May 1-7 Plant/Garden Wrap-Up

We’re to the third week of books and that’s about when our local system seems to run out of age appropriate books for about any topic! At any rate, we’re about ready to wrap up the plants/garden type of study and figure out where we want to go next. This semester has run a pretty logical flow from studying germs with Florence Nightingale, to the human body, senses, nutrition, food groups, and then plants and gardening, with the garden being a big summer project for us…

I read through a few topical worksheets and held a discussion about them– these were from a large kids curriculum book from the library. Information about plants and flowers, etc. It was a good review of everything we had worked on in the last month.

Field Trip:

We visited the local flower shop and bought some white carnations for our science experiment.  I explained that we were homeschooling and when the shop owner asked what she was learning, my little girl rattled off the parts of a plant like nothing… despite her impatience, she is learning something! We never have fresh flowers in the house, despite the fact that this place is literally next door to one of our favorite haunts, the local library. Who knows? Maybe we’ll pop in there more often and have flowers other than you know, when babies are born, which seems to be the only time otherwise.

Science Experiment:

Dyeing carnations– This could fit under plants/flowers, rainbows, color mixing, waves of light, etc. Click the link for the simple tutorial!

Unexpected learning:

A tiny tree frog decided to take up residence on our porch on Monday, so we watched it for a while and then snapped some pretty cool pictures so the kids could get an up close look without terrifying the poor thing. It was making a terrific amount of noise and they could see it croaking visibly. Quite awesome… and deafening.

Reading Together (topical science reading):
Reggie Rabbit Plants a Garden by Krauze
Dinosaur Garden by Donnelly
Alphabet Garden by Coats
A Tree is a Plant by Bulla
Excerpts from…. The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends Complete Story Collection by Beatrix Potter

6 year old independent reading:
Horrible Harry Goes to Sea by Kline
Rainbow Garden by St. John
Top Secret Diaper of Celie Valentine: Friendship OVER by Sternberg
Song Lee and the Hamster Hunt by Kline
Horrible Harry and the Kickball Wedding by Kline
Horrible Harry and the Green Slime by Kline
Horrible Harry Goes to the Moon by Kline
Horrible Harry and the Holidaze by Kline
Horrible Harry and the Purple People by Kline
Scooby Doo! A Haunted Halloween! by Howard
Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie by Sternberg
The Mystery of the Purple Pool (Boxcar Children) by Warner
B Magical The Superstar Sister by Connor
Hank Zipzer The Night I Flunked My Field Trip by Winkler
Boxcar Children and the Mystery of the Lost Mine by Warner
Hank Zipzer the Zippity Zinger by Winkler
Winter of the Ice Wizard by Osborne
Hank Zipzer Help Somebody Get me Out of Fourth Grade by Winkler

She’s been frustrated this whole semester with writing, so I downloaded a first grade ‘writing’ booklet that explains the different types of sentences, goes over capitalizing, end marks, incomplete and complete sentences (we called them fragments growing up) and in general gets the child to WRITE some sentences. Hopefully this will be a confidence booster for her! (education.com Introducing the Sentence workbook.)

3 year old ‘reading’:
Clifford’s Good Deeds by Bridwell
Clifford’s Sports Day by Bridwell
Clifford and the Grouchy Neighbors by Bridwell
Clifford’s Day With Dad by Bridwell
Clifford’s Family by Bridwell
Clifford, We Love You by Bridwell

Working on the Dora ‘phonics’ books from the library. Got her to read ‘go’ and ‘no’ and ‘love’, etc. Now if she didn’t look so wounded every time I ask her to look at the book instead of me. She’s not going to get much by looking at my face instead of the text… :-/ She seemed to do better sitting on my lap and got more words as time went on… I would love for her to read independently this summer!

We also have worked on tracing alphabet and random letters and words again because it had been awhile! Plus some random worksheets about beginning and ending sounds, etc. All the pre-reading stuff!

 

 

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