(Please, as always, forgive my typos. I'm always so relieved to actually finish a blog post and be done with it that I hardly ever reread them and correct mistakes.)
I'll start with the Respiratory System because that was maybe the favorite subject of the week.
On Tuesday Abigail was so tired and things just weren't really working out so instead of re-doing our circulatory system lab (where we got our heart beating and talked about getting oxygen to the blood) but counting breaths per minute instead of calculating heart rate, we just read our books. That worked out fine for us.
But on Thursday everyone was feeling fine so along with our last two books I had a fun activity prepared (courtesy of Pandia Press, again). Joshua found our activity supplies that morning and sort of figured it out, but I think that just made him more excited. I laid out drawings of a large nose, a large lung, a large heart, and a large foot on the ground. We used an old outdated rolled up map for our trachea and then I had 20 round markers, 10 colored red and 10 colored blue. The red circles represented oxygen and the blue represented carbon dioxide. I sat at the head of our "giant" and would move an oxygen through the nose and down the trachea where it landed. At the same time I inhaled (very deeply). Then the kids had to take the oxygen through the lung via the alveolar sacs into the blood stream and then to the heart. Joshua's favorite part was where the oxygen was pushed with great force through the arteries to the foot where it was dropped off through the capillaries and then a carbon dioxide was picked up from the cells, and followed a return path through the veins until it got back to the lung, passed from the blood to the lung via the alveolar sacs again, and then pushed back through the trachea (passed the vocal chords in the larynx) and then out through the nose of the giant. At this point, I got to exhale... and then take another deep breath and send another oxygen back down the trachea to do it all over again. That's a lot of info. And my kids wanted to do this over and over again. Even as I was helping Abigail with her reading lesson, I could hear Joshua out in the living room running oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out of the giant.
After the activity the kids filled out this worksheet to show on paper what they had just acted out and they answered questions about why we breath harder when we exercise, etc. They liked this paper too.
In one of the library books we read about the need for oxygen. I finally thought to ask Joshua if he understood what oxygen even was. I mean, he knew it was necessary for the body but he didn't really have a grasp of the fact that it was a gas in the air that we can't see but is all around us. (I didn't want to get into the molecular chemistry of it.) The book had an interesting experiment showing the need for oxygen and the presence of oxygen. You had to have faith the book wasn't lying, but for a 6 year old, I don't think he's considered the fact that not everything you read is true. That's a lesson for another day. Anyway, we demonstrated how a candle, after burning up all the oxygen it has, will go out because it must have oxygen to burn. We also "caught" the air without oxygen and could make the candle sputter by putting the glass back over the flame and lifting it back up again. Joshua was worried that we were playing with fire, but he couldn't hide the mischievous grin growing on his face. I better watch that one!
See, respiratory system was fun.
For the conclusion of our Ancient China unit we started out with Confucius. While I read them a very interested book (maybe a little over their heads, but they got the idea and made connections with Socrates and the founding fathers) they did some more brush paintings and we finished their wall hangings.
The next day we moved on to Doaism. I don't really understand this religion very much and honestly, I'm not totally interested in learning more because what I do know doesn't make very much sense - you know, when you actually know Truth, why would you want to spend much time really studying a religion that proclaims all truth, once spoken, isn't truth anymore. I'm sure it is a beautiful religion, but it is confusing to me, and at this point in my life, irrelevant.
But we read about Loa Tzu anyway. It was a beautiful book. Then I had the kids watch some youtube videos demonstrating Tai Chi, which I understand is part of Doaism, even if it isn't really used necessarily that way all the time. Earlier during the unit we had read a number of legends about different forms of Kung Fu, like eagle, tiger, dragon, and crane style. I thought it would be fun to watch some Kung Fu too and contrast that with the Tai Chi. The kids did enjoy it.
Also, somewhere in there, we read the book Fa Mulan by San Souci. This is the story of a Chinese girl who, to save her aged father, impersonated a soldier and secretly joined the Chinese army. She was so good that she eventually rose in the ranks to become a general. You're probably more familiar with the Disney movie, which we watched afterward and is actually based on this San Souci book. The legend of Fa Mulan is actually quite ancient and there are a variety of versions. The end of this book gives a little history and honestly, that was just as interesting as the story. I recommend this book. And Joshua would probably recommend the movie (although he really liked the book also).
