Oops!

Oops! The previous post shows a picture of North America, but states Asia underneath it. I've fixed the file and re-uploaded it so that it is now correct. Sorry about that error.

:-) Leann

Deserts of the World

After researching about deserts, I thought I'd make some 3 part cards of most of the major deserts around the world. The cards include 2 sets of images for several deserts... one is a hand drawn image of the world, showing where the desert is located, and the 2nd is the satellite image of the continent where the desert is located. Some deserts only have the satellite image. On the last page, there is a large graphic of composite views of the world with the deserts labeled.

I want to say a special THANK YOU to Sheri Amsel of www.exploringnature.org who allowed me to use her hand drawn images for the cards.

You can get them here.

I hope you can use them as you study deserts!

Checking out the cacti

After our initial discussion about cacti, I decided that we need to go see a cactus to understand its properties. We headed to a local nursery, Twelve Corners, to investigate. Unfortunately, the did not have any.

Our next stop... (and the only other place that I knew that definitely had cacti)... Wal-Mart.

Here are a couple of pictures of Aikman checking out the cacti.

At one point, he didn't realize that some species had very sharp needles, and put his hand right on top of it. ouch! ouch! ouch!

I captured the moment right after he touched it, and I asked him if he'd ever touch another cactus again. The response: "No! No!"

It all started with a cactus...

This morning at breakfast, Aikman asked, "What's a cactus?" So, while we ate our breakfast, I showed him pictures of cacti, which lead us into a discussion about singular and plural words (cactus vs. cacti). We talked about the different shapes and sizes, and unfortunately, we even had to talk about how some people are "not very nice" in pictures with cacti (I'm not going to expound any further, but you can find out yourself when you google image the word cactus).

That lead to a discussion about where cacti live, and pulling up images of the desert. He's even asked if we can do some activities about the desert.

So, be looking for posts later this week (and probably some printables too) about the desert.

Scavenger Hunt... SWEET!

Colleen at Sunrise Learning Lab put together a cool scavenger hunt for snack foods from different continents. We had to complete a couple of different tasks. We chose North America.

Here's our list...

1. Our 3 favorite snack foods are: apples, cantaloupe, and chips. We typically keep a small stash of bagged chips on hand, and they have a tendency to disappear quickly.

2. A snack food that is common on my continent, but we do not eat... brownies! (... or anything chocolate for that matter... I'm allergic, so I just don't buy it! I can't even stand the smell of it! ICK... how do you people eat it?!?!)

3. Snacks from all the different colors of the rainbow:

red -apple

orange - cantaloupe

yellow - cheesestick

green - celery

blue - blueberries

violet - homemade blackberry jam on toast

4. Our favorite snack recipe: our version of a blueberry parfait! This is a picture of a pretty one. Sorry, no picture of this one from us... we didn't have any yogurt on hand to make it!

Here's our recipe:

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

1/3-1/2 cup granola (depending on your taste for crunchiness)

small handful of blueberries

Mix together and enjoy!

There are still 3 other parts that we need to post about for this scavenger hunt, but that will be tomorrow's post!

My first freebie!

We have been working on recognizing coins, so I made some 3 part cards and coin mats to go along with what we have been working on.

If your child is working on counting coins or skip counting, here's some great Montessori style mats to practice. I can just hear some little ones counting... 5, 10, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25! Right now, it's a little too difficult for Aikman, as we haven't worked on skip counting yet; however, it won't be too long until he's there!

Please leave me some feedback whether you like them or not. I have made some more coin mats for practicing other coin combinations that I'll be posting soon too, so stay tuned for more within the next day or two.

You can download them here.

Have a great day, and enjoy!

I won an award!

Thanks to my wonderful bloggy friend Colleen at Sunrise Learning Lab, she has given me her very own award... the Wild About Your Blog Award! I feel so honored to be one of the first people EVER to receive this award.

Isn't it just cute with all of the zoo animals that her boys drew?!?!? I will pass on the bloggy love in a few days, and post some facts about me then.

