Thanks to some of my wonderful blog readers we were able to come up with the coolest boards for our Geography Fair this year! My daughter did China, she read a wonderful report and presented her Great wall of China display. (Her outfit came from a lovely friend of mine, I realize it’s a little more Japanese, but don’t tell her that!) My son did his report on Japan, he was a total super star. His sister sat quietly by incase he needed help with bigger words, and after the morning practice we did I was slightly concerned for the audience. But it’s so cool when you get to see your kids just bring it to the table when the pressures on! He did better than I could’ve hoped and even pushed his sister away letting her know he didn’t need her help. You can’t tell because he’s in front of them, but thanks to my mom he had real Samurai Swords to show off, of course this was his favorite part of the display! (They’re shown in the top picture if you’re … [Read more...]
Care package from Japan
We were so excited to receive this awesome care package from one of my readers who lives in Japan! She nicely put together a whole selection full of goodies for my kids! We’re having a blast going through all of it, and my kids and I want to give a HUGE thank you to Marla for her kindness and generosity! They were so excited to see things from Japan since they studied it a few weeks back for our Expedition Earth Geography studies. My son was so excited that he’s going to do Japan for our Geography fair in December and we’ll be using some of this cool stuff for our display! Thanks so much Marla, this was so cool! … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth ~ Thailand Floating Boats Craft
Sawa dee ka! This week we made Krathong Floating boats for our Geography Curriculum week on Thailand! This craft went much better than our Columbus Day Boat craft so I thought I’d share our building strategies! Supplies: Cardboard Masking Tape Tin Foil Popsicle sticks and any other decorating items you’d like Play-doh (optional: we used it to secure the popsicle sticks that were holding up the sails) Directions: STEP 1: Cut a rectangle out of cardboard and fold in each side so it makes a “U” shape as below. I used masking tape to hold it in place. STEP 2: Cover the boat with tin foil, making sure to pinch ends together in a pointy shape to keep water from getting into boat. STEP 3: Using popsicle sticks and whatever else you like, decorate your boat. We used the sticks for oars and also to hold up our sails. We placed a small ball of play-doh inside the boats and stuck the sail popsicle sticks into it. Step 4: Present your finished boat to Mom for blog pics: … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth ~ Thailand
Sawa dee ka! Welcome to our Geography Curriculum week on Thailand! Here are some of the highlights of the week: Of course we stamped our passports and greeted each other, Sawa dee ka! Each day we review all the countries we’ve learned so far. I also ask about capitals, language, how to say hello and what the money is for each country just for review. Of course we learned about animals found in Thailand and then added them to our Animal Wall We worked on our Mapping Thailand activity: We made these cute Krathong Floating Boats after studying about the Thailand Floating Markets: Since Thailand was our last country in Asia, we did a quick review of all the countries and colored in the ones we learned about on the Asia map. Of course we went out for Thai food to complete our week! It’s all part of my “Erica doesn’t cook on Friday nights” meal plan ;o) When we were eating my preschooler saw the waiter walk by and started saying “sawa dee ka! sawa … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth ~ Israel
Shalom! Welcome to our Geography Curriculum week on Israel! Here are some of the highlights of the week: Of course we stamped our passports and greeted each other, Shalom! We located Israel on the map. This is the smallest country we’ve done so far, so the kids really had to look to find it. We played the Israeli version of tic tac toe. instead of marking your spot with an X or an O they use colored rocks. And instead of putting them in the blanks the rocks are placed on the intersections of the lines. 3 in a row wins! We learned about the Dome of the Rock, and made a painting with foil on top. We worked on our Israel Lapbook Component: We learned about animals found in Israel, the Teeny Tot was particularly tickled with this activity. We finished our animal lapbooks then classified them on our wall, here are our favorites: We made these cool stone inlays that we’ll use as coasters. I do have to point out that this didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d expected … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth ~ India
Namaste! And welcome to our Expedition Earth week on India! This week we learned a lot about India's culture and animals! Of course we started off by stamping our passports! We found India on the map, then located the capital, Mediterranean Sea an Dead Sea: We colored and learned about the flag of India. We made fun inlay jewel mosaics. For this I used self hardening Crayola Clay and plastic jewels. We learned about animals from India: Then we talked about the facts we learned about them and classified them on our wall. We learned about the Taj Mahal, and then made a craft. Oh the paper Taj Mahal craft…sigh…what can i say other than this was a task! I ended up having to put most of it together as the cutting was a bit tedious. Also, a tip for you: Make sure to ENLARGE this quite a bit. I quadrupled the size of it and the little tops were still difficult to fold in. I think it would have been easier if it were bigger. We made Lassi (a sweet drink) I liked this, but … [Read more...]
