Pumpkins!

Our look at fall this week was all about PUMPKINS! Or as Ezra calls them, PUMPGAHS! It's officially October, officially 2 weeks from our new baby's due date, and we had two mornings of 70 degree weather this week!! Fall has arrived to Florida!

On Monday, we looked at the life cycle of a pumpkin. It was a learning experience for all of us because I did not realize that a pumpkin actually comes from the fruit of the flower on the pumpkin vine- so awesome! It is crazy too that a tiny pumpkin seed only takes 4 months to turn into a great big pumpkin once planted. We talked about life cycles of baby to grown up, seed to pumpkin, and looked at pictures and ordered them. We read our story Seed to Pumpkin and I was told it was kinda boring. We liked Too Many Pumpkins much better. 

Next, we took a small pumpkin to investigate. We talked about all the parts of the pumpkin- inside and out. We polished our pumpkin, then cut it up to explore the inside. We put all the guts in a bag and really looked at them closely. We then did a craft to label the parts of a pumpkin. We also did a scissor and glue exercise to complete pumpkin patterns. 

Polishing the pumpkin.

In the afternoon, we had a special surprise snack that we made while we told dad and brother the life cycle of a pumpkin. It was way too sweet to finish but it sure was fun to make.

Brother liked learning about the life cycle of pumpgahs too.

On Tuesday, we did a lot of writing practice on P for Pumpkin and J for Jack-o-lantern. We even were able to write our S in our name all on our own. We are still timid when it comes to S but we are getting there! We did a puzzle that we had to order 1-10. 6 and 9 were confusing when we had to order them but mom wouldn't help and we figured it out all on our own. ;) Next we did a graphing exercise with a pumpkin dice and we raced to the top to see who would win. I have a little bit our doubts that we got tired of rolling the dice and blue just happened to win by such a long shot but I was distracted so I am not sure. We decided we were done after this game.

 Wednesday, we did so much school work because we were having so much fun! We did a color by numbers picture and Silas did a very nice job. After that we did an experiment called Pumpkin Sink or Float. We made a little pumpkin boat and we guessed wether or not it would sink or float. Silas said sink and I said float. Then he chunked it in the water and it went straight to the bottom! He said he knew it was going to sink! I said lets clean off our pumpkin and put it in more gently and guess what- it DID float. So we learned that how we do our experiments also affects results. Silas asked to do Math so we did some math problems with our counters. I didn't realize how confusing it is to switch to making 2s after working on S so much. All of our 2s looked like S so I drew him some to trace. Silas understands addition and that's exciting. We took a break and read another fall story called

Bear Has a Story To Tell. Ezra enjoyed pointing out all the animals. Then we made a little book called "How Is This Pumpkin Feeling?" and we drew faces on the pumpkins to show their feelings. This reminded us that we should read Happy Halloween, Mouse. This was enough school for us today!

Today, we talked about how we investigate the world with our senses. How can we tell it's fall with our sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch? We talked about the yummy flavors of fall that people like and wait all year for- like pumpkin spice coffees and pumpkin treats like in Too Many Pumpkins or our favorite pumpkin cookie from Starbucks. We made a piece of pumpkin pie to enjoy with our pretend pumpkin coffee. 

I love his face here!

Next, we compared what's the same and different about the big pie pumpkin and one of our little pumpkins. Silas said they both had stems and that's the same. The difference is we washed one and not the other.

Then we used our senses when we investigated our chopped up pie pumpkin.

Can you hear the knife cutting it?

"Yes, sounds hard to cut!"

What does it feel like to you?

"Slobber and drool."

What does it smell like to you?

"Alien slobber from a haunted house!"

What does it look to you?

"Kinda like the inside of a peach."

What does it taste like?

"Not good, we need to cook it"

 We then baked our pumpkin. While it was cooking, we talked about smells of fall and smelled spices, candles, and some essential oils. Some smells were spicy so they gave us "tears" and some smelled "yummy". We also decorated some foam pumpkins while we waited for our pumpkin to cook. Any excuse to use glitter is a good one.

Smelling fall smells in our essential oils.

When the pumpkin was nice and soft, we peeled out the meat, blended it, and made our pumpkin pie. 