Again, sometime this last week I had the children listen to Chinese nursery rhymes. The library book had a CD with it so the kids could look at the pictures and listen to someone read the rhymes. The book was grouped with like rhymes as much as possible, one in English and then one in Chinese. But each nursery rhyme also had translations with it as well. I thought the kids would have liked to listen to Chinese, but actually, they weren't too interested in this book once they had listened to it once through and they said it wasn't very interesting. These rhymes, I am sure, were not ancient. They seemed a little "western" to me, if you get what I'm saying. Maybe more authentic would have been to listen to the Analects of Confucius in the native Chinese, but I don't think the kids would have enjoyed that either.
Lastly, which China at least, we did read a few other books. When I can get my hands on them, I check out books from the Magic Tree House series by Mary Osborne Pope. They are very educational but I like the kids to hear them AFTER we've done most of our studying on a topic so they can hear the story and as different topics come up, they know and understand what those things are. I use it as a review instead of an introduction. Also, I found a Choose Your Own Adventure book about Ancient China (the only problem being many people believe "ancient' China lasted until 1911! and we were dealing with about 600 BC to 200 AD) and Joshua and Abigail thought this was the best way to read a book. They learned very quickly not to take risks when making their choices. They were really conservative because they found out if you don't, your character will most likely end up shaming your entire family and then being beheaded by the emperors guards. But of course, we read all the other endings too! And finally, no photo, I found a book filled with Chinese myths and legends about dragons, gods, and spirits, or something like that. The earlier stories were the most interesting, about the dragons, but once it got into the Daoist and Buddhist gods, it got a little ridiculous (I promise I am not trying to be offensive!) that it wasn't much fun for me to read. Had we studied each individual deity, I think the stories would have made more sense, but we didn't.
And finally (for real this time), on Friday we did a quick lesson on ancient Scythians and Mongols. In our actual "history book" from which I pick what we will study and in what order, this topic only covered one page layout. I couldn't find any books at the library on this topic suitable for children, so we just read the history book and did the project recommend therein. Applique. I bet you didn't know the Scythians were very good at applique with felt. We tried it out. Abigail is always trying to get me to teach her how to sew (even Joshua sometimes) so I figured at least she might like this. The problem was our yarn needles had an extremely hard time poking through two layers of felt, so it was hard going. We only had two needles pointy enough to pierce through, with effort, so I used a more blunt needle and a small pair of scissors to puncture my felt before pulling the yarn through. Another problem was that the kids wanted to do a complicated shape, a horse and a unicorn. I thought, hey, why not? until we ran into our needle dilemma. So eventually we switched over to easier shapes. Abigail was doing awesome and not complaining at all, except when her yarn fell out of her needle. She may really enjoy needlework and such. But as it turns out, it was Joshua who actually finished his project.
On a funny note, Derek was a little worried about Joshua doing needlework because it wasn't "manly" enough or something. So I was happy to relieve Derek's concerns by reporting back to him that when Joshua was getting frustrated with the dull needle not piercing through, he more than once exclaimed, "Oh! I just need a hammer or something!" There, hammers are more manly than sewing needles.
Next week, actually tomorrow, we are starting our study of the Ancient Mayans. Next year we will be studying about the Incas and Aztecs. I didn't realize the Mayan civilization was so much older (although later also a contemporary) to those other civilizations. There was also another group in that region even before the Mayan called the Olmecs, and if you ever find a child appropriate book about the Olmecs, let me know because I have yet to find one. Anyway, I have an idea of what we are going to cover, but I have kind of no idea of how we are going to do it. I am totally disorganized. But we will be drinking a chipotle chocolate drink and making our own corn tortillas. I've gotten that far. I was just so busy last week planning for preschool for this week and my Relief Society lesson that I gave today that I didn't have time to come up with much of a game plan. So I think tomorrow we will pick one of our books to read and then go down our list of learning activities and the kids can kind of help me plan out when they want to do each activity. We'll see how it goes.
And the RS lesson went well. And I'm glad I'm not teaching again until June. Yea!
