A Corny Lesson

When you live on a farm and your dad is a farmer, it is very important (in my opinion) to understand what your dad does and how it affects you.  Dad is also much more interested in helping out and talking about your school day when it involves him :).  Every fall, I try to work the harvest into our lessons, and this year was no exception.

We read this book, The Life and Times of Corn, by Charles Micucci.  It is awesome!!!

I am highlighting my 2 favorite pages-the part of corn and harvesting corn (below), but it gives SOOOO much information about different types of corn, what corn is used for, the history of corn, it is really a great book!

Then, we took a ride on the combine :).

And, watched dad put the corn into the bins.

One day, we broke out the big paper and crayons.  I asked them to draw 2 things-the parts of a corn stalk, and what they saw when they went for a ride in dad's combine.

Mustang's parts of corn.

Mini Cooper did her own thing and made a corn maze with people-it was so cute!

Charger riding in the combine with Daddy.

Mustang's again-she was missing the brace roots before.

Charger's he made his when the corn was done growing, because his favorite color is yellow.

It has been a fun little study and I am quite sure the kids learned something.  I was very impressed by their drawings!  Have you done any seasonal work?

We are linking up to:

Johnny Appleseed Unit Homeschooling Lesson Plan Ideas Preschool-2nd Grade

So, I somehow read the calendar wrong when doing our school planning this year.  I read that Johnny Appleseed's birthday was on August 23rd.  Ha ha!!!  Apparently we need to do a unit on calendar reading, because his birthday is September 23rd.  A bit early for my kids-but they really don't care.  Works out great for blogging, though, because I can tell you what we did BEFORE his birthday :).

We learned about Johnny Appleseed as part of our group learning each day.  So, we just did a few things each day for five different days.  Here's a peak into what we did:

On the first day, after our school lessons, I popped this DVD into the DVD player. It is Disney's It's A Small World of Fun! Vol. 3.  .  The first episode on the DVD it the old Disney film of Johnny Appleseed.  This has the traditional Johnny Appleseed prayer song.  I liked playing the show before our unit so that my children were already familiar with him before we started.  BTW, we did a short unit on him a couple years ago, but Mustang is the only one who remembered it :).

Day two, we read The True Tale of Johnny Appleseed (top left corner) and Johnny Appleseed by Reeve Lindbergh (bottom left).

It was also the day that I put a few new works out for the little girls.  This is the letter sorting available in my A is for Apple Pack.

Explorer totally got the apple matching from All Our Days.  She was SOOOO PROUD!

Mini Cooper chose the different pictures from Prekinders.  Explorer supervised :). 

Day three we read Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellog (top right of books above).

Then I we played a game.  I found a free Johnny Appleseed lapbook on Homeschool Share.  Lapbooks aren't really our thing, but I found some great printables in the pack and set to work coming up with different ways to use them.One of these is a fact or fiction little book that was to be made.  I loved the fact or fiction part, little book-not so much-so instead we played 'Johnny Appleseed's Fact or Fiction.' 

 After a lesson on what a fact is and what fiction is, I gave the kids each a fact paddle and a fiction paddle.  

We kept score of who got the most answers right.  Surprisingly, Mini Cooper one the game.  Charger has a long way to go before he understands tall tales, lol!!  They loved the game so much they begged to play it with more then just Johnny Appleseed facts and fiction.  It was fun!

Day 4-ART!!!  Yep, we did art!  That almost never happens (and won't happen again for awhile since I signed the kids up for art classes at our local art museum), but this week we did ART at OUR house...with PAINT!!  And, I even survived, whew.

I found this neat apple art project on Deep Space Sparkle and decided to give it a try.  It came out very well!

We didn't have colored paper to glue the apples to (and BELIEVE ME, I did try to find it at the local Hobby Lobby-sigh), so instead we made place mats to glue the apples to.  I think they came out very cute.  This one is Mustang's.

