Alaska!

We learned all about Alaska! 

 

We learned about aurora borealis, the Northern Lights.  There were some amazing videos on YouTube with time lapse pictures that we watched, and I also found a Christmas card with a photo of the Northern Lights.   Levi did some finger painting to create his own version. 

 

 And then we cleaned up, which led to a water fight.

Next, we learned about the Iditarod, which Levi was very excited about.  We read a book that his great grandparents got for him when they went on a cruise to Alaska.   We also read about sled dogs, and then practiced some of the commands (I don't know how accurate we were, but it was fun!).  

 

Books we read, "Granite"is all about sled dogs, and the other two are from the library. 

Lapbook:

 On the front:  A map of Alaska, and the state capital, Juneau.   A map of the United states, showing where Alaska is located.  We also looked at a map of the world, and talked about why Alaska is shown under California on maps of the U.S, when its really not there!     Under that is the state flag, and a constellation experiment we did (more on that later)

 

On the back of the lapbook is Levi's painting of the Northern Lights, the crayola finger paints have a translucent quality that gives a nice effect.  Usually I make finger paint instead of using store-bought though. 

 

 The inside:  At the top is sled dog commands, with what they mean on the outside and the commands under the flaps.  Next to that is a quiz that we used to discuss facts about Alaska.  

In the middle are the two Alaska postcards we received, one is the oldest church in Un-Alaska, and the other one is Alaskan bears.  Levi loved the bear one, b/c on his first camping trip we saw a real bear (up close!).      Next to those are two mini books with the state capital, flag, state bird and state flower.  

At the bottom is the christmas card of the Northern Lights.

This one shows what they look like opened up!

 

Another thing that we did was introduce cuisnaire rods.  We are just starting to use Miquon math, which is a very different approach to teaching math.   I'm not a math person myself, and Levi is much more interested in books.  We have a bunch of different math manipulatives, but we didn't have these, so I ordered them from Amazon.  For today, I just let Levi play with them on his work mat.  He made them into shapes!

Lastly, right before bed we talked about Alaska's flag again, which shows the Big Dipper.  We traced the circle of the flashlight, and then poked holes in the shape of the Big Dipper.  Next we taped it to the end of the flash light and tested it out.   This picture was taken with the flash, but in the darkness it was fun to see the constellations on the ceiling.