Learning about Japan- 2012

In 2011 we learned a lot about Japan, the time has come for us to refresh some of the information and learn some more. So last week it was all about Japan in our house

Our activities:

• We read and wrote some haiku.

• We learned how to say some words in Japanese. Using 
Let's Learn Japanese Picture Dictionary

• We played Otedama game. How to make otedama.

our otedama

• We played math game called Shiritori math game, which basically consists of making up new number sentences using the answer from the previous number sentence.

• We made some oregami (yay! this year it was much easier that last), we listened to the music (great tracks from Orange Range: Hana, Kizuna, Silent Night , some excellent stuff by Joe Hisaishi , lullabies)
• We read some great books, check out our Reading about Japan book list over at our "bookshelf" blog.
• Finally, we tried some Japanese food, kids are definitely warming up to miso soup, but still wouldn't eat sweets, oh well, more for me :)

the best season of all- day 4

Another quiet day, I ran some errands in the morning, D. did his schoolwork on his own and read his stories with grandma, so proud of him.

It's cold here, the snow stays (for now).

Narnia :)

Our activity today was cutting snowflakes. Now it's snowing on our fireplace :)

What I especially love December for is that I have a perfect excuse for baking every single day and not even feel guilty about having all these cookies in the house. We made our annual chocolate cookies.

We read Let it snow! by Holly Hobbie (we just adore Toot &Puddle series!), cute tale and awesome illustrations.

We listened to
French Christmas Songs: Chants de Noël - Hélène Baillargeon

Mom and I are going to watch   Meet Me In St. Louis  tonight.
Life is good.

the best season of all- day 2

Lovely, sunny day today. It still looks like winter outside, but all the nasty slippery ice from the road is gone. For me the best thing about winter evenings is the golden light of setting sun on top of white roofs. It's magic for me.

Our activity today was simple- decorating candles. We grabbed plain, unscented candles, mod podge, lots and lots of glitter and set to work. Kids had so much fun, and glitter is everywhere. D. picked up couple of pine cones and they also got some sparkly treatment.

The yummy treat for today : Crunchy cookies
Preheat oven to 385 F
2 cups of flour+pinch of salt -mix together, 125 g of softened butter +3/4 c of sugar +1 egg+1 tsp of vanilla -mix well. Add flour. Make a ball and let sit in a fridge for 45 min. Roll the dough, get cookie cutters out and bake for 15 min or until golden.

We read The Mitten by Jan Brett


Today's music :

Putumayo Celtic Christmas - Various Artists

The movie for me when kiddos are in bed  :
Sleepless In Seattle

 

The best season of all- day 1

Easing into winter and first little door in our calendar is open. We woke up to a delightful gift from Mother Nature- snow, so much snow everywhere!

We did some school, and pulled out our coffee filters and window art paints and created this year's window display. It's getting dark so early in our parts (it's night by 5 pm) that I barely had time to take a picture :)

It was sort of "Breakfast for dinner" event today as well and we celebrated the beginning of winter by eating raspberry-chocolate filled aebelskivers. Recipe found here.

We read "One Snowy Night" by Nick Butterworth (I wrote about this lovely book in Sleepy books post recently)



Great day!
Today's soundtrack : 



Movie for me tonight :)

Science Sunday- The Star named Sun + field trip

As much as I love doing science with kiddos, I must confess it is not my usual favorite subject to plan  (being a liberal arts major all my life (and being told by "kind" teachers that science is not my thing all my life)). However this year I'm thoroughly enjoying it. September and October were dedicated to animals in general, and Colorado animals in particular. The November and December are going to be all about Space.
We had a great start learning about the Sun and having most amazing field trip to the Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory in Boulder.
The trip was organized by our amazing co-op -we saw the show about Sun's influence on the Earth at the Planetarium and got an incredibly interesting observatory tour. It was a lot of information for us to process afterwards, but D. was absolutely charmed by being given a chance to look at the sun and two stars (all that is visible in the daylight) through the huge telescopes.

looking for Venus

I had no idea that there is such a great place not so far away from us and now I believe we will visit both planetarium and the observatory  quite often. The observatory has open house events which allow general public to do some stargazing every Friday during semester.

Before going to the planetarium we read about our Sun and talked about its importance to all that is alive.

Our reading material this week included our favorite encyclopedia- Universe from DK publishing ( as I have written before the latest editions come with handy posters that look great on our wall)

This book is always fun for little ones :

Another source of information is a book that we found on NASA webpage (some info is still beyond D.'s comprehension, but he got a good idea of what sun does)
Super Star meets the plucky planet storybook

The teacher's guide on NASA webpage is most helpful as well:
NASA'a teacher resources about Earth and Sun connection .pdf

The Sun images gallery is this way .
Great video about Sun:

The answer to the question how big is the sun and earth was provided by this image and video:

Our craft was quite simple- D. simply cut out a shape of sun and colored it with oil pastels- now it warms up our art display

Another great thing? Why, the Sun songs of course :)

 

Learning about Brazil- day 2

This time we learned about culture and traditions.

We watched "Families of Brazil" that we got from the library, which, I am sorry to say was not very informative. I think the goal of this film was to show that life of children in Brazil is not that different from that of American kids. We were however looking for differences and did not find much.

We talked about Carnavale and looked at some videos on youtube. We admired costumes and tried to do a little samba dance -it sure produced a lot of giggles :)) this video is not of carnival samba but is our favorite nonetheless.
Both D. and C. were fascinated with capoeira, and of course attempted to do it too :) This video shows some great skills that kids have. D. wants to take some classes so I'm looking for it now.

