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:

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 Inspired Activities for The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

My big kids are learning about roots and plants and all things botany this week.  So, I thought it would be good to come up with a few activities for my little girls to do, too.  We read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, and then they got to choose from a shelf full of activities.

Cutting carrots and fractions.  So far we haven't gotten to the fractions, but Explorer spent a long time cutting!  I found this idea from The Educator's Spin On It.

The Carrot Seed cards and counters.  I found the carrots at a yard sale-for FREE!  And, to make the cards, I downloaded the free printable from Miss Lee on Teachers Pay Teachers and then printed off 5 copies of just the first card.  

Patterning using the freebie from Prekinders.  

The Carrot Seed order cards.  I used the same cards as above from Miss Lee, printed them off and colored them a little for interest.  Then I just grabbed an orange piece of card stock and wrote 1-4 on it.  

This tray included an apron, playdough, and playdough mat.  I used the playdough recipe from Domestic Superhero.

The idea is to make little carrots from the playdough.  This is wonderful for building the pincher grasper muscles for writing.  I got this idea and free printable from Prekinders.

This tracer page is from myfourps.

Our local library has the 'Big Book' version of The Carrot Seed.  That really helped in keeping Explorer's attention.  

We made footprint carrots, these were inspired by the hand print ones I found on Teach Preschool only we used our feet and markers instead of paint :).

They came out really cute, I wish this wasn't so blurry!  

Last, but certainly not least, we headed out to the garden and picked our own carrots!  Then, we cut them up and ate them :).

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope your new school year is off to a great start!
God Bless,
Lisa

We are linked up:

Montessori Science: Parts of a Seed Unit

We have been studying the parts of a seed in our botany and culture lessons.

We read a couple of books:

From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons 

and Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert (not affiliate links)

Matching seeds to packets.

I found the little boxes at Hobby Lobby.

I got the idea for this tray from Just Montessori.

We stuck beans in paper towels to watch them grow...which they didn't.  So, we went outside and took a few sprouts from the field (this was about a month ago!).

We were able to see the little plan growing right out of the seed.  

This is a corn seed.

We were also able to see this maple tree growing out of its seed, then use the leaves to identify that it was a maple tree.

Charger and Mustang put together seed booklets from Homeschool Share.

Everyone made parts of seed booklets.

Even Mini Cooper!

I used my copier to cut off the words so that Mustang could practice her handwriting.

I found these books at Montessori WorkJobs.

Charger, Mini Cooper, and I worked on three part cards, also FREE from Montessori Workjobs.

The parts of seed puzzle from Kid Advance was a nice addition-oops we have it backwards!

Overall it was a great unit!  Thanks for stopping by to read our recap!

God Bless!!

We're linked up: