Its got a coloring page print out for the background, which Levi colored with crayons. Then watercolor paint over the top, and a decorated cardstock shell.
We looked at the anatomy of a crab:
We read a book by one of my favorite children's authors, Eric Carle - A House for Hermit Crab.
Homeschool share has a lapbook to go with this book. We used "Hermit Crab's Year" when reading the story.
The answer to the question on my Whale Post: Its Blue Whale poop!! Ever sense reading the book "Everyone Poops", Levi (ok and me too), have wondered what whale poop looks like. The book asks "What does whale poop look like?" on one of the pages, but never answers the question! So when learning about whales, I googled it.
We finished up our unit on farming today by reading the rest of Charlotte's Web (again!), and then watching the movie (picked up at the library today after super hero training). We also went on a field trip to a place called Green Meadow's Farm. Its a petting farm that has all sorts of animals, a hay ride, pony rides and a train ride. They do continuous tours, so you just jump in when you show up and keep going until you've done everything! It was a nice way to check out all of the animals we've studied and more. The only drawback is that you had a limited time at each stop, I wish we would have been able to spend more time at some.
The first animals we saw were Zebu's which are a type of cattle.
Next were the Llama's. Levi thought it was interesting that they are often used as "guard dogs" on farms. They also have the 'under bite' because in the wild, they use those teeth to strip bark off of trees.
Next was a hay ride. Levi took the opportunity to take some more notes, the whole day he wrote notes in a little book I made for him, listing animals, drawing pictures, and writing down new information that he learned.
The tractor that pulled the hay 'wagon' had giant tires.
Next were the turkeys. Levi learned that they are territorial, and that only the males gobble. They were 'showing off' for us. The big brown one is the dominant male. I though it was interesting that the bigger their 'beard' is, the older they are - it grows as they age.
Next was the pony rides, this is Butterscotch. I got to lead him around for Levi's ride.
And then there was a train ride
Next we walked over to a building that held a collecting of antique items - some cool farmhouse stuff, and some smaller animals.
Outside was a big tortoise.
Guinea pigs
Rabbits
Old school desks - all different sizes
Then we saw the baby cow and his mama. The mama's name is Sweet Lips! Cows give 6-8 gallons of milk a day, so they drink 10 gallons of water a day.
MOOOO! (both the cow, and the random guy in the background!)
Elmer the water buffalo likes being sprayed with the hose. He is around 1800lbs, and water buffaloes were often used for plowing. This is also the type of buffalo that makes mozzarella cheese (well, not this particular buffalo, he is a boy!)
Tigger is a "Zorse" - half zebra, and half horse. Tigger's dad was a zebra, which makes the first part of "zorse. Hybrid animals like this one are sterile. They have beautiful stripy markings!
Next was sheep petting, they were nice and soft.
The bison, Peanut is smaller than ones in the wild at around 900lbs. Males usually get up to 2200lbs! He is loosing his winter coat, which is why he looks a bit shaggy.
Next up was the babies! Baby chicks, who were about 6 days old, and baby ducks. They put them in a basket and passed them out for us to hold. The little chick fell asleep while Levi was holding it.
And Levi took a picture of me with the little bitty duck!
Aww!
The the kids got to feed lettuce to the baby pot-belly pigs. These guys can be house trained and are as smart as dogs. Apparently, they make good pets!
The goats! There were a lot of babies, including twins that were only 4 days old
The 4 day old baby!
There were also many wild peacocks around. Levi kept calling them 'pecans'. They warned the kids that if they chase the peacocks, the peacocks will chase them back!
Then we got to spend some time with the adult chickens. Levi managed to catch and hold a few of them (very gently of course). There were several different kinds, including some funny looking ones with no feathers on their necks called 'naked necks'
This one had eggs it was sitting on.
While learning about chickens earlier in the week, we put an egg in vinegar:
This is the result after 3 days. It turned to "rubber" because the vinegar disolved the calcium in the egg shell, leaving the membrane intact.
An ostrich egg is the same as 10 chicken eggs and takes over 2 hours to hard boil. And if you get too close, they will steal your shiny things!
They had several tractors, and other farm equipment that the kids were allowed to climb on.
I like this quote they had near the entrance.
It was a fun trip!
And then we finished up Levi's lapbook.
We did some different painting techniques to make some decoration of the backgrounds. For the bird pages, he used a feather as a paint brush.
And here is the finished lapbook. It turned out HUGE with 2 file folders, and several page extensions. I also used brads to attach a couple page protectors, to add pockets for pictures and other little things.
