Study America Saturday ~ Iowa and Kansas

When I think of Iowa and Kansas, I do not get excited. However, the kids and I had an exciting trip through both states with our Road Trip USA unit study.

Iowa

We completed our Iowa notebook page and read Iowa: Facts and Symbols by Elaine A. Kule

We learned that the geode is Iowa's state rock. When we were visiting Jacob's Cave in Missouri with our friends this summer as a part of Lake School, we got to watch a geode get cut open. It was neat to see and we received some great information from the lady who worked there.

That led us to the book Rock On!: A Look at Geology's Groovy Gems by Christine Peterson.

We also did the coolest experiment!

We used our new science notebooking skills that we have been doing on our study of colors and rainbows. It was a very exciting and enriching experiment!

Kansas

We completed our notebooking page on Kansas and then moved onto some interesting and fun activities.

Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas. We started by reading the book Vanished! The Mysterious Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Monica Kulling. It was excellent and told of all of the different theories as to what happened to Ms. Earhart. Makes you wonder!

Then we watched a very short black and white clip about her disappearance from the bonus material of the "Flights of Courage" dvd.

As the sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, we read about it in Sunflowers by John F. Prevost

Then we turned to the queen of pastel tutorials, Tricia at Southern Hodgepodge, and completed her Sunflower pastel tutorial. I thought they turned out really great, and we all enjoyed doing them.

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ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

Last Child in the Woods ~ Chapters 1-4

Welcome to our book study of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. To be honest, I have no idea what this "study" is going to look like. I imagine that when we get together I will post about all of the things that caught my eye. And I would ask that you leave a comment, or a link to your own blog post in the comment, about what caught yours. This isn't anything formal, ladies, just a place to talk about what we have read. I have now read the first four chapters of Last Child in the Woods two times. It is just so good. Several things have specifically hit me deep, but in general I just realized that "times, they are a changin'." Things aren't the way they were when we were kids. Chapter 1. Gifts of Nature ~ "When I see birches bend to left and right ... I like to think some boy's been swinging them." ~ Robert Frost What is your definition of nature? What feelings, visions, senses does it conjure up? For me, it's not a

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