So, what have we been up to today? Well, we went blackberry picking this morning at my grandfather's farm. Mmmmm.... blackberries! I can't wait to gobble 'em up and make my favorite dish--blackberry dumplins!

Stay tuned for the next post... my first freebie is coming!

Fabulous Finds Friday!

I'm stealing my dear friend Colleen's post title (hope you don't mind Colleen!), and showing off my new finds from yardsale-ing today. I happened to find a teacher who was leaving K-2 to move up to higher grades, and she was selling ALL of her lower grades work... it was AWESOME! Luck for me, she had messed up advertising the sale, and there was no one there, which meant that I got to rummage through all of her stuff.... and there was a LOT of stuff!

I managed to steal away a hundred number board, a blending game, 2 kiddie goggles (for experiments), 4 sets of tangram, a box of magnetix, and some blend and digraph letter tiles. Just for the heck of it, she threw in a wooden craft pumpkin too.

We've already put the hundred number board in use. Aikman has a little bit of trouble counting past 30, so I thought this would be a great way for him to practice. Dad found a big bat full of gumballs, and we had a great time estimating how many were inside. Then we opened it and put each gumball on one spot of the board, so he could count how many there were. Dad won, with a guess of 50, as there were actually 52.

Oh, and my light table swap buddies... you've got some tangrams headed your way in the near future! (If you are interested in a different twist on learning with a Reggio Emilia light table swap, please head over to the Sunrise Learning Lab blog and sign up!)

A kid in a candy store!

That's how I felt today after the mailman ran!

He delivered a ton of FREE Scholastic magazines and posters; even some materials in Spanish and German.

I LOVE this one, which shows the lifecycle of a frog... in English AND the identical page in Spanish. In the same issue, there's a big poster of a rainbow of frogs on one side (in English), and then rainforest animals on the back in Spanish.

Of course, Clifford was a big hit too, but I was even more impressed with what they sent us... lifecycle of a butterfly AND lifecycle of a sunflower! (Can you tell I'm all about lifecycles right now???) The Let's Find Out magazine included activities for non-standard measurements of flowers, sight word practice, and even a comparision of Eric Carle art to the real thing. The Spanish version of this magazine included activities on what different animals looked like inside of their eggs, before hatching, as well as an activity to determine if an object was/was not an insect.... with supersized posters of both!

I also got samples of several other magazines that are too old for Aikman, but I figured they might have some photos I could use or articles I could save for later. I was quite excited when I saw that the creative writing magazine Storyworks had a story about King Tut in it (perfect for our Africa continent bin). Junior Scholastic had a story about France and about saving our Earth's resources. Even the Spanish and German journals had some great photos of cityscapes around the world. Oh, and did I mention that the Scholastic News article had the lifecycle of a butterfly in it??? (WHAT? Another lifecycle you say?)

... and how can you get your hands on some of these same great resources???? There's a link for teachers! http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/classmags/sample.asp I ordered one of just about all of them! Will I order more again? Absolutely! All of these magazines came from March and April, so I'm betting that I can ask again in the fall and get different ones!

Uh-oh ZERO!

To entertain a class of 4 year olds at church yesterday, I came up with this game on the spur of the moment.

Here's how you play "Uh-oh ZERO"... write the numbers 0-5 on slips of paper and put them in a bag. Have the child stand on one side of the room, and then you draw out a number. The child reads the number, and then jumps that many places towards the wall on the opposite side of the room. If you pull out a zero, the child yell, "uh-oh ZERO" and runs back to the starting wall. The point was to get to the opposite wall, but my son didn't care about that; he just wanted to jump and read the next number.

I added a bit of excitement with Aikman when I told him that I was a whale, and he was a fish, and I was looking for food when the zero was announced. Needless to say, he thought it was hilarious and exciting to be "chased" back to the start.

On another note, I've been working on my "classroom" (formerly the spare bedroom). I've gotten a lot of it set up, but waiting until it is all done before I post pictures. With the shortage of space in this room, I've come up with a new way to display work.... I can't wait to see what you have to say about it!