Lukas has started a new workbook about shapes! Page one was about circles. He did fairly well - he can draw a circle much better than a square and he can pick them out in a crowd, but the lesson ended up looking like this.
He told me he made lots of little temples and that since he did such a great job he deserved some stickers. And, since he did do a good job, I gave them to him. :)
I'll start with the Respiratory System because that was maybe the favorite subject of the week.
On Tuesday Abigail was so tired and things just weren't really working out so instead of re-doing our circulatory system lab (where we got our heart beating and talked about getting oxygen to the blood) but counting breaths per minute instead of calculating heart rate, we just read our books. That worked out fine for us.
But on Thursday everyone was feeling fine so along with our last two books I had a fun activity prepared (courtesy of Pandia Press, again). Joshua found our activity supplies that morning and sort of figured it out, but I think that just made him more excited. I laid out drawings of a large nose, a large lung, a large heart, and a large foot on the ground. We used an old outdated rolled up map for our trachea and then I had 20 round markers, 10 colored red and 10 colored blue. The red circles represented oxygen and the blue represented carbon dioxide. I sat at the head of our "giant" and would move an oxygen through the nose and down the trachea where it landed. At the same time I inhaled (very deeply). Then the kids had to take the oxygen through the lung via the alveolar sacs into the blood stream and then to the heart. Joshua's favorite part was where the oxygen was pushed with great force through the arteries to the foot where it was dropped off through the capillaries and then a carbon dioxide was picked up from the cells, and followed a return path through the veins until it got back to the lung, passed from the blood to the lung via the alveolar sacs again, and then pushed back through the trachea (passed the vocal chords in the larynx) and then out through the nose of the giant. At this point, I got to exhale... and then take another deep breath and send another oxygen back down the trachea to do it all over again. That's a lot of info. And my kids wanted to do this over and over again. Even as I was helping Abigail with her reading lesson, I could hear Joshua out in the living room running oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out of the giant.
 |
| View of our giant from the bottom looking up. |
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| View of our giant from the nose looking down. |
After the activity the kids filled out this worksheet to show on paper what they had just acted out and they answered questions about why we breath harder when we exercise, etc. They liked this paper too.
 |
| Abigail got a little over excited about the coloring aspect of the worksheet :) |
In one of the library books we read about the need for oxygen. I finally thought to ask Joshua if he understood what oxygen even was. I mean, he knew it was necessary for the body but he didn't really have a grasp of the fact that it was a gas in the air that we can't see but is all around us. (I didn't want to get into the molecular chemistry of it.) The book had an interesting experiment showing the need for oxygen and the presence of oxygen. You had to have faith the book wasn't lying, but for a 6 year old, I don't think he's considered the fact that not everything you read is true. That's a lesson for another day. Anyway, we demonstrated how a candle, after burning up all the oxygen it has, will go out because it must have oxygen to burn. We also "caught" the air without oxygen and could make the candle sputter by putting the glass back over the flame and lifting it back up again. Joshua was worried that we were playing with fire, but he couldn't hide the mischievous grin growing on his face. I better watch that one!
 |
| Here the flame is halfway down. It's almost out of oxygen. |
See, respiratory system was fun.
For the conclusion of our Ancient China unit we started out with Confucius. While I read them a very interested book (maybe a little over their heads, but they got the idea and made connections with Socrates and the founding fathers) they did some more brush paintings and we finished their wall hangings.
 |
| This was MY favorite of Abigail's paintings, but she didn't want it as her wall hanging. |
 |
| These two are mine. I like the black and white look better, but the colored wall hanging looks more realistic (if you can call it that). That river floating down between the mountains in the black and white just doesn't make any sense. |
 |
| Joshua painted a silk worm on a mulberry tree eating the leaves next to a silkworm cocoon whose silk is beginning to unravel. Then on second half he painted a picture of a silk wall hanging. I think it's a dragon. Abigail's is brown mountains. |
But we read about Loa Tzu anyway. It was a beautiful book. Then I had the kids watch some youtube videos demonstrating Tai Chi, which I understand is part of Doaism, even if it isn't really used necessarily that way all the time. Earlier during the unit we had read a number of legends about different forms of Kung Fu, like eagle, tiger, dragon, and crane style. I thought it would be fun to watch some Kung Fu too and contrast that with the Tai Chi. The kids did enjoy it.
