Farm Fresh Adventures: February 2012

February 13, 2012

Farm Animals Part 2: Hh Horse

After Cc Cow comes Hh Horse in the My Father's World Kindergarten Curriculum...

We started with our typical Daily Notebook for our Calendar--I thought I'd share a couple pictures of it today.. Both boys usually start at their desks. Little Britches is using his overhead marker to write on the sheet protectors. Here he's copying his days of the week.

One of the things we also do is a daily drawing page...usually I get four days of a John Deere Tractor--but this week, he changed it up and did a tractor, a barge, our family and our house.

For our horse unit, we spent most of our time talking about how important horses used to be in society...and comparing it to now.

We made a chart comparing what we can do with a car and what we could do with horse...I copied down exactly what Little Britches told me on most of them...

We really didn't do anything highly exciting this week...one of our slow weeks. We are also reading Black Beauty, so it was easy to reference things from our story to our discussions.

Our next post will move to the Wild Animals...starting with Ee Elephant!

Links:

Daily Calendar Notebook by Carisa (1plus1equals1)

February 12, 2012

Biting the bullet...

It's the time again...we are needing to buy our next curriculum. Why is it so hard to push the "process order" button on your orders? I see the cost and think...man. Seriously? But then I have to remind myself that this is for my firstborn and I'll be able to use all my materials (hopefully) for my other son and any other future children God would bless us with...but still...why is it so hard?

The thing I hate the most is that you KNOW it's money well spent...and that you probably spend MORE than that on frivolous things...so why is it STILL so hard to do it? It's cheaper then the cost of tuition at private schools. So I guess you have to just think of it as an investment into your child's future...

Right...
So that's why I'm just going to...

leave my products in my "shopping cart" a little longer...

I need to talk myself into this more before I actually do it...

I know I will do it...

just not...

right now...

(giggle)

February 8, 2012

Farm Animals Part 1: Cc Cow

Okay I admit. This week was rather boring...I mean we live on a cattle farm, so there isn't much we didn't already know about cows! So we spent more time on specific details we needed to review...and choosing to focus on dairy cows.

Thanks to Homeschoolshare.com I was able to get some good information about dairy cows and we used that in our studies...including our math for the week..we did some story problems using our new fact about cows and how much water they have to drink to make milk.

Here is the Milk Products collage Little Britches made using one of my old cooking magazines--

He was so worried about cutting my magazines--I told him I didn't need them anymore, but he didn't believe me...LOL!

Here are some other things we worked on...

And last but none the least, here is Baby Britches doing his "schoolwork"...

I'll be sharing our last Farm Animal unit Hh Horse in our next post...

Links:

Eberhart's Explorers: Dot Snowman Worksheet

Homeschoolshare.com ~ search for "cow"

February 7, 2012

Pp is for Penguin

For the week of 1/16-1/20 we learned all about Penguins with our letter Pp!

Day #1

Today we worked on various worksheets and coloring pages relating to the letter P and number 16. I filled up our weekly Word Bank--here are the words he can make a "withdrawal" from this week. He has to write them out on the board and then read them to me. He really likes this activity each morning.

I introduced Penguins with an easy reader book I found at Goodwill. Little Britches helped me with the words.

Day #2

We learned facts about Penguins--then we made a Think Chart to see what we remembered.

During our Think Chart, Little Britches asked the question "Are they warm blooded or cold blooded?" {RABBIT TRAIL!!}so when we finished our chart, we asked that question on Bing.com and discovered that all birds--including penguins--are warm blooded.

Once we completed our chart, we learned how to draw a penguin in 5 easy steps.

Here is my attempt...

I think he's rather cute! LOL! Now Little Britches uses those steps and draws penguins ALL THE TIME! We made a magnet out of one of his penguins to send to my mom (aka. Mum-Mum) for her new refrigerator.

Day #3

Today we learned about the different species of penguins. Some sources say there are 16 and some say there are 17. There is a GREAT resource provided by SeaWorld for teaching about penguins--including species identification cards for each one! We printed these pages off and then used a map of the Southern Hemisphere and put dots where each species lived. Little Britches noticed there were "a TON" of penguins near New Zealand and hopes that MumMum will see some when she goes with Papa (my dad) to New Zealand this fall. (yes...I'm soooo jealous!!!)

Once we found where they all lived, I had him highlight their size in inches and we used a measuring tape to determine how big each one was compared to him and Baby Britches.

He was surprised to discover he was taller then the tallest penguin! He also thought it was funny that even Baby Britches is taller than a lot of the species "and he's just a baby!" We wrote all the sizes down and then I made a graph on Excel for him to see how they compared. Then I had each of MY penguins lie down so I could measure how tall they were. We added them to the graph too as "J---inian Penguin" and "S---inian Penguin"!

The last thing we did today was look online (Penguin World) to see color pictures of each one. Little Britches says he likes the eyelashes that the species in the Eudyptes group have! But he likes the Chinstrap Penguin the best because he's the easiest to recognize.

Day #4

Today we reviewed where penguins lived with the globe--Little Britches did excellent! Then we discussed why God made penguins black and white. We started by making a penguin (a template in the Sea World packet) and then used it to demonstrate why they would have white on their belly and black everywhere else. We held the penguin high over our heads and looked up--noticing that he blended in pretty good with our white ceiling. Then we held him down low and looked down on him noticing that the black of his body did make him blend in more with our dark carpet. I added a little magnet on the back of the cute penguin he made so he could put in on our metal cabinet in the classroom (I ADORE adhesive magnetic strips!)

Day #5

Today we discussed what a Food Web and Food Chain was. Little Britches understood this as he had recently watched a Magic School Bus episode about a food chain...and had seen something just the day before on the PBS show Wild Krats about a food chain. Using a lesson from the Sea World packet, we made a Food Web of the ocean including one of our species of penguins. I had already cut out the cards and colored the plankton...but I let him color all the other animal pictures. Then we started stringing them all together...it was QUITE the web and boy, he sure LOVED it!