First Levi made a mini book. It includes different locations from the story, and cutouts of Little Bear. The text includes positioning words so you know where to glue Little Bear on each page. I had Levi do all the cutting and read the book to me when he was finished.
Next I laminated a "Read, Build, Write" worksheet that we can use in the future (I need to get some lowercase wooden letters though). For this, Levi chose a flashcard with a word on it, read it, "built" it with the wood letters, and then wrote it.
The whole time we were doing the above activities, Levi was also eating blueberries. With the rest, we made jam.
1. Put blueberies in a pan
2. Add a big squirt of lemon juice
3. Add a big squirt of agave (or honey, or put some sugar in there)
4. Cook at a gentle boil until it looks like blueberry jam.
5. Eat.
While thats cooking, remove a spoonful of juice and use it to tye dye a scrap of fabric. And squeeze the fabric into a little bowl and use it as paint!
For this one, Levi had to read the word on each bucket, and write the number below the word. Then he used a pencil eraser dipped in blueberry juice to dot on the right number of blueberries.
The juice changed from purple to a blueish color when it dried.
Next we did some math. I gave him math problems, and he had to find the right number of blueberries to put in the bucket, and then give me the answer. I think next time it would be more fun to use actual blueberries in an actual bucket, or at least pom poms. I could also have him write down his math equations and record his answers. I saved this one to use again.
And these are the crafts we did:
Tye dye fabric, dyed with blueberry juice.
Blueberry pie - this looks simple, but actually involved several skills. First he colored the background with a lite tan color, he had to cover all the white paper. Then he traced a small bowl and cut out the circle. Then he cut strips to make the cross hatching. He used a large hole puncher to punch out all the blueberries, and finally glued it all together (I made the edge crust)
The basket of blueberries was made with a cork as a stamp, and Popsicle sticks for the basket.
The next part of the book describes winter in the Big Woods... much colder than our Florida winters!
Laura and Mary wake up to frost on their windows, with designed scratched into it. We did a Florida version, using white window paint and then scratching into it. We also made some paper snowflakes, my mom thought we were weird for doing "winter" activities when its been 80* out.
Next we learned about the process of churning butter. We got the opportunity to try this when we went on a homeschool field trip to Fort Christmas, but unfortunately, with Levi's milk allergy, there wasn't much point in doing it at home (its very easy, just put heavy cream into a jar with a couple marbles, and shake away!).
But we did get to try something else. In Little House in the Big Woods, Ma uses grated carrot to color the butter a yellow color.
So, we grated some carrot...
And put it in Almond milk! We heated it up a bit until it turned yellow, and then squeezed the carrot shreds out using a bit of clean cloth.
And lastly tasted the grated "milky" carrot, just like Laura and Mary did in the book.
They also molded the butter using a strawberry shaped mold - so we spent some time in the sand box (well, sand and dirt), using sand molds to demonstrate the process.
We also made a mini book where Levi wrote down all of the butter making steps.
The fire and fireplace is a big thing in the Little House - they used it to keep warm, and to cook.
We did a simple marble art craft to make a "fire". Just put some paper in a tray or box, add globs of paint, and some marbles - roll to make the design.
Next we learned all about gun safety. I am not a gun fan, but I think its important for kids to learn about gun safety, so I found a little song on youtube.
STOP!
Don't touch
Leave the area
Tell an adult
Catchy, and to the point. For our lapbook, we learned that Pa kept his gun up high above the door - where he could reach it if he needed it, and where the kids couldn't touch it. We also discussed why Pa has a gun in the Big Woods, and what he does with it (protection from wild animals, hunting for meat to eat).
To tie into that, we learned about all of the animals in the Big Woods. Levi's favorite is the panther, and he spent several days crouching behind things and 'pouncing' on unsuspecting people. Including some poor lifeguard at the Yacht Club when his grandparents took him out to eat!
We compared animal tracks, and also traced some animal names. I tried to get him to color the animals, but he is still not into coloring at all.
We made an owl craft as well, I found the idea on another blog, Meet the Dubiens, its very cute, with handprints for the wings and simple cutouts that Levi did himself.
Next in the book, its Christmas time! Pa carves Ma a beautiful wooden shelf, so Levi tried his hand at carving as well, but using soap. First he planned his design, and then carved it.
He is using my stamp carving tool, but lots of different things would work.
When done, we popped it in the microwave to make a soap cloud. This only works with Ivory soap! We've done this one a few times, still fun every time.