We talked about food, listened to some great music. National Geographic has a great music page  with recommendations for artists. (Their photo page is also great)  I will never stop loving Putumayo cds for great music. Some tracks from various albums can be heard here .

The art activity for the day was to draw a carnaval guy or girl and make him some exciting costumes using feathers, markers and sequins.:) Here is the result, I must say glitter panties is my favorite part :D

Learning about Australia. Part 2

Our days are pretty chaotic as we prepare for my parents to leave for the summer.
Nevertheless we managed to finish our Australian studies (for now :). I mean they could go on and on, the interesting country it is :)) Maybe more next year :)
Part 1 of our studies can be found here
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We read some wonderful books that taught us about this amazing country and the culture of aboriginal people:

Anya's bookshelf: children-books-australia




More of Anya's books »

We learned about amazing wildlife. This particular short movie was especially fascinating:

We did Australia inspired art:

We listened to the music:

We did a card for our "destination" box:

What I love most about homeschooling that it gives me an opportunity to discover more about the world. I read a great book Dreamkeepers:A Spirit-Journey into Aboriginal Australia by Harvey Arden I learned a lot and will definitely continue learning.
I watched some great australian movies and again, can't wait to see more, so un-hollywood they are.
The journey will definintely continue :)

Lion King

One of the best theater experiences for me was "Lion King" Broadway Musical, that me and hubby saw long before we had kids. I was in tears the whole time- it was magic.
In November Lion King comes to Denver, I'm seriously considering buying tickets for us and D. now, least we miss it.

The best season of all: day 2

A little crazy today, more work for me, more fun for kiddos :)
It was really warm today too, a decent snowfall is long overdue and I'm craving it.

Today we have winterized our window display (Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog had some great ideas), we made snowflakes and birdies out of coffee filters , and we made "lights"  using paints from Paint and peel window art kit.

I'm planning to see "Sun Valley Serenade" later tonight, great winter movie, not much of a plot but the music is great.

Learning about Italy part 1

We are learning about Italy this week. I figured I'd better make one or two big posts about it just to keep all activities in one place.

Monday:

We took out globe and atlas and found Europe, then Italy ("it looks like a shoe!" ), looked how far it is from out town and vowed to go there someday ("mommy, can we go tomorrow?" ). D. demanded to know if there are any volcanoes, we found two and he was satisfied. We talked a little bit about Pompeii too. We looked where the major cities are situated, what is the capital and learned some Italian words.
Then we made a card that will go to our "destinations" folder. On a sheet of white construction paper D. wrote Italy in English and Russian, capital, language and drew the flag. Then the fun started- we have a huge pile of old National Geographic magazines at home and we looked through them for some pictures. The pictures  and tiny maps that we found we then glued on the sheet. I wrote few Italian words on the back of the sheet- D. loved the idea of learning a new language.  D. was absolutely thrilled when he found this ad "look mama, it says ITALIAN!"  he even did a little dance around the room. :)

Tuesday:

We read " Strega Nona: her story" by  Tomie de Paola  and learn more words. D.'s favorite was "aglio selvatico" :). D. loved the book and the little rhyme in it. Then he drew a picture of Strega Nona he tried but the tile roof was a challenge for him I must say.

Then we listened to some songs (Stella stellina, Volevo un gatto nero- kids songs and couple of my personal favorites Una poesia anche per te by Elisa, Nell'azzurita by Eros Ramazzotti)  and opera pieces ("O soave fanciulla", "O sole mio", "O mio babbino caro"). I translated for him "O mio babbino caro" and he was very serious while he listened to it. After it was over he turned to me and asked "So where is the daddy , isn't he coming on stage?" :)

Wednesday:

It turned out a very busy day for me, so we did only a fraction of what was really planned. We looked through "Anno's Italy", it is a great book with very detailed pictures. It doesn't have any text so it was fun to imagine what people on the pictures were doing and thinking. He loved poppies on the pictures about Tuscany.
We talked about the leaning tower of Pisa and did this project. We deviated a bit from the instructions and merely bended our pipe cleaners, D. wasn't up to scrupulous work that day.

Thursday:

Today we learned about Venice. We read "Olivia goes to Venice" by Ian Falconer. Now I'm not sure if I liked the story in this book very much especially towards the end of the book , but pictures are great and D. enjoyed it. The final part where the bell tower breaks had him frowning and we had to look some pictures up in order to assure him that the tower was indeed fine.:)
After that we did a great art project Venetian Architecture that we borrowed from laugh, paint, create 
We outlined palazzi using crayons and painted over with watercolors. D. loved the idea of painting reflections and he drew his gondola after I showed him how. I love his colors as always, so bright.

So here we are, 3 more days to go. I'm still thinking if it should be one country every month or one country per two weeks. Every week is going to be too much- D. is only 5 after all and no way I can prepare the material and organize it for every week :) So yeah, I will post part 2 on Sunday I think :)

Autumn theme continued

Windy day today, wind has stripped trees from the rest of the leaves. It was delightful to watch leaves dance around. It inspired today's creations for aedm.
D.'s task was to paint the background in fall colors with a wide brush , then to add dots with a smaller brush.
I did another ATC because cards are small and I can actually complete one and do it fast :).

"Dancing leaves"

Book of the day :  "Woody, Hazel and Little Pip" by Elsa Beskow which was absolutely lovely, we enjoyed it a lot.
Background noise: Concerning Hobbits by Howard Shore ("The Lord of the Rings" OST)