The Rag Coat

We had  a wonderful time rowing The Rag Coat. Although we read this book several times over the course of two weeks I could not manage to get through it once without tearing up a bit. It was beautifully written and the illustrations are vibrant.

We made butter during the course of our study which has nearly replaced the purchase of butter at the store. My dear husband has decided that it is the perfect compliment to his homemade bread. So now we are not only blessed with the wonderful wafting aroma of bread baking, we are also privy to the “butter dance” as he excitedly shakes the cream past it’s frothy prime and into a nice yellow clump of butter.

While we did have lofty ideas of putting together a quilt we decided to settle for making rag dolls as Minna does in the story. We made our dolls out of knit gloves by cutting off all but the middle two fingers for legs and then sewing it together.

I was quite impressed with Hailey’s manual dexterity with a needle and thread. Just a couple of months ago I recall trying to explain cross stitch with one of those plastic needle kits that you purchase at the craft store. We both ended up getting frustrated and decided to put it away. So when she managed to sew the arms together and then attached them to the body I was quite proud of how well she did.

I did purchase the Hands of a Child project pack to go with this book, however the majority of the items within the pack require answers to be filled in. While perfectly suitable for children a bit older it did not suit our needs at this time.

As Minna’s father was a coal miner in Appalachia I took the opportunity to discuss the formation of coal. We decided to place our story disk on West Virginia after discussing where the Appalachian Mountains were as well as our top coal producing states.

We also covered three of the basic formations of rocks – igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Hailey had a difficult time understanding the word “sedimentary” so I filled a glass with water and sprinkled in some sand, dirt, and leaves. We watched it settle on the bottom and discussed how it could eventually turn to rock.

We also made igneous rocks by watching our chocolate “lava” cool off. Although we did speed up the cooling process by popping it in the freezer!

In order to solidify her understanding of the variations of rocks how the earth is constantly changing, I explained the rock cycle. I tried to find a basic illustration, but all of the pictures seemed to be too complex for the early elementary level. I ended up making my own illustration for her to color and labels to place . Please feel free to download it for your own personal use.

rock-cycle

Owl Moon and Unit Study

This turned mostly into a Unit Study on Owls, but we did use the Five in a Row title Owl Moon as well as HomeschoolShare title Owl Babies to implement our owl study. HSS also has Owl Moon lapbook graphics here. Owls weren’t actually on the schedule to study at all, but the local park was having a ranger talk with a rescued non-releasable barred owl named Merlin. Of course I decided to work it in to the schedule!

Since I don’t actually have the FIAR volume that Owl Moon is covered in I ended up just doing things my own way. Owl Moon is really a beautiful book. We also got the huge library storytelling book for Owl Babies. Charlie loved the life-size pictures! I thought about dissecting owl pellets for a minute, but decided that we would push that somewhat icky discovery off until another year. We used this online owl pellet dissection instead.

The cover page shows a graphic from HSS on the Owl Babies lesson plan page. Hailey wanted it to be a screech owl so she changed the coloration a bit and wrote the sound that a screech owl makes. You can hear owl sounds here.

The inside shows a nocturnal animals flap book on the left with the different animals that the owl babies might have heard during the night. The right flap has a book where Hailey illustrated the materials needed to make a nest using construction paper and crayons. The middle shows a food chain chart the we used from Teacher Created Resources. This was a terrific purchase! While it is geared toward a classroom setting it was chock full of ideas and resources that we easy to work with and put together. It has ideas for interactive plays, story telling, dissecting owl pellets, and more.  The right middle is a flap book that opens to show three of the animals that make up an owl’s diet.

The second side of the folder shows a matchbook with the definition of nocturnal and cursive handwriting copywork on the left flap. The right flap has a layer book with several owl poems and songs from HSS. The middle shows a printout on the preservation of owls from Teacher Created Resources.

The middle flap opens to show a graph with the different heights of several owls, also from Teacher Created Resources. Hailey is the first column.

Inside the flap there is a book with three different types of owls and the sounds that they make as well as a flap book about owls and their habits.

Halloween Costumes

Just a picture of our kiddos dressed up for Halloween last night. Hailey was a lion (boy that mane was a pain to make!), and Charlie wore the tiger costume that I made for Hailey last year. Michael took them trick-or-treating together with Hailey’s friend.

As you might be able to tell Hailey loves big cats!!