Stories from Around the World -- Europe

Today's story is one of my all-time favorites.... Peter and the Wolf. The story was written by Russian Sergei Prokofiev in 1936. It is a narrated story, with an orchestra accompaniment.

The story:

Early one morning, Peter opened the gate and walked out into the big green meadow.

On a branch of a big tree sat a little bird, Peter's friend. "All is quiet" chirped the bird happily.

Just then a duck came waddling round. She was glad that Peter had not closed the gate and decided to take a nice swim in the deep pond in the meadow.

Seeing the duck, the little bird flew down upon on the grass, settled next to her and shrugged his shoulders. "What kind of bird are you if you can't fly?" said he. To this the duck replied "What kind of bird are you if you can't swim?" and dived into the pond.

They argued and argued, the duck swimming in the pond and the little bird hopping along the shore.

Suddenly, something caught Peter's attention. He noticed a cat crawling through the grass.

The cat thought; "That little bird is busy arguing, I'll just grab him. Stealthily, the cat crept towards him on her velvet paws.

"Look out!" shouted Peter and the bird immediately flew up into the tree, while the duck quacked angrily at the cat, from the middle of the pond. The cat walked around the tree and thought, "Is it worth climbing up so high? By the time I get there the bird will have flown away."

Just then grandfather came out. He was upset because Peter had gone in the meadow. "It's a dangerous place. If a wolf should come out of the forest, then what would you do?"

But Peter paid no attention to his grandfather's words. Boys like him are not afraid of wolves.

But grandfather took Peter by the hand, led him home and locked the gate.

No sooner had Peter gone, than a big grey wolf came out of the forest.

In a twinkling the cat climbed up the tree. The duck quacked, and in her excitement jumped out of the pond. But no matter how hard the duck tried to run, she couldn't escape the wolf. He was getting nearer, nearer, catching up with her. Then he got her, and with one gulp, swallowed her.

And now, this is how things stood: the cat was sitting on one branch, the bird on another . . . not too close to the cat. And the wolf walked around and around the tree, looking at them with greedy eyes.

In the meantime, Peter, without the slightest fear, stood behind the closed gate watching all that was going on. He ran home, got a strong rope, and climbed up the high stone wall.

One of the branches of the tree, around which the wolf was walking, stretched out over the wall.

Grabbing hold of the branch, Peter lightly climbed over on to the tree. Peter said to the bird: "Fly down and circle over the wolf's head. Only take care that he doesn't catch you."

The bird almost touched the wolf's head with his wings while the wolf snapped angrily at him, from this side and that.

How the bird worried the wolf! How he wanted to catch him! But the bird was clever, and the wolf simply couldn't do anything about it.

Meanwhile, Peter made a lasso and carefully letting it down, caught the wolf by the tail and pulled with all his might.

Feeling himself caught, the wolf began to jump wildly trying to get loose.

But Peter tied the other end of rope to the tree, and the wolf's jumping only made the rope around his tail tighter.

Just then, the hunters came out of the woods, following the wolf's trail and shooting as they went.

But Peter, sitting in the tree, said: "Don't shoot! Birdie and I have already caught the wolf. Now help us take him to the zoo."

And now, imagine the triumphant procession: Peter at the head; after him the hunters leading the wolf; and winding up the procession, grandfather and the cat.

Grandfather shook his head discontentedly: "Well, and if Peter hadn't caught the wolf? What then?"

Above them flew Birdie chirping merrily. "My, what brave fellows we are, Peter and I! Look what we have caught!"

And if one would listen very carefully, he could hear the duck quacking inside the wolf; because the wolf in his hurry, had swallowed her alive.

(text from: http://www.philtulga.com/Peter.html)

There are so many great websites with resources for this story. First, I just love http://www.philtulga.com/Peter.html, as it has lessons, online activities, and lets you listen to each instrument individually.