Also, somewhere in there, we read the book Fa Mulan by San Souci. This is the story of a Chinese girl who, to save her aged father, impersonated a soldier and secretly joined the Chinese army. She was so good that she eventually rose in the ranks to become a general. You're probably more familiar with the Disney movie, which we watched afterward and is actually based on this San Souci book. The legend of Fa Mulan is actually quite ancient and there are a variety of versions. The end of this book gives a little history and honestly, that was just as interesting as the story. I recommend this book. And Joshua would probably recommend the movie (although he really liked the book also).
Lastly, which China at least, we did read a few other books. When I can get my hands on them, I check out books from the Magic Tree House series by Mary Osborne Pope. They are very educational but I like the kids to hear them AFTER we've done most of our studying on a topic so they can hear the story and as different topics come up, they know and understand what those things are. I use it as a review instead of an introduction. Also, I found a Choose Your Own Adventure book about Ancient China (the only problem being many people believe "ancient' China lasted until 1911! and we were dealing with about 600 BC to 200 AD) and Joshua and Abigail thought this was the best way to read a book. They learned very quickly not to take risks when making their choices. They were really conservative because they found out if you don't, your character will most likely end up shaming your entire family and then being beheaded by the emperors guards. But of course, we read all the other endings too! And finally, no photo, I found a book filled with Chinese myths and legends about dragons, gods, and spirits, or something like that. The earlier stories were the most interesting, about the dragons, but once it got into the Daoist and Buddhist gods, it got a little ridiculous (I promise I am not trying to be offensive!) that it wasn't much fun for me to read. Had we studied each individual deity, I think the stories would have made more sense, but we didn't.
And finally (for real this time), on Friday we did a quick lesson on ancient Scythians and Mongols. In our actual "history book" from which I pick what we will study and in what order, this topic only covered one page layout. I couldn't find any books at the library on this topic suitable for children, so we just read the history book and did the project recommend therein. Applique. I bet you didn't know the Scythians were very good at applique with felt. We tried it out. Abigail is always trying to get me to teach her how to sew (even Joshua sometimes) so I figured at least she might like this. The problem was our yarn needles had an extremely hard time poking through two layers of felt, so it was hard going. We only had two needles pointy enough to pierce through, with effort, so I used a more blunt needle and a small pair of scissors to puncture my felt before pulling the yarn through. Another problem was that the kids wanted to do a complicated shape, a horse and a unicorn. I thought, hey, why not? until we ran into our needle dilemma. So eventually we switched over to easier shapes. Abigail was doing awesome and not complaining at all, except when her yarn fell out of her needle. She may really enjoy needlework and such. But as it turns out, it was Joshua who actually finished his project.
 |
| My initials. Now that I'm done with this, I have no use for it and will probably end up throwing it away, but I started it and I felt like I had to finish it. |
Next week, actually tomorrow, we are starting our study of the Ancient Mayans. Next year we will be studying about the Incas and Aztecs. I didn't realize the Mayan civilization was so much older (although later also a contemporary) to those other civilizations. There was also another group in that region even before the Mayan called the Olmecs, and if you ever find a child appropriate book about the Olmecs, let me know because I have yet to find one. Anyway, I have an idea of what we are going to cover, but I have kind of no idea of how we are going to do it. I am totally disorganized. But we will be drinking a chipotle chocolate drink and making our own corn tortillas. I've gotten that far. I was just so busy last week planning for preschool for this week and my Relief Society lesson that I gave today that I didn't have time to come up with much of a game plan. So I think tomorrow we will pick one of our books to read and then go down our list of learning activities and the kids can kind of help me plan out when they want to do each activity. We'll see how it goes.
And the RS lesson went well. And I'm glad I'm not teaching again until June. Yea!
Lukas has started a new workbook about shapes! Page one was about circles. He did fairly well - he can draw a circle much better than a square and he can pick them out in a crowd, but the lesson ended up looking like this.
He told me he made lots of little temples and that since he did such a great job he deserved some stickers. And, since he did do a good job, I gave them to him. :)
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