A New Smile

This little one is certainly keeping the tooth fairy in business. 6 teeth gone so far...

Advent

Thanks to an amazing publisher's book sale I was able to go to this year, I was able to create a book advent for each of the kids. Each day they get to open a new book. It's been fabulous and they're loving it. What's better than a new book every day for 24 days. They are very fortunate.

Christmas Party

Heinrich's work had their annual kid's Christmas party a few weeks ago. They hold it in the amusement park section of a big city mall. They close down the section for employees and their kids. It's a great time and the kids look forward to it every year.

Poem #1

I've been working on a poetry unit with my grade 6 class. I had them purchase sketchbooks which had paper that could handle watercolours. For our poetry unit, we're studying a different type of poem and an art technique (for lack of a better word) each week. My goal is to have the students create a beautiful poetry journal filled with art that they can truly be proud of. So far, they've done a fantastic job and are so proud of themselves.

I'm enjoying this project so much that I've decided to do it with my two. We started with the acrostic poem using their first names. Last names could be added as well. I chose to have them write sentences for each letter of their name, but for younger children, they could easily choose one word for each letter. The word or sentences must be reflective of the child.

For the artwork on the border, I had them make some tangled art. Since I can't find a link online, here's a quick lesson. I did it within a border, but it's even better when you can fill a whole page.
1) draw 4-5 curved lines from one edge of the page to the other. Allow them to criss cross.

2) fill each shape with a different pattern.

3) go over curved lines and patterns with a fine black Sharpie marker.

4) after discussing colour theory and colour options, have them fill in each space with colour.


Mason - age 7


Mickey - age 5

The kids were so proud of themselves when they were done. Stay tuned for our next poem.

Check This Out!

A New Book

I've been eyeing these books by Erin Hunter for a while. Going into the children's department in any bookstore can be quite daunting. As a book lover, I get completely overwhelmed. I want to buy everything. Finding a chapter book suitable for a young, yet advanced reader can be a challenge. I need the books to interest him, yet not be garbage. I also need them to interest me! After speaking with the sales rep. at our local Chapters, ( who really knew her stuff), I decided to give this book a go. This is Mason's newest chapter book. He loves animals so a fantasy book all about bears, is perfect. It's beautifully written and I am enjoying hearing the story as well. When we finish it we will write a more complete review. If we enjoy this series, I'm sure we'll try Warriers as well. I would love to hear from anyone who has read them all. What did you think?

Balloons

A friend suggested that we get our kids together to do some experiments. She had three in mind that all used balloons. We stayed with the balloon theme and ended up with seven fun experiments. Nothing serious, just some fun experimenting!

We started by creating static electricity. They had a lot of fun with this one.



Next we tried the "skewer through the balloon" experiment. This was cool! The kids predicted the best locations for the skewer to enter and exit the balloon. Unfortunately I didn't have any of the thin wooden ones so, we had to make do with a metal shish kebab skewer which proved to be a little more challenging. It took a few tries, but finally worked. The kids figured out that it was best to put the skewer through the area with the least amount of stress on it.



Here's a good one to demonstrate the difference between expansion and contraction. Since I didn't always have my camera at the ready, my pictures aren't the best, but you get the idea!



Check out this video for demonstrating centripetal force. The kids enjoyed this one and it could be expanded on in a variety of ways; different sized balloons, different objects, etc...







All kids love a chemical reaction. Try this simple one for blowing up a balloon.






And my personal favourite, the balloon hovercraft. It definitely helped to have another set of hands available to help stretch the balloon over the top. Very neat.



Next theme....lemons!