Eyes and Ears Wall

I haven't shown any of our working walls recently so before I took everything down from our Attentiveness unit, I snapped a picture.  I first mentioned our "wall" about three years ago.  It's hard to believe so much time has passed and that I'm still doing it.

A few weeks ago we began studying the ear so after making the crawl through ear, I mounted the big auricle to my kitchen wall and had the kids help me diagram it using construction paper cut to the approximate shape of the inner ear parts.   Then I added the title of the unit with a simple explanation, "Attentiveness is listening closely and watching carefully."

I usually like to include a few quotes with our units as well as interesting fun facts.  Along with the verses in the KONOS book, I went online to Biblegateway and quickly looked up a few verses on listening and hearing, seeing and watching and printed the ones I wanted the kids to remember in really large font.  And because there are so many awesome verses in the Bible and I have such a hard time choosing, I also printed out a list of others for observation and study but not for memorization.  While I was searching on Biblegateway, I noticed that the word listen or some form of the word listen, was found 412 times.  Fun factoid found for my wall!

The week we studied the eye the kids and I worked together to make the huge diagram of the eye.  I was planning to add a bunch of optical illusions but we ran out of time and I only got one on there that I found on Pinterest.  The 3-D hand.

Paper Bag Animal Masks

Good old fashioned fun.  Today we started the Orderliness unit back up again with a focus on animal classification.  I thought it would be fun to begin the week with a craft.  While perusing the internet for some new fangled ideas I came upon  Vintage Goodness where Mitzi had blogged about vintage cookbooks.  She included a picture of some classic paper bag masks that reminded me of my childhood.  And that's when I decided.  Keep it simple.  Have a good time.  Give the kids ideas but let them design and create on their own. We're thrilled with the results.

Studies Show Homeschoolers Have A Better Chance in the Real World

Created by: College At Home

Spaghetti and Meatball Cake

Inspired by the folks over at Food Network, I had to give this spaghetti and meatball cake a try for a dear friend's 20th birthday.

This had to be a travelable treat so I made it on a cake tote tray.  (Which doesn't make for a very pretty presentation.) Fortunately before I popped the lid on, my 7yo informed me that my lid was too short!  Yikes, my cake would have been ruined before it even left the house!

Mary is a chocolate lover so I made this using a sweet, delicious, moist chocolate cake and a to-die-for, light white chocolate frosting I found on Cooks.com.  For assembly just follow the instructions at Food Network. 

Mary was also the object of my daughter's efforts recently when she made her a friendship bracelet.  The tutorial on that will be coming up soon!

 

Sound and Music

After completing our study of the ear and hearing we moved on to sound and music with a particular focus on the orchestra.  Each of the students had to give oral presentations about a chosen composer or an opinion paper on a piece of orchestral music.

Two of our teachers are blessed by God to have the wonderful gift of musical talent.  Last week Dianna and my husband talked to the kids about different types of sounds, notes and instruments.  Dianna brought her saxophone and talked about how it is played and how to get a variety of sounds from it.  My hubby taught the kids about the mechanics of stringed instruments.  Then the kids poured water into bottles to experiment with notes.  By blowing across the opening of the bottles they tried to match notes with a keyboard.  This was pretty hard.  I'm not sure they were very successful except that they discovered glass bottles would have worked better.  They also made reeds using straws with slits cut into them.  These were successful and very noisy!

This week, they focused more on musical terms, symbols on sheet music and dynamics.  For a fun review activity a teacher held up the symbol on a card and the kids had to remember what the symbol meant and then they practiced making those sounds with their voices.  After a little practice with this we got the paints out and had the kids paint pictures while listening to Beethoven's "Spring."  They were instructed to listen quietly to the music and paint what they felt or what they thought the composer was feeling or thinking when he wrote the piece.  We did NOT tell the kids what they were listening to until the activity was over.  And when they were finished we talked about the piece and the kids shared about their paintings and discussed some of the dynamics of the song that they recognized.

We like to have a physical activity each week to help the kids get the wiggles out and move around a little bit.  Praise the Lord the weather was so nice today.  As a final test to see if they are learning to be more attentive the kids went outside and took part in a directive obstacle course.  We didn't have a course set up, rather the students were given a verbal set of instructions to complete.  This got all the kids cheering for each other and running around and having a great time.

What a Good Book

This book has been on my shelf for years and I never think to pull it out.  It is just loaded with precious crafts and games and ideas for young girls looking for something to do.

I guess I make the mistake of thinking, "We're not into needlepoint and that book is too old-fashioned for us."  But there is only one chapter on needlepoint out of 42!  There is so much more to this book and such an assortment of activities.  You'll find something for every season and everything from modeling clay to instructions for making a hammock, from window decorations to recipes, from nature study to recycling projects and lots of different party ideas with activities to do at them.

So this blog post, while a gentle nudge for you to go get this book if you haven't already acquired it is also a reminder for me to just get it off the shelf and begin using it.

Busy Bees