Second, thanks to my wonderful friend Karen, Netflix also offers several "Peter and the Wolf" movies as part of their streaming video collection.

Stories from Around the World -- Asia

Here's today's legend... it's the Japanese tale of a tiny little boy who got what he wished for-- a princess!

Issun-Boshi
Long, long ago there lived a sweet old couple. Having no children but desiring one very much, they went to the shrine and prayed, "Please, please let us have a child, no matter how small." Eventually, a son was born to them. But small indeed was the child--no larger than a grown man's fingertip.

The couple raised the child tenderly, and though he became a bright and well-respected young man, he grew not at all. As a result, he became known as Issun-boshi (issun is a unit measuring about 3 centimeters).

One day, Issun-boshi told his parents that he wanted to seek his fortune in the city. His parents were worried about their son but, trusting him, they sent him off with a sword made of a sewing needle, a sheath made of straw, and a boat made from a rice bowl with a chopstick for an oar. Issun-boshi walked along until he came upon the river that flowed towards the town. There he set his rice bowl in the water and paddled with the chopstick for days on end, until at last he reached the town.

Issun-boshi walked about town until he found himself in front of the stately mansion of the lord. At the gate he announced, "I have come to the city to work and train. I beg of you to make me a servant." But he was so tiny that the guard did not notice him. "I'm here, I'm here," Issun-boshi shouted. Finally the guard spotted him and lifted him up from the shadow of his geta (Japanese sandals). Issun-boshi was granted permission to see the lord and, in the palm of the lord's hand, he knelt, bowed, and pledged his loyalty. The lord took an instant liking to Issun-boshi and made him a retainer. Everyone in the mansion soon came to like the intelligent, charming Issun-boshi, but none more so than the lord's daughter. Before long, he became her personal attendant.

One afternoon the princess took Issun-boshi along and went to pay her respects at the Kiyomizu temple. Along the way, two ogres suddenly jumped out onto the road and blocked their path. Issun-boshi unsheathed his sword and instantly threw himself upon their attackers. But then suddenly one of the ogres swallowed him up in one gulp. In retort, he stabbed at the insides of its stomach. The ogre was so overcome with pain that it threw Issun-boshi up out of its stomach. Issun-boshi immediately jumped up on the other ogre's eyebrow and stabbed at its eye. Defeated, the ogres fled away crying, and in the process, one of them dropped its magic hammer.

The princess picked up the hammer and said, "If you wave this, anything you ask for--money or rice--will be yours." Issun-boshi replied, "I want neither money nor rice. All I want is to become full-sized." The princess nodded, then waved the hammer, singing, "Growww, growww."

In an instant, Issun-boshi became a full-grown, handsome warrior. He married the princess and, together with his parents, they lived happily ever after.

text is from: http://folkloreandmyth.netfirms.com/

Stories from Around the World bloghop

I'm participating in the "Stories from Around the World" bloghop, hosted by Walk Beside Me.

Today's legend comes from Namibia, Africa.... it's the story of how the crocodile got its bumpy skin. (text from http://www.gateway-africa.com/)

How the crocodile got its knobbly textured skin:

The crocodile originally had a smooth golden skin, and it stayed that way because the crocodile would spend all day in the muddy waters and only come out at night. All the other animals would come and admire it's beautiful golden skin.

The crocodile became very proud of its skin and started coming out of the water to bask in the other animals' admiration, even while the sun was shining. He bagan thinking he was better than the other animals and started bossing them around. The other animals became bored with his change in attitude and fewer and fewer started showing up to look at his skin. But each day that the crocodile exposed his skin to the sun it would get uglier and bumpier and thicker, and was soon transformed into what looked like bulging armor.

Crocodile never recovered from the humiliating shame and even today will disappear from view when others approach, with only his eyes and nostrils above the surface of the water.

On a side note, I found a blog that has a artwork created for this story. I've contacted the blogger, and am hoping that he'll grant me permission to use his artwork for this story to make an activity. Until then, I hope you'll go check out his post that has the adorable artwork for this story.