When the pie was all done, we enjoyed a piece and it was yummy. Squirting the whip cream was very fun and we said it would be funny to squirt dad in the face.

Chef approved and obviously added his own whip cream! 

This was a nice treat to end this week of school! We still have lots of pumpkin activities so if we can get to a pumpkin patch this weekend, we study pumpkins some more next week! 

Leaves

This week we decided to abandon our B4FIAR books to study fall! We want to focus on different parts of fall each week and this week we decided to study leaves. Our life was very busy this week with family in town, a big youth event coming up, and a baby coming in the next few weeks so we only were able to focus two days on our study this week but since we got 15 fifteen fall books from the library we have been reading and talking about fall every day.

On Tuesday, all of our fall books came in to the library so we went to pick them up. We read a great book about autumn leaves and learned about many different types of leaves and also the parts of a leaf. We also worked on coloring and continued to practice writing our name.

On Wednesday, we went on a leaf hunt. We went to our park with our back pack and looked for all kinds of leaves. We found some on a vine, some that had already fallen on the ground, big leaves, tiny leaflets, leaves with smooth blades and leaves with jagged blades. We also found some buttercups like in the story, The Little Rabbit, so we added those to our back pack too. When we got home we examined the leaves with a magnify glass and pointed out the similarities and differences amongst the leaves. We also identified the parts. We then picked some of our favorites to use for an art project called leaf rubbings. We rubbed our crayon on paper with the leaves underneath and like magic the leaves showed through. This was so very cool to us and we learned it because the leaves have texture that this happens. Later that day we did an experiment with a balloon, vinegar, and baking soda that we saw on a learning show. This was almost the same ingredients we used in our hopping corn experiment so we knew why the balloon filled up with air- baking soda and vinegar make a gas.

Through the rest of the week and weekend we kept reading our autumn books and we noticed that our leaves we found shriveled a little more each day and our big yellow leaf that looked like a banana had turned completely brown and dry. On Sunday, we made our very own leaf man with pretend autumn leaves since fall weather has yet to hit us yet.

We may continue a few leafy things next week but we are excited to take a look at pumpkins! Some of the pumpkin patches open up this weekend and it's already feels like fall even if we haven't noticed it too much in the weather yet.

The Little Rabbit

We chose the BFIAR book, The Little Rabbit, for this week. It is about a little girl named Sara who received a rabbit in her Easter basket, how they play, how it is having a rabbit for a pet, and also how it is after Buttercup, the rabbit, has her babies. This is our first book where the artwork was from photographs and Silas seemed to really like that because he said it was real. He even asked when he could meet these kids in the book haha.

On our first day exploring the book, we read the story and also reviewed our scripture verse that says you are blessed when you are kind to animals. This was  also the scripture they learned in church a Sunday or two ago and Silas liked that a lot. We learned some new vocabulary like rhubarb and hutch. We then talked about how words have syllables and did a game of one or two syllable sort. Silas is so keen when it comes to auditory things that he caught on no problem. We also used a sheet protector to work on our letter of the week, R. I am learning that right now this is his favorite way to write. I don’t know how long it will last but he loves using the expos and worksheets under the sheet protector. We ended up practicing R’s over and over this way so later in the week I added S work since those make him most nervous when writing his name.  We also used our manipulative and did some peg work on patterns. Later this night, little brother found some flowers that looked like buttercups at soccer practice and this made Silas so happy.

The next day we read our story and talked about the differences between the pet rabbit and the wild rabbit. They were different in how they looked and also in how they got their needs met. We talked about how God helps provide for both the rabbits in different ways because he knows what we all need. We worked on our R’s again and also on making a hutch for our rabbit and a wild place for our wild rabbit. We learned that where you live is called a habitat and we thought creatively to make our habitats the best they could be. We didn’t have enough cotton balls to make the seven babies so we just made two bunnies. We also reviewed our days of the week since the baby rabbits were named after the days of the week- we are finally learning the order! Calendar time is paying off!

