about in this post.

Next…the fancy buffet! I shortened the original menu a bit, but took all the menu items I did use from the original :) 

A great spread! For dessert I Mary Todd Lincoln's almond cake, which was surprisingly good! Very light because of the whipped egg whites, and with a nice almond flavor. It was dry a few days later, but not at all dry the day we made it. Here's the recipe…I actually blended up the almonds instead of just chopping them, so they were very fine!

Mary Todd Lincoln's White Almond Cake

Waiting politely for their food…unlike the guests at the real ball, who trampled over each other and made a huge mess when they descended upon the food, apparently!

After dinner we watched the silent movie The General with Buster Keaton (so good!) and then there was, of course, a little dancing!