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Traveling Great Britain: Week 2

Feb192009
February 19, 2009 by 1 Comment

Last week we moved on (not very quickly) in our study of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. I’m personally a little overwhelmed with just how much we could really do if we really wanted too. :) That said, we focused more on the flag this week and had fun watching some different videos on YouTube and learning about the British currency.

Thanks so a friend of ours, we were able to see first hand what counterfeit currency looks like (she wasn’t passing it off, but unfortunately was on the receiving end of it!). McKenna started her first official chapter book this week (Christmas at Camelot) and Laurianna is reading through the Fairy Tales book still and together we’re reading Knight at Dawn to prepare for our studies on knights and castles in a few weeks.

 Monday

  • Colored flag of UK
  • Talked about how flag of UK was created (see notebook page below)

Tuesday

Wednesday

  • Used Draw Write Now, Book 1 to draw sheep and had the girls write their own information about sheep
  • Reviewed the difference between the UK and Great Britain
  • Read aloud more from Knight at Dawn

Thursday

  • Finished Knight at Dawn with the girls
  • Looked at the currency of England and also had fun trying to figure out if the money we had was counterfeit or not (it was – thanks Christin!)
  • Made the DLTK palace guard craft (link below)

Resources we used:

Websites we visited/used:

Notebooking page: UK Flag Notebooking Page

 

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Traveling Great Britain: Week 1

Feb112009
February 11, 2009 by 4 Comments
We’ve been studying Great Britain for the last few weeks. Originally I had only planned 2 weeks, but somehow we’ve managed to turn it into a 4 week study so far…and really we’ve only touched on the England part of Great Britain.

 

Because there is a LOT one can study in Great Britain. I was more confused with the whole Great Britain/UK thing to start with. Because silly me thought they were one and the same (in case you were wondering, they aren’t).

I’m definitely behind posting on our time in Great Britain, but do have some great resources to share with you over the next few weeks and posts. Throughout the week the girls also had some independent reading that included some Madeline books (McKenna) and also the Sword in the Tree (Laurianna) as well as some English fairytales (Laurianna). A peek at our week:

Monday

  • Realized the geography song for the British Isles was waaaaaay too long, so we scrapped that. *grins*
  • Used our atlas and map to find England and tried to figure out the difference between England, Great Britain, and the UK. Got frustrated and decided to talk about it the next day.
  • Talked about the geography of Great Britain/UK

Tuesday

  • Pulled out the altas again now that we’ve figured out that Great Britain is England, Wales, and Scotland. The UK includes Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
  • Talked about the capitals of the 4 different countries and also that London is the capital of the UK.
  • Did our map project (see the sheet below)

Wednesday

Thursday

Resources we used/read:

Websites we visited/used:

  • Guide to British life and culture – put together by the Woodlands Junior School, UK. One of the best and most informative sites I found for our studies. You can find almost anything here.
  • British Monarchy Official Site – Anything and everything relating to the British monarchy – even has links to the Royal YouTube channel.
  • Kids Ask Questions about England – a subpage of the page by Woodlands Junior School, UK but has lots of quick links to answer questions
  • Visit Britain – explore parts of Britain using an interactive map. Also has links to all the official websites.
  • England Quiz – quick ten questions to test your knowledge of England

Notebooking page I created: UK Map Worksheet

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Tot School ::14::

Feb82009
February 8, 2009 by 5 Comments

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

Ninety three pictures this week. 93. Apparently I was a little camera happy this week, but I will not be showing you every single one, so you can relax. :) I will however be sharing a little something fun that I pulled together for Kaleb as a Tot Tool, so hang on ’til the end!

Kaleb love the DK books, especially the Touch and Feel: Animal Colors right now. The pages are all sorted by different colors and show animals that are that color. One of the animals on each 2-page spread is tactile, which he loves!

