Leprechauns with a Pot 'o Gold

St Patrick's Day is not a big thing here in the Philippines, but since there was a unit about it and we already have the materials for it then we went for it.

1. Books: Under the Rainbow, St Patrick

2. Geography and Reading Preparation
Locate Ireland in the Map.
Make a game identifying all words that starts with sh

3. Botany & Bible: 
Talk about shamrock and its meaning.

2. Art: Color Sequence of a Rainbow
The Song Colors of the Rainbow as sung at Kindermusik class helped a lot in remembering the sequence.
We coupled it with activities and painting.

3. Language: Rainbows around the World:
Colors in English,Tagalog and how often Spanish words are used in the Philippines (a short introduction to Spanish influence to the Philippines) and Chinese

Red - Pula- 红色
Green -Luntian (berde) - Spanish Verde - 綠色

and so on

4. Music: Classifying High and Low

- Visual thru pictures (pointing and looking for objects), High and Low
- Kinesthetic thru movement and dance
-  Auditory thru singing the high note and low note, play the high low note in the piano

5. Musical Term: Glissando
-Visual thru the logo

-Kinesthetic thru waving the scarves in an arclike movement

-Auditory thru playing the slide whistle

6. Dress Up

7. Do an Irish Jig
Put a clacker (bottle cap/coin) at the bottom of our shoes and followed the dance step.

In the end we found the pot of gold, and ate them all up!

Survive Quicksand

It is summer, time to play with sand!

1. Book: The Quicksand Book
We love Tomie dePaola books, here is one informative and amusing book, coupled with a science experiment.
   

2. Video: We watched a video from Discovery Channel on quicksand

photo credit to Discovery Channel video

3. The Experiment
-Dry Sand

-Attach the hose at the bottom, a pail is better,seal the connection

-add with a little water

-add lots of water

-test how hard it is to pull Bert out

-wait and the water goes up and sand is again stable


4. Survive in a real Quicksand

photo credit to Wikipedia

-use stick to check where you are going
-in case you already fell lie back to float and slowly roll over to dry land
-don't panic and do slow movement of pulling your legs out
(read the book for complete details)
Be careful and have a great summer everyone.

Finding North

Geography basics is one of the topics in the book we are rowing (Five in a Row curriculum)

1.Two Main types of Compass
Magnetic & Gyro

2. Reading a Compass
Read the compass and use the sun as your reference to check your reading.
(sunrise and sunset)

a gift to my husband few years back,
now we are using it for our activities

3. Making a Compass
We used Usborne's 100 Science Experiments.

-With a Needle

  


and Magic School Bus' Weather Lab

-With a Magnet

4. Mapping Out
-Make a relationship between North in the compass and map's North

5. Application
-Treasure hunting with directions

6. Book Reading
Stories to relate:

-Katy and the Big Snow
One of the topics discussed is reading a compass, you can make a sub-topic or activity about it just like this.

-Eric Carle's 10 Little Rubber Ducks

Happy hunting!

Noodles from Scratch

This month's theme is Jazz Kitchen, singing, dancing to Jazz music and of course activities to make it memorable

1. Book:

2. Practical Life & Math
Grocery list, ingredients listing , money counting, and measuring are among the things you can learn in this simple task

Count, pay and go

3. Project Noodles from Scratch
Learn cooking terms by doing and seeing it

insisted on making noodles just like the animals in the book

mixing and measuring

kneading the dough

cutting by an adult (start with banana slicing for your child)
the one we did is still too thick

twirling some noodles for drying, we tried different shapes

4. Cooking: 

tomatoes, cheese & mushroom

Viola, finished product

5. Music : Singing and Drums
- Note reading: quarter note and eighth note, getting a beat

pum pa dum dum

Happy Eating, Reading and Singing everyone!

Book: The Red Carpet

1. Book: The Red Carpet

This book has been out of print, we had to search the last few copies left for sale.

This is  a fun book, so we re-enacted the scene with whatever we have at home.

2. The Story

Add words to your child's vocabulary, and know about means of communication before telephone or cellphone was invented.

As they roll the red carpet, it rolled out of the hotel

..and continued to roll

Chaos at the street

Street peddler selling pretzel got out of sorts

        Street peddler selling pretzel got out of sorts

Pets chasing after the red carpet

Road block did not stop the carpet from rolling

Police are on the chase.

Chaos as the red carpet rolled around town, police trying to put it on a halt

Carpet reached the ferry and the Duke arrived

Police escort to town hotel

3. Further discussion

-Know about jobs in the hospitality industry.

-Talk about people in authority and how they uphold the law.

-Know more about street food and the origin of pretzel.

Enjoy a pretzel with your child.

-Talk about pets having their walk, how do they behave in unusual environment.

-Discuss means of travel, one is thru a ferry.

-Discuss special events and what a red carpet treatment means.

3. Field Trip

Go to a Hotel or places where red carpet is laid.

Bundle your books with activities and they'll always keep the story in their hearts.