Pirate Costumes

We were in the thick of our Pirate Unit for Halloween (we'd just finished learning about bats and making our bats, which was Halloweeny too, and all without any intention on my part!) and Marigold made the best Halloween costume with things we had around the house! I loved it! She used the red coat from when Sebby was a British soldier years ago, and she was a bold and fearsome Pirate Queen! (With a little squishy parrot on her shoulders!)

When Ziggy saw Goldie's costume, he was inspired to make one of his own. He always has loved to come up with costumes! (And here is a different parrot entirely.)

Clem-parrot

Another iteration of Zig's costume

Good little pirates!

Bats

 

We all became quite wild about bats during this unit! We spent a whole week (or so?) studying them. Our favorite activity was making these cut-out paper bats to decorate the house with, which seems so simple, and it was, but somehow en masse these bats became so dramatic, we thought they were one of the best decorations we'd ever made!

We got the general idea here and used her basic templates, but we soon graduated to making our own shapes, adding ears, and varying other little details. We liked making them in slightly different sizes too. I invested in some heavy waterproof paper (Graftix 12x12 craft plastic, to be precise) so we could hang them outside, though we actually ended up hanging them all in the living room. But I was still glad to have the stiffer paper since I am hoping to be able to reuse them for multiple years.

We loved this Bat Documentary

A little explanation of echolocation

The little kids loved making bats too. Gus was fascinated with the way you could fold a paper in half, cut out a shape, and then unfold it and have a bat! He made a bunch of his own bats with the cutest little faces.

Tiny bat! Daisy made this one for him, I think.

Ziggy really did well at making them, too. We had the littler kids use regular black construction paper (and white scratch paper too!) to make theirs, because the plastic was a little harder to cut. And I didn't want to waste it.

Downstairs bats

Upstairs bats. Sam helped us put them up so they would look like they were all flying out in a huge cloud from a cave somewhere. Junie made a nice round moon for them to fly past. I loved how they looked! I can't wait to put them up net Halloween (which will actually be NEXT year from when I'm writing this…in 2025…because we will be in Quebec for Fall 2024!)

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!

Bunny Celebration

What a celebration it was! Abe and Seb helped me figure out place settings. Bunny ears and bowls made cute heads, and Abe taped some of those little glass beads (you know, the ones you use inside vases) on for eyes. Cute!

We all wore our ears during dinner, of course.

Even Marigold.

Peter Rabbit dishes I got years ago, at Beatrix Potter's house (Hill Top) in England

We put out all our bunny things on the table. That tiny brown ball on the white plate at center is a whole nutmeg seed with ears drawn onto it. Seb made it to represent our bunny Nutmeg :) And the little blue plate on the lazy susan is Nutmeg's plate of parsley (this celebration was in his honor, after all)

Our menu was all bunny-themed, of course

The bunny sweet roll recipe is here. I can't believe I haven't posted the recipe for vegetable bars before! It's one of our very favorite recipes. I'll put it into a separate post too. And the carrot-and-celery soup, also one of our favorites, is as follows:

Carrot and Celery Soup

1 med. onion, chopped

1-2 c. diced carrots

1-2 c. diced celery

1/4 c. butter

1/4 c. flour

1 1/2 T. cornstarch

1/2 t. paprika

1 t. salt

dash of pepper

2 c. chicken broth

About 4 c. milk

1-2 c. grated cheddar cheese

Fresh parsley

Saute the onions, celery, and carrots in the butter until the onions are transparent. Add flour, cornstarch, paprika, salt, and pepper. Add chicken stock and cook over medium heat until vegetables are soft (about 5 minutes in pressure cooker). Puree mixture with a hand blender until only small bits of vegetable remain, or as desired. Add milk and keep heating, but don't boil. Taste to correct seasoning. Just before serving, stir in shredded cheese and parsley.

I thought these bunny salads were our masterpieces. The bunny bodies are pear halves, set on a bed of lettuce. They were inspired by a picture I saw here, but I don't think the ones pictured are very cute. Too bug-eyed and toothy! And the almond ears are too small (unless you're making Netherland Dwarf bunnies, which we weren't). So we cut our ears out of apples and stuck chocolate chips on for eyes and noses (we would have used raisins if we'd had any on hand). The tails are mini marshmallows (cottage cheese would have been cute, but again . . . we were out). And Seb made the baby carrots out of . . . baby carrots. With parsley sprigs stuck into them.

For the top of the cake, we just cut out a bunny stencil shape from paper, then sprinkled toasted coconut into it. Seb made the little carrot for the bunny to eat.

We got out all our bunny friends to attend our party---

which ended with us frolicking with our favorite bunny of all, Nutmeg! We love him so much.