India Unit Schedule and Lesson Plan

We really loved learning about India. What a fascinating country! We would love to go there someday. I have a sari that my aunt and uncle brought back to me on one of their trips to India, so we took turns wrapping it and putting it on, with varying levels of success.

Malachi thought it was VERY funny to have a boy wear a sari.

Abe opted for a turban instead.

A couple links that didn't fit easily anywhere else:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=prQOdTmF8u0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DprQOdTmF8u0

Some Indian dancing we enjoyed

http://ourlifesimplified.com/kitchen/all-recipes/homemade-yogurt-in-a-crockpot/#axzz20tQHKBNL
We made yogurt a couple different times during the unit, after much consultation and help from some friends. It was really yummy. We are still perfecting our technique, but this recipe is one I'll use in the future (when I get a new crock pot . . . I realized my crock pot must be broken after it kept  the milk at 160 degrees for FOURTEEN  HOURS without ever getting hotter. So the stove method is faster for me at the moment).  Anyway, the yogurt made delicious lassi and it tasted awesome on our coconut dal. Which I should post the recipe to also, and I will link it here when I get it up.

Halloween Party

We had a fun Halloween Party!  (It was during our Elections unit, so we did have an activity where we listed qualities we wanted in a president, and then qualities we wanted in a cookie. We drew upon this cookie election activity, though we didn't follow it exactly.) And we happily enjoyed the gorgeous, 70-degree weather by playing at the playground.

We made ghosts out of kleenex and egg cartons (sort of like this). (All the people in these pictures are making spooky ghost sounds.)

And here is a convention of ghosts going for a lovely walk in the starlight.

We made these cookies with this recipe.

Election Night party

Whoa, this picture is bright.

This peanut butter cup pie was really good.

Speeches and Ribbon Flag

We talked about how public speaking is an important part of running for office (and other parts of life, really), and we talked about the kind of speeches that political candidates give. Then I found this online teleprompter, which is SO FUN. So we wrote speeches and took turns giving them to each other, with the assistance of the prompter. (The most coveted position was that of Teleprompter Controller.)

I guess I don't have any pictures of Malachi speaking, but he was great. Here is his speech: 

"Hello, my name is President Malachi. I am going to give a great speech about all the things I'm going to do. I am going to make a law that nobody can go in the White House without permission. I will make a very tall White House with 100 floors and a big point and a tram that goes to the roof. And I will make an escalator that goes all the way up, and there will be a huge rocket that I could ride in. Bye-bye now; thank you for listening to my great tall speech."

We also made this American flag for our door, out of ribbons. I think it's quite cute (if slightly uneven). We followed the instructions here . . . sort of. Our ribbons were a different width and that made everything more complicated. But we had fun anyway!

Elections Unit

This unit was on Elections. We did a government unit earlier and learned about different political systems, but this was focused on mostly just our American election process, including the electoral college etc. 

As you can see, we had a lovely time experimenting with "hanging chads," "dimpled chads" and so forth :)  [A few weeks later, Malachi came running in excitedly after he'd been trying to use the three-hole punch to put a piece of paper in his binder. "Mommy! Look! I got three hanging chads!" So cute.]

We went on a field trip to a campaign office and learned what goes on there (quite interesting---but would have been more interesting in another state, perhaps) :)

One of the best parts of the unit was when my cousin Heidi came to speak to us. She's a city council member in American Fork, so she told us about running for office, what her duties include, her favorite parts of the job, and so forth. It was fascinating. She's our favorite politician!

More resources:

http://pbskids.org/democracy/be-president/ My kids liked this "President for a Day" game

http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Special-Offers.aspx Electoral map, with historical electoral totals included

http://magazines.scholastic.com/election-2012 Another fun game (you \have to click on "electoral challenge game" on the right)

http://bensguide.gpo.gov/files/Ben_Activity_webversion.pdf A coloring book of American symbols

There's also an interactive White House tour at the White House website. My kids thought it was pretty cool.

Authors Week

This was a really fun week that I have hardly any pictures of! When I planned this, I was remembering the "Young Author's Conference" that we used to have when I was in Elementary School. You had to write and illustrate (and put together) your own book in order to be eligible. Once you had done that, you had the privilege of attending the all-day conference (while everyone else was slaving away in their regular classes!). You got to read/tell about your book to everyone else, and then there were writing workshops and guest authors, and you got to eat your lunch in the faculty room, and best of all there were donuts or some other refreshments at the end of the day! I remember it very fondly, as you can tell, and I wanted to find some way we could have a similarly fun experience with the writing process, start to finish. 

We did spend some time on basic story structure, but I also wanted to study some different authors' lives, so I read quite a few (meant-for-adults) biographies of children's book authors that we like. I picked the best ones (some were very depressing, and/or shocking---like Lewis Carroll! Goodness!) to summarize for the kids, and then we also found several shorter, meant-for-children biographies that I read to them. Nothing really stellar. "Biographies for children," as a genre, is clearly in need of some new talent. The ones I found were either cloyingly insipid ("Young Ted never did well in school, but once he just believed in himself he was stunningly successful!") or achingly dull ("After many years at Punch, an English Literary Magazine, Arthur became interested in theater criticism . . .").

Every day we worked on some new aspect of writing their stories. Daisy and Malachi insisted on being included, so they dictated their stories to me and I wrote them down. (Daisy is surprisingly attached to her book. She gets it out and pores over it, even by herself, every day, and loves to have it read to her.) 