Our third day of The Little Rabbit, we played with our habitat while we read the story and acted out when the rabbits met (all his idea).  We did a worksheet where we had to count all the rabbits and below were three number choices and one was the correct answer. I showed him how to do the first one and let him work independently and I was so surprised he got them all correct. This was his first time doing a worksheet like that too! He thought it was important to draw a line to each bunny, even though that wasn’t a part of the directions, but I let him do it his way and I think that number trail helped him not miss a single rabbit! I guess he taught me a little bit! Then we worked with our vocabulary words and clothes pinned the beginning letter/sound. We did the words with both capital letters and also lower case. He enjoyed this activity too. He usually maxes out at two to three activities so we took a break and continued working later in the afternoon. In the afternoon, we summarized the story we have been learning and told dad all about it. We also explained the parts of our habitat to him and told him about all the different flower types in the book.

Our last day of The Little Rabbit was a very fun one. We read the story, then we practiced writing R’s, S’s, and our whole name. We did a scissor and glue worksheet where we cut out pictures of words that started with a H sound and glued them down. We then talked about all the different kind of pets that people have from kitties to big spiders to goats. We talked about if we would like to have these animals as a pet or not. Then we decided we were going to go to the pet store to look at all the different pets- even rabbits! We saw hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, fish, and birds! We asked the worker if we could pet the rabbit and she let us. We were surprised at how very soft the rabbit was! He was even softer than our dog. The worker gave us a sheet of paper about how to take care of the rabbit if you choose a rabbit as a pet. We ended our pet store visit with buying a couple of treats for our dog. This was a very great week of school and I would love every week to feel just as exciting!

Yellow Ball

This was our first long weekend since we started homeschooling a month ago (gasp! can't believe it's been a whole month!). Since Labor Day was Monday, we didn't start our week until Tuesday. This week's book was Yellow Ball by Molly Bang. It was a really pleasant surprise. The artwork in the book was very pretty but the story was basic, one word per page basic, so I feared it would be hard to keep him engaged. The simplicity though allowed a lot more room for activities than I would have thought!

We started this week off with an experiment called "Hopping Corn". This experiment used yellow food coloring, baking soda,vinegar, popcorn and when you mix it just right, the corn begins to hop on it's own. Our corn hopped and looked like a lava lamp for an hour! We discussed solids, liquids, and gasses and how they are all forms of matter. We also discussed how they can move differently and also make each other move- like rain in a cloud or popcorn that hops because of gas.

We also discussed what the word interpretation means. We used the cover of our book and made our own interpretation of the cover. This was special to me because he really took his time to make it his own but loved looking at the cover for a guide. It was fun to observe his mind working and figuring out how he could make his similar.

The following day, we read our story again and were careful to notice the artwork on each of the pages. It really is a beautiful book. We then used play dough to form balls and build with toothpicks. We were going to make our balls yellow, but of course, we were all out of yellow play dough! We choose green. We made balls with our hands and learned that they are called spheres. We then made some balls with our hands and smooshed them flat and we already knew these were called circles. This was fun. We did this for a while before we ended up making pizzas with our play dough- haha.

Then, we squeezed in some more work on our letter S. These are hard for us but we really want to get confident in it, considering there are two S's in Silas! He will do it with help but on his own still makes him nervous! We also worked on Y this week. We made a big Y and a little y out of yarn- and yep, you guessed it our yarn was blue because we were out of yellow! haha

Our last day on the Yellow Ball was packed with learning because he was especially into school this day. We opened with reading our book. We recalled our discussion on matter and talked about how a force is necessary to move objects. We talked about that in the book the storm was the force that moved that yellow ball all the way across the sea. We decided to reenact this, but again our ball was not yellow, because the one we found was blue. Silas moved the ball across our sea by creating wind! We also stirred the water to make it choppy and saw that water can be a force to move an object too. We then made guesses if we put the wall under water would it come back up or stay down...what if we pushed it really hard? Each time it came up and we learned the reason why is because of gravity.

We also used our cars later and discussed how one car could move the other car if it pushed it enough. After all of this, we decided to watch the storm episode of the Magic School Bus and learn more about what happens in a storm. Then we made our own storm with construction paper and paint.

And mom squeezed in some more handwriting! Look how serious. The next week we are taking off because daddy has a few vacation days so we are spending time as a family of four before Ruby hits the scene in the next few weeks!