Frontier Unit - Week 2

In week two we studied Genisis and how God gave us animals to rule over.  We talked about different animlas and how we use them.  Then we studied tracks.  We did a little matching and talked about how it would be important as a fronterman to know what tracks belonged to what animal.

 

You know the drill.  FIELDTRIP

 

We went to this really cool nature trail in friendswood, and I showed the kids kind of what we were looking for

 

 

Car tracks, but we are looking for animal tracks.  Just wanted to make sure they had the right idea

 

And the hunt began

 

I just love this park

 

 

Noah pointed out how heavy the leaf cover was and how hard it was to see tracks

 We found something!!!  I think it was where a squirrel buried something

 

Yikes!!! Tracks!!!

 

Im pretty sure they were human tracks BUT it was exciting non the less!!!

 

Our second field trip of the week was to go to the zoo.

 

I made a spread sheet that said:

 

animal name, predator, prey, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore

 

as we approached each exhibit they wrote the name, and then checked of which it was. 

 

 

 

 

After a bit, we just talked about which it was.  The point was to grasp the concept of herbivore, carnivore or omnivore and to understand that some predators were frogs.  That not all predators are huge lions with BIG scary teeth 

 

 

 

 Watching the otters.

 

 

It was windy so Micah hung out in this hippo.

 

It was a good shelter from the wind

 

That's a wrap!!!

 

 

 



Frontier Unit - Week One

This week we started our konos frontier unit.  We read about Davie Crockett, and we learned about the Louisiana purchase, and  Sacajawea.

 

To tie things together we went on a hike pretending we were frontiersmen.  We took:

 

A peanut butter sandwich - and I explained they would have flour to make their bread and beef jerky for protein

water - we talked about how frontiersmen got their water

Cheetos - that was the closest we had to dried fruit in the house.  But I explained they had to take things that would not rot easily.

 

As we went on our hike they took pictures to "shoot" any animals or food (plant life) they saw.  When we got home we were going to "trade" animal skins etc.

 

 

We saw a lot of fruit

and one dead fish.  There was a lot of trash in the creek behind our neighborhood, it was a perfect opportunity to talk about pollution and the differences of back in the frontier days and today.

 

So, as you can see we had no furs to trade.

 

So this lead to lots of questions.  What would that mean for a frontiersman?  What would they eat?  What would the trade?  Would you try again tomorrow?

 

I think the actual hands on hike cemented in what we had read about and learned through out the week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Konos - Sensory

 

 

 

 

We continued to concentrate on our senses this week and vision.  We talked more about how the eye works and we did fun things INCULDING finger painting

 

 

 

I love paint, all the bright colors

 

mixed together

 

Eli did several cool designs

 

During activities like this, we talk about the senses, what senses is this activity using?

sight, touch, smell

 

This week we also talked about the 6th sense, and if they think it exist or not.

 

Both boys said NO!!!

 

What do you think?  Do you believe in a 6th sense?

 

 

Learning about the eye

We recently did a KONOS unit on the eye.  I was a little nervous about this whole cow's eye thing, but it went off with out a hitch.

 

First I drew this diagram of the eye on our white board.

 

We went over the parts of the eye and what they do

 

Each child wrote it down on their work sheet & we discussed it

 

Now it was time to actually see what we were talking about.  I did not get to take pictures, because my hands were pretty gross, Eli did the honors.  And there's just a few good ones :) (scroll fast if your squeamish, but its not really that bad)

 

 

We went step by step and talked and looked at everything I had just showed them about the eye.  The cows eye is very close to the human eye.

 

 

Then we went to the health museum.  I work this in to our lessons by taking them to the exact part of the body we are learning about.  We do the full display & then look at other things that interest us.

 

This is the eye from the out side

 

Now we are inside the eye.  In the above picture Noah is doing an interactive question series on the eye.

 

Here are eye lenses, you can see what it would be like to have different eye diseases.

 

This is the back of the eye, what it looks like from the inside.

 

Pretty fun!  What techniques do you use when learning about the body?

 

 

Orchestra Memory Game

We are in week 4 of our Konos curriculum on the character trait of attentiveness.  I can not say enough good things about Konos, I highly recommend it.  In weeks 3 & 4 we learned about sound, musical instruments and the orchestra and symphony.  One of our activities was to learn the lay out of where all the instruments are located in an orchestra and the names and family's that each instrument belonged into.

 

I had very much enjoyed week one of the attentiveness unit, where we used a very interactive approach to memorize the ear.  So I created this memory game to help the children with the memorization of the orchestra.

 

 

Link to: Orchestra Memory Game

This was such a fun night! We made sugar cookies, listened to Christmas music and then sat by the fire & played our memory game!

attentiveness

We started a new unit this week on attentiveness, using the Konos curriculum.  I absolutely love it.  I feel like the children have learned so much in two days.  Konos teaches a character trait and incorporates bible lessons with science, history, memory, art, reasoning, reading, language and field trips

 

For the science part of the attentiveness lesson we learned about the ear.  How it works and the parts.  After day one, both boys know all the parts of the ear.  I was honestly blown away.  We have tried less hands on approaches and it took longer (example: memorizing the continents)  We defined attentiveness, practiced eye contact, acted out Bible stories, talked about the importance of paying attention, jobs that required attention.  We watched TV with no sound and talked about body language and how we thought the people felt from watching them.  We started reading about Helen Keller, we played attention games and talked about concentration.

 

I have to supplement Konos with math and phonics.  But Its so wonderful.  I love how the learning fits in to our life and its fun.  It feels like we are playing.  And we are.