By the end of the week (after much work---copying the final drafts took the most time, and I ended up typing the last few pages for even Abe and Seb, since I decided the point of this was not handwriting technique, though they did get several hours' worth of that), we were ready to bind our books! This was very, very exciting for the children. But when we went to the Kinko's/FedEx copy store, the guy told us it would be $19 to laminate and bind (simple spiral binding) ONE BOOK. What?!? We went to Stevenson's in Provo the next day instead, and did all four books for under $9, so let that be a lesson to you! :)

In order for us to have the full, Young-Author-y experience I was envisioning, however, our week needed a GUEST AUTHOR. Luckily, I had one in mind: our friend Kristen Randle. I had read some of her books when I was in high school, but I rediscovered her as an adult and liked her newer books even better (and even did a bit of editing for her). Best of all, I knew she was a fascinating person to talk to, and good with children. And she graciously agreed to come be our GUEST AUTHOR. Hooray!

And she was SO good. Warm and funny and down-to-earth. She taught the children all about the history of books---bookbinding---publication---the printing process---and a bunch of other things---and she helped them create a character and the bare bones of a plot which we were supposed to continue working on later. (And we will---though we haven't yet.) We were SO enthralled by her.

And of course, we had a delicious AUTHORS LUNCH, with fancy luncheon-type foods which we only have on special occasions and which the children helped me prepare: vegetable bars and artichoke dip and homemade hot cocoa in the crockpot.  So that made us all feel very fancy. All in all, it was a lovely week!

Plastic Bag Hot Air Balloon

We really wanted to try making our own hot air balloon from a plastic bag. There are a lot of different ways to do it, and tutorials. I thought this one looked most promising (the instructions are very detailed). There are 6 videos to watch. We almost, almost got our balloon to fly. It hovered for a moment. But it just wouldn't go all the way up. We tried it first with a dry-cleaning bag (it started to melt before getting very far up, though it did stand up) and then with a small trash can liner we got at church, but it must have still been too thick---or perhaps the folds on top needed to be smoothed out so they didn't get so hot (he shows this in one of the videos).

We would have tried again, but we had no more bags, no more candles, and no more time that day! But it was a really fun project, and not too difficult. The boys did all the measuring and taping/cutting of the straw frame, the foil, etc. by themselves, and I helped with attaching the candles to the foil. I read that you can use hot glue instead of melting the wax, and I think that would have worked better (the wax had a tendency to be unstable). There are other good troubleshooting suggestions on this main page also.

Candle platform

Measuring the bag

Attaching the "frame"

Ready to fly

We do have this on our list of things to do another time! I really think we can get it to work better, so next time I have to have something dry cleaned we'll give it another go!

We also might give one of these methods a try (there are several other tutorials like this one around), but because the heating apparatus is not attached, I'm not sure it would be as effective. Might be worth trying, though.

Fully inflated

Almost!

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

[Since I already wrote a long post on the Balloon Fiesta for my other blog, and since I don't believe I have any other school-related observations to share, I'll just reproduce that post here:]

As I believe I've mentioned before, going to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta has always been something I've wanted to do, ever since we tried (and failed, due to windy conditions) to see it when I was three years old. I love hot air balloons! When at long last we planned this trip at the correct time of year, I was fully prepared for it to be cancelled due to wind or rain again. But we were hoping, hoping (and praying) that the weather would cooperate! The Friday was rainy and cold, but the Saturday and Sunday were bright and clear and lovely. We were so happy! It was everything we'd hoped, and even better. When the first balloons go up, it's still pretty dark outside, and as they turn on their burners, they light up like floating lanterns in the sky. These first balloons also have little lights floating from their baskets---tiny diamonds below them---see?

Then suddenly the sky starts turning pink, and you walk onto the field and you're surrounded by all these huge, breathing, billowing creatures. They sway uncertainly as they lurch upright, like a genie who's spent too long in his bottle and is feeling rather stiff. I love being in among the balloons. I think they seem friendly, even when they puff fire and make hraaaa! noises at you.

They rise up into the sky a few at a time at first, and then suddenly whole swarms of them are lifting off: stretching and straining upwards and finally breaking free of the earth.

Hundreds!

There are lots of funny ones: floppy-trunked elephants and storks and clocks and penguins.

Those were a big hit with the children.

When the sun comes up, everything becomes, if possible, even more beautiful. Rainbow bubbles catching the sunlight!

They are mesmerizing.

I have experienced nothing like it. The sheer numbers . . . over 700 balloons, I think . . . and the way they loft so simultaneously into the sky around you. It's like you're underwater, watching the whole world float up past you to the surface. I can only imagine how cool it would be to lift off within that colored cloud.

We watched from a different viewpoint the next day. From that distance, there was less of the submerged-by-balloons feeling, but there was the sudden breathless surprise of seeing them suddenly foaming up out of the trees, surging out in waves like bubbles from a bubble machine.

And then spilling over the buildings and right over our heads.

Abe took this picture out the back window of the car. A flock of bright birds following us back to our hotel!

All the way back.

That night we went back to watch them glow again. No flying this time, but they stood in rows and blinked on and off like fireflies. It reminded me so much of the gas lamps that light Embassy Row in London---the sound of the gas hissing gently in the dark; the fuzzy edges of the light, so different from the starkness of fluorescence; the feeling of being in another time. It was beautiful.

There were fireworks to cap it all off; you can see that we are a family that enjoys fireworks. (Sort of embarrassing: need I be quite so stereotypically "ooh-and-ah"-ing?) (Though I do especially like Sebby's dumbfounded expression.)