Big Plans Academy: 2012

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Thanksgiving

Along with homeschooling we enrolled Rachel into an Enrichment Program that meets on Fridays. This program is set up like a traditional school and it is where she participates in things like Music, P.E., Computers, class parties, Star of the Week, etc. They also do some learning throughout the day. The week before Thanksgiving the class talked about Thanksgiving and turkeys. They then had a special party with the 1st and 2nd graders. Each grade did a little presentation and then they had a special thanksgiving snack and watched a movie. I was able to come in and help with the snack part so I got to see the presentation. Here is one of the poems they did.

Here is one more....

Pumpkins

Our pumpkin unit was 3 weeks long in the month of October. We read many books about pumpkins some fiction, some non-fiction. Here are just a few of the things we did while learning about pumpkins.

We estimated how many candy corn pumpkins were in a jar.
We sorted pictures of pumpkins into small, medium or large.
We made a book called 'Where is Pumpkin".
We made patterns with different pictures of pumpkins.
We put pumpkin seeds in our dictionaries.

We explored the inside of a pumpkin with using our 5 senses. We tried to get all the seeds out to count them...but Rachel and Isaiah did not like touching the insides.

We painted pumpkins with our knuckles.

We also had two on going projects as we studied our pumpkins. The first one was making our own pumpkin patch.

Rachel watering her pumpkin seeds after being planted


Rachel, Isaiah, Rebekah and Mommy's Pumpkin seeds

Rebekah making her pumpkin for the patch

Our Pumpkin patch after roots, vines and flowers have grown

Rachel making her pumpkin.

Isaiah making his pumpkin

Our pumpkin patch

The second big project we had was investigating our pumpkins and making a book about it. We bought more pumpkins and gave them a bath(the kids were really surprised to see that they floated). Then we recorded what color our pumpkins were, if they had a stem or not, how tall they were, how much they weighed (we used subtraction for this), we counted how many vertical lines they had and then we painted faces on our pumpkins when we were done.

Floating pumpkins getting a bath

Scrubbing them clean

Rebekah and her pumpkin (she did not do any of the book stuff but likes to be involved with what the big kids are doing).

Isaiah and his pumpkin

Rachel and her pumpkin

Rachel painting her pumpkin

Isaiah painting his pumpkin

Rebekah painting her pumpkin

Malachi watching his siblings paint

On October 31 we had a big pumpkin party.

We had a pumpkin pizza.

We played pin the stem on the pumpkin.

We acted out a poem we learned called 5 Little Pumpkins

We finished the night by carving a face into our pumpkin. It is suppose to look like Bob the Tomato from Veggie Tales.

Apple Orchard & Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

We ended our apple unit and began our pumpkin unit by going on a field trip to an apple orchard and pumpkin patch. In the town of Wilcox (which is about 3 hours away from us) is Apple Annie's Orchard and Apple Annie's Produce and Pumpkin patch. We have gone to this apple orchard 2 other times. This was the first year where Rachel and Isaiah could do a lot and Rebekah could actually pick the apples (the last time she was only 6 months old). This was Malachi's first trip.
We started the day by taking pictures while we waited for our friends to arrive.

Rachel with the tractor

Rebekah with the tractor

Isaiah with the tractor

Rachel with a bunch of apples

Isaiah with a bunch of apples

Rebekah with a bunch of apples

Rachel and Rebekah

Isaiah


Rebekah, Rachel and Isaiah...Josh is hiding back there holding up Rebekah and Isaiah.

Next we watched a giant grasshopper that we discovered.

Do you see it?

Then we joined our friends and had pumpkin pancakes with homemade apple syrup. Here is a picture of all of our friends that where there (except Malachi).

Then we picked a wagon, bucket and apple picker and walked over to the fields to pick some apples.

Rachel with the apple picker

Rebekah, Isaiah and friend Carsten in the wagon

Rebekah with an apple

Isaiah picking an apple


Rachel picking an apple

Then we took a ride behind a tractor all through the orchard.

Rebekah (and Isaiah and Rachel in the background)

Rachel


Malachi, Mommy & Daddy

Apples

The last two weeks of September thru the first week of October (3 weeks total) we spent studying apples. Some things we did were:

Studied the life cycle of an apple.
Studied what the apple tree looks like in the different seasons.
Studied what the different parts of the apple are called.
We did an apple investigation and made a book out of it. In it we recorded what color our apple was, if our apple had a stem or not, we measured and recorded the circumference of the apple, weighed our apple and counted how many seeds our apple had. Each child had there own apple for this investigation.
At the end of our investigation we took our apples and made applesauce.

Isaiah cutting apples

Rebekah cutting apples

Letter Scavenger Hunts

This summer I bought a Letter of the Week (LOTW) curriculum online from another homeschool mom who creates and blogs about great ideas she uses to help her children learn. I spent all summer printing, cutting, laminating and organizing this curriculum. There was one thing I did not think the kids would like (I was not to excited about either). This was the letter scavenger hunts that were included in some of the letters. But when we came to the first letter that had one in week 2 of school I decided to try it out. Much to my surprise Rachel and Isaiah loved it and worked really hard together to find items to put into the bag. They were very excited to show the items once we sat down for calendar time. They look forward to seeing the scavenger hunt bag. Here is what they have found for the different letters so far: