Fourth week in October 2011

Another week...

We did our state study of Florida this week as we are doing this the last week of each month.  I can't believe what a great time I have with these.  The children are so excited to learn about each state... and they can tell you what the name of each state we have learned is, where it is on the US map, the capital, and a few details.  Just the other day we read a book that had a ptarmigan and they all got excited because they remembered that was the state bird of Alaska.

So moving on... our state study went like this.  As always we introduce the state and color the name and state outline on the cover. 

We then found the state on the US map and colored it green and learned the capital of the state.  The children were happy to find one of their sight words at the end of the word... "see".  We then colored the flag to look like (or best we could) the Florida state flag.

 We also traced the state name on a fan folded page.

We talked about the state flower being the orange blossom... so can you guess the fruit and beverage of the state?  Yes, the orange and orange juice.  On this page we colored an orange and orange slice (can be found here).  We went on the squeze an orange to make orange juice... and was it delicious!  The children wanted more.  And we also made orange juice frozen popsicles.  We basically took 100% orange juice and poured it into plastic cups and put plastic spoons in and froze.  Hot water around the the cup and bottom made it easy to pull out.  They were so excited to eat these (and sorry I forgot to take a pic).

 Squezing an orange to make orange juice.

The state bird was introduced next.  The mockingbird.  We talked about how the mockingbird mimics or mocks other birds so they pretended to be mockingbirds and I was another bird and they all mimiced my actions.  They thought this game was great!  and of course, I had to do some rather entertaining things to keep their interest.  We then colored the mockingbird on a page in our state book trying to match the colors they were (you can find the coloring page here).  Afterwards, we waterpainted (very colorful) mockingbirds (you can find page here).

The state tree was next on the list.  They knew what kind of tree it was and that coconuts grew on the tree.  I would have liked to have them explore a real coconut but didn't make it to a store to get one (my 4th grader had a "ton" of homework and two tests to study for... sometimes I wish I were a homeschooler but that is another topic for another time).  We did this color by number palm tree on in our state book (you can find here) and then we made a palm tree.

 To make the palm tree we colored an empty paper towel roll with a brown crayon.  We used

pre-cut leaves and fringed the edges to make them look like palm trees.  We taped them to

chenille wire that was poked through holes in the empty paper towel roll.  We glued a few pom poms

on the tree so they would have coconuts.  We cut the bottom of the roll to make it stand because

once the leaves were on it was out of balance and we colored the bottom heavy paper stand.

Next we talked about Cape Canaveral and The John F. Kennedy Space Center.  We talked about how space shuttles blast off from there and that astronauts fly the space shuttle.  We colored an astronaut in our state book and made a space shuttle (you can find it here).

 We had fun playing with our space shuttles as well!

The saltwater mammal of Florida was next.  We talked about the dolphin.  We made a mosiac dolphin in our state study book and we painted a dolphin.

I saw the idea on pininterest but we modified it to suit us.  We used our hands vs. our feet.

We also talked about the state reptile... the alligator.  We did another color by number as they enjoyed it so much the other day and we made a toilet tube alligator that you can find here.  We modified it a bit to make it easier for the children to make.

We colored the tubes green with our crayons.  We colored the pattern pieces green with a

marker.  I cut the pieces out since they were small and the children glued them down

to make it an alligator.

We talked about painted turtles.  I know they are not really significant to Florida only but I thought it would be fun... and well I was running short of ideas... yeah!  So we matched painted turtles and waterpainted one.

And our last topic in our state book was Disney World.  We talked about Disney, their favorite character, if they have visited, and on and on our conversation went.  They had a lot to say.  After we were all talked out about Disney World we did a roll and graph in our books.  They love these and have learned so many graphing skills... they can tell who won, who came in second... third...fourth...etc, who had four rolls... and it didn't take much teaching.  They have been discovering this since we started doing graphing.  Below is the picture of our page and doing the activity.

We continued talking about our Peek-a-Boo book, "In the Pumpkin Patch".  We first talked about spiders and found the hidden spiders and made a spider (they didn't turn out as expected... but the children were happy with them).

We also talked about caterpillars.  We sang a song about caterpillars and made our own caterpillar with an egg carton, paint, and a few craft supplies.

Our final page of our Peek-A-Boo book, "In the Pumpkin Patch" was about the grasshopper.  We talked about grasshoppers and then made jumping grasshoppers.  We used High Reach's pattern of

the grasshopper and stapled it to an empty paper towel roll.  As the children pressed down on the back of the tube the grasshopper would hopefully hop.  What fun they had with this!

We also talked about witches for Halloween. 
We heard the magnet board story... "Five Little Witches".  I put it on our table top magnet board so it could be more interactive.

We heard the felt story, "Hats Off For Olivia" and I changed the story up just a bit so they could take the clues given in the story and try to figure out which color hat she made.

And then we colored a witch....

And we paper pieced a witch.

In my posts I typically focus just on the learning time we do, but one day this week during their free choice time (which we do a lot of daily!!!!  I might add) they created this train creation.  They insisted I take a picture and share it with the people I share all the other pictures with (direct quote just about as they know I'm always taking pictures but have no idea where they go.... so I guess next week I will be sharing the pictures with them on my computer (ie:  the blog) so they can see where the pictures go).  So here is their train creation...

I hope you enjoyed our week.  We sure had fun. 

Best,
Rose

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