Day 5 was all about apples.  We read How Do Apples Grow?  by Betsy Maestro-PERFECT book about apples, BTW.  Loved it!

Next up, taste testing!  This was part of the Homeschool Share pack from above.  We recorded our answers.

Check out Explorer trying to swipe more apple!

Apple tasting is every one's favorite!!

Before we cut them open, we predicted how many seeds would be in each apple.  This printable was ALSO from the Homeschool Share pack (great pack if you ask me).  The kids would draw how many seeds they thought would be inside the apple, and then draw how many were actually inside.

Mini Cooper and Charger even drew big apples and drew seeds inside.  They loved the guessing.

In one apple we found the seeds were already starting to sprout-inside.  It was really neat to see after just reading the book.  Needless to say, we did not eat the apple :).

There is one more book in the book photo.  It is a chapter book titled Who Was Johnny Appleseed.  I loved that I didn't have to assign this book to Mustang.  I simply left it on the coffee table for a couple days and after we had talked about Johnny Appleseed, she noticed it and read it without being asked.

So there is our little unit on Mr. Johnny Appleseed.  He is one of my very favorite characters to learn about.  I get to talk about American history, nature, and most importantly, being a missionary, all at one time :).

Oh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord. For giving me the things I need: the sun, and the rain, and the apple seed.  Oh the Lord is good to me!

God Bless,
Lisa

We are linked up:

Botany and Nature Work Leaf Collecting and Tree Activities

We've been keeping quite busy around here!  One thing we started last week was our leaf collection.  Then it ended up being 100 degrees this week, so we took a week off from outdoor nature work.  But, we will be back at it next week.

The goal is to identify all the trees in our yard.  Which there are a LOT of. I am pretty sure we have about 10 different types, and that's without heading over to my IL's who have a few more.  Living out in the country has its perks for leaf collecting :).

We started out reading the book Tell Me, Tree by Gail Gibbons.  We also read I Can Name 50 Trees Today from Dr. Seuss.  Both are good, but Tell Me, Tree was our favorite.  This allowed us to discuss that the trees are different in their leaves, bark, and seeds.  

Then we headed outside to collect leaves, needles, pine cones and acorns.

We also observed lots of things about the trees-like how the needles grew out of the branches.  

And took a good look at the sap on the trees.  

The next day we explored the leaves we collected.  We made playdough prints.  

We also put some in wax paper, somehow we don't have photos.

We did leaf rubbings.  This is my example.  I enjoy 'helping' :).

Mustang giving it a try.

I was going to have them match leaves to our Botany work.  But, before I could suggest it, Mustang had already started.  Yay!

For the little girls, we got out our fall sensory bin.  It's been a bit of a mess around here!

And, for Mini Cooper's cutting practice I found this great printable on Education.com.  I can't link you to the exact page, so search preschool, science, trees.  She loves to cut and paste, so this was a great fit for her!!

We have more to do with our leaf learning.  I would like to have Mustang and maybe Charger do a book of leaves and rubbings and identify them.  Should be a good project for the year.  

What have you been up to in your nature studies?  I'd love to hear your ideas!!

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless,

Lisa

Montessori Art: Cookie Cutter Tree Art

When I do art projects with the kids, I like to set up art stations.  I put out all that is needed for the project and then demonstrate how to do it.

For this project, they received a piece of watercolor paper, a tree stump, paint, glue, and cookie cutters.

The idea was to glue down the tree stump.

Then use the cookie cutters to dip in the paint and make leaves for the trees.

Here was my example.  It was a little harder then I thought, but it did seem to work.

Mustang was first up.  She did it 'my' way first. 

Then moved on to her own ideas.

Mini Cooper had a lot of fun gluing on the stump.

Then did her best to make leaves.  Looked a lot like a cannon.

Charger scrapped my idea altogether.

He decided it should be a volcano.  To be fair, the stumps DO look like volcanos.

Finished products-Mini Cooper's, Mustang's,

Charger's, and Mini Cooper's again.

This was a fun one!  

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!