There are very few “big-kid” games that Kaleb can play along with (without much frustration on the older kids part). Laurianna decided that she wanted to play Old McDonald (a game I recently picked up for $0.25 thank.you.very.much). Kaleb loves hearing the different animal sounds and it’s a great way for us to practice our animal names and sounds.

Another new favorite game in our house is Horton Hears a Who! – You to the Rescue! – one I picked up on clearance after Christmas at Target. The kids have so much fun hiding the little “dust specks” and it’s too fun watching them try to pick them up with the Horton nose. Makes for some fun pictures too!

This week it snowed again and while the older kids went outside to play, I distracted Kaleb with some other table activities. He’s still had a pretty rough cough, so inside seemed a little better for him. During that time we had fun putting beads onto pipe cleaners.

Then I found an activity that kept Kaleb happy for an entire hour. A bottle of glue, colored rice, many beads and complete stickiness later, he had a lovely messy masterpiece.

I have lots of little beads left over from who-knows-what, and I was throwing out a Parmesan cheese container this week I thought it might be a great fine motor activity for Kaleb to drop the beads into the container one at a time. He loved it. He would get between 10-15 in and then I would close the lid, he’d have fun shaking it, and then ask me to open it back up. He’d dump out all the beads and start over again. The most fun was spilling the beads all over the floor!

There were other activities this week too, but I’ll leave you with the Tot Tool that I created this week. I made a Color Matching game for Kaleb (you should be able to print it off from the link below). There are 10 colors/sheets with 6 cards on each sheet. Each color sheet has the ‘base’ color and then 5 picture cards of an item that match that color. I printed them off and laminated them to make them a little sturdier for his hands to hold onto (and also they will survive longer in our house).

I’m only giving him 2-3 colors to use at a time and spread the pictures out on the floor. Then I show him the ‘base’ color and he finds me a picture that matches that color. Click on the sample image from the cards below and it will take you directly to the pdf file.

That’s it for this week! I’m working on some other Tools for (my) Tot too, so be sure to check back later!

Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

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Color Matching Cards

Feb82009
February 8, 2009 by 22 Comments

This past week I pulled together some Color Matching Cards for Kaleb to practice matching his colors, naming/identifying objects. You can print the cards off using by clicking on the thumbnail image below.

There are 10 pages/colors shown in this set with 6 cards on each page. One of the cards shows a ‘base’ color. The base colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black and white.

Print the sheets, cut and then laminate to make them more sturdy.

Have your child find the five cards that match the base color shown. If your child is just learning his colors, use only one or two sets at a time and then add more colors in as he begins to sort colors correctly.

Click on the thumbnail above to download a copy. Please feel free to print the pdf file for your own personal use. They were created for private and non-profit use. You are more than welcome to link back to this post.

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Traveling Russia: Week 2

Jan212009
January 21, 2009 by Leave a Comment

After our first week studying Russia, I found even more to study the next week. There are times when the resources seem to be overwhelming, especially when you find them on the tail end of your studies.

Both of our girls love to pretend to be ballerinas, so this week we spent some time listening to famous Russian composers and watching some ballet in action. Needless to say, there have been lots of tights flying, tutus twirling and spinning like crazy. Zachary included. :)

Monday

  • Quick review from previous week’s studies
  • Look at the currency of Russia (see notebooking page I made below)
  • Review geography song (from Geography Songs cd)
  • Pick a meal to make and put grocery list together
  • Watch a little of Fiddler on the Roof (since this takes place in Russia)

Tuesday

  • Sing geography song and point to countries on map
  • Talk about some of the geographical/climate features of Russia and do map activities: Ural mountains (divide Russia between Europe and Asia); coldest inhabited place on Earth is Verkhoyansk; dry climate and poor soil; Volga River is longest river in Europe, three of longest rivers in world are in Russia (Ob, Yenisei, and Lena); Lake Baikal is deepest, largest fresh water lake in the world; three differenet land areas: tundra, taiga, and steppe
  • Listen to Tchaikovsky and have fun dancing