Japan Craft ~ Karesansui Mini-Garden
We made these fun (again with the messy!) Japanese Karesansui Mini-Gardens today. The idea behind the creation of the sand garden was to symbolize nature using natural materials such as stones, sand and gravel. The gravel was raked in order to create the illusion of rippling water. The use of plants was kept to the bare minimum. I searched for those cute little rakes, but didn’t find any that were cheap so I ended up making my own. I have wooden pieces in our craft closet so I glued some small wood sticks onto a wood square then topped it off with another wood square to make small little rakes. They worked quite well I thought and were a good size for small hands. We practiced tracing around the rocks, then took them off and did designs then added them back on. (Just a tip from the trenches here, but even though I had these nice little containers for our gardens, sand did end up all over.) My preschooler made a drawing of her with Jesus which I thought was cute, “no … [Read more...]
Japan Craft ~ Origami
We used Fun with Easy Origami for our project this week. The step by step instructions made it easy, and the book comes with32projects and 24 sheets of origami paper. It’s thinner than regular paper and so I think easier to fold. Here are our final creations: The blue one is a pig, the red a Carp, and the green a pelican. Here we are in action, my 7 year old could follow most of the instructions, but I did have to help my 6 year old and 4 year old. Here was my preschooler’s “fancy box”, it wasn’t quite as “fancy” as it was supposed to be, but it was, um, box like ;o) My son chose the pelican and carp fish. We had some trouble with the pelican, but the others came out well. And here are our final projects, well, minus the “fancy box” which seems to have disappeared? Maybe it IS “fancy” after all! … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth – Japan
Konnichiwa! We had a great adventure in Japan this week as we went through our Geography Curriculum! I’m so glad I took the time to get it all together, it’s really paying off and the kids are having a great time learning about our world! Here are some of the highlights of the week: Of course we stamped our passports and greeted each other! I’ve found it useful to review all the continents and oceans daily, then we review all of the countries for the continent, this might not work as well once we’re on country 31, but for now each day we’ll review the countries for Asia: China, S. Korea, and Japan. And yes, my preschooler is doing it! We studied our animals of Japan when they were done writing all the fact sentences they each picked their favorite animal to show you: After that we classified our animals, I did some re-organization of our wall to make room for the over abundance of mammals! I hope they all fit on the wall, after looking at it closer, I doubt they will, … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth ~ South Korea
Ahn-yong-ha-seh-yo! We had a great week learning about South Korea, my preschooler especially liked the song this week, the vibrato was right up her alley! I apologize for the lack of pictures for this week, but the unthinkable happened on day 3…that’s right…I dropped my camera on the hard wood floor and well…let’s just say it’s apparently not okay to do that. First I panicked, next I tried desperately to fix it, then I called my mommy crying and she happened to have a spare camera which she so kindly donated to our cause. Thanks MOM! But despite this sadly lacking in photos post, we did have fun week! We worked on our Animal Unit lapbook components: Here is everyone displaying their favorite animal: We added our animals to the Classification Wall: We did our lapbook activity: And we made jeweled crowns: Here are some more of the things we learned about this week some of which will sadly only exist in our memories now: Completed our Mapping Worksheet Learned … [Read more...]