Wednesday

  • Use Draw Write Now to draw picture of a brown bear and also copywork about bear
  • Talk about some of the different animals in Russia
  • Review geography song
  • Talk about the history of Russia using notebooking pages
  • Watch a little bit of Nutcracker

Thursday

  • Sing geography song and point to countries without using cd
  • Talk about religion in Russia and what happened during Communist rule (atheism). You can read about Laurianna and McKenna’s reaction to atheism on our family blog – too funny.
  • Compare Russian alphabet to our alphabet
  • Work on making meal (Beef stroganoff)
  • Stamp passports

Websites that we visited:

  • National Geographic Kids – facts and pictures about Russia
  • Enchanted Learning about Russia – members only
  • Travel for Kids – fun things to do with kids in Russia. Also includes book ideas for helping kids learn about Russia
  • Time for Kids – learn more about Russia’s culture, landscape and resources
  • Mission Friends – resource available from the Lutheran Church. This is the student pdf version that you can print off and use as a great resource for you teaching of Russia. It includes the map activity that we did and a lot of wonderful information. Our kids really enjoyed this!
  • Nutcracker on youtube – this is the first of 16 mini-videos of the Nutcracker performed at the Royal Opera House. The girls loved this!

The currency notebooking sheet that I put together on the ruble: Next week we are going to be moving our studies to England/Great Britain, so stay tuned for more!

Resources that we used:

 

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Traveling Russia: Week 1

Jan142009
January 14, 2009 by 3 Comments

This last week we started our study of Russia with the girls. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and pull all my thoughts together until now, so I might miss some stuff that we did because there have been moments when we have veered off course from my plans and I keep forgetting to pencil in what we actually did {sigh}.

That said, I can give you a basic framework of what our week looked like, include some links that we/I used, the books we used, and one of the worksheets that I pulled together for us. I’m also working on putting a post together that talks about some of the specific things that I try to do for each country that we study (and might go into a little more detail in this post too about how we did some of the things to give you an idea).

Monday

  • Locate and map Russia. We have a wall map and globe that we use for this. The girls find the country on the map and we talk about a few different things: what continent the country is on, which hemispheres, what other countries it is near, etc…
  • Introduce our new geography song. I can’t say enough about how much we have enjoyed the cd Geography Songs and how much the girls (and Zachary by default) have learned from this cd. This week we learned the song "Former USSR". As we sing the song, we find the other countries that are mentioned in the song and work on remembering where the countries are and pointing them as we sing along.
  • Use our atlas to learn more about Russia. We use The Children’s World Atlas from Rand McNally. We read the little blurbs in the book on industry and other key facts about the country: population, major cities, etc…
  • Find the capital of the country

Tuesday

  • Read Children Just Like Me and complete the worksheet. I made a worksheet to go along with the book, so after we read about the child from the country we are studying, we fill in the information we learned (what city, religion, language, favorite foods, etc…)
  • Learn about Russia’s flag. This week I made up a little worksheet about the flag of Russia (you can print it off below).
  • Review our geography song
  • Talk about some interesting facts about Russia: it is on two different continents (found dividing point), 11 different time zones, takes up almost all of Eastern hemisphere

Wednesday

  • Review our geography song with map.
  • Play a Russian game
  • Travel and learn a little about Russia via a website – a virtual tour

Thursday

  • Review our geography song
  • Learn about the language(s) spoken in Russia and different religions. We also used this time to talk about the time that Russia was under Communist rule and people weren’t allowed to believe in God.

Here are some of the books that we used this week in our studies:

Some great websites and links related to Russia:

This is the worksheet I put together on the Russian flag:

Next week we will be continuing our time in Russia and learning about the currency of Russia, making a meal, studying the different geography features of Russia and the climate and more so be sure to check back or look for the second link/post.

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Filed Under: Asia, Europe, Geography, Geography Printables, Notebook and Worksheets 3 Comments