Banana Boy's 2nd Science Unit (Backtracking here)

I mentioned in the Safari post that the African Savanna was BB's 3rd science unit. I don't think I posted about his Space unit.

It also, was fairly low key. He worked through a packet I made him from LearningPage.com. You can get an idea of the pages from the Space Gallery page. If you are a member (free, just sign up), you have access to all of the theme pages. They have units on Zoo animals, dinosaurs, the ocean, space, and insects. There are complete lesson plans for a unit, including book suggestions and a giant wall mural you can print and make.

In the past, I have used these plans (with Rose Bud when she was in Kindergarten), but this time, I just pulled out selected pages from the science, language arts and math sections. I also chose from a variety of grade levels from K-2, based on his skills (in other words, I didn't use all the first grade math pages, but just those I thought he could use practice on and I also added in a few K and 2nd grade math pages).

I also made him some little booklets from the Giant Science Resource Book by Evan-Moor and from Evan-Moor's ScienceWorks for Kids: Exploring Space.

I didn't use the whole unit from the space book, but just limited it to a few lessons on the sun and the planets, since that was BB's main focus and interest. I'm (in my old age) getting much better about not overplanning units and adding in every possible resource in the universe. I figure he has a lot of years left to learn about the way the Earth tilts on its axis. The kid just wanted to know about the planets.

So he filled out some mini-books, colored some planets, unscrambled their names and memorized the Solar System song from Audio Memory's Geography Songs. Oh, and we watched Ms. Frizzle about 10 times!

Math Cat

Safari Unit

Banana Boy's 3rd science unit was the African Savanna. This one was pretty informal and he watched a lot of movies. Some of our favorites were
Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies
Wildebeest: The Great African Migration (you can read my review of this movie at Amazon)
and some National Geographic movies.

We also read the One Small Square: African Savanna

I promised him (foolishly) that he could make a diorama of the savanna when he was done. This would have been a great and fun project for the girls, who love to draw from Draw Write Now books. BB, however, spends a lot of time looking at this book, making some marks with a pencil, then crumpling the paper, throwing it at the wall and stomping around the room.

So one morning, we made a very quicky diorama, with Mom doing much of the work. Now BB is happy to have his African scene and he took it up to the attic where he adds the little plastic African animals from the drawer to his scene.

Journal Cat

Grammar Cat

Bible Study

For our Bible study this year, I have printed out pages from Bible Scribe.

Banana Boy is doing Bible stories and we are using the Bible Scribe sheets as our outline. Here is our schedule:
Monday: I read the story from The Egermeier Bible
Tuesday: BB reads the story to me from the Beginner's Bible
Wednesday: I read the story from the Jesus Storybook Bible
Thursday: BB draws a picture on his Bible Scribe sheet (his choice how he wants to illustrate the story
Friday: BB copies a Bible verse from the story on his sheet and dictates to me the story in his own words. The copywork goes on the lined portion of the sheet and the dictation in the "ribbon."


The girls are doing something similar, only we are doing a verse study. We are using the Bible Scribe New Testament Scripture packet.

We read from the Egermeir Bible, Pepper's NLT Bible, Daisy's NIV Bible and then the girls illustrate, copy the verse and write the meaning in their own words.

Bird Study Lapbook

Here is the culmination of Banana Boy's bird unit. We made a lapbook together and I think he did a great job!


The photo makes it a little hard to read. It is called "All About Birds." BB chose the title himself.He drew a robin, a red-winged blackbird and a cardinal flying (if you click on the picture, you can see them better)

Here is the inside.

His bird-watching journal. It says, "What I saw: 'a blak bird. it was big.'"


His booklet titled, "What is a Bird?"


I love the picture for "Birds are warm-blooded." He drew a penguin walking in a snowstorm (keeping itself warm with its warm blood).

Resources for Bird Unit

Next up: The Solar System.

They Close Their Eyes And Just Breathe

If you read just one post from Sarah's Blog, please read this one. (This is the one I want you to read)

Rose Bud and I are going to India in January to help out at Sarah's homes and we are SO excited!

I have to admit when I first heard about Leslie's trip to India, I was mostly--selfishly--excited just to go to India. The "missions" part of it was really an excuse for me to go back. I looked at Sarah's blog and all the photos of her kids and I didn't really want to go "there."

Why is it that we have that kind of reaction to the handicapped? They are humans, they are children. But they look different. Is the feeling based on previous interactions we've had with real people who looked "funny," made strange noises, whom we couldn't understand? What makes it so hard for us to treat them as we treat any non-handicapped person?

But....it didn't take long for me, reading Sarah's blog on a daily basis, to catch hold of her wonderful attitude, her compassion and love and enthusiasm for these children and their possibilities.

When you read her blog everyday, you get to know the children by name. You learn their strengths and gifts, their personalities and their needs. You learn that they are human and they are just children. They look different, but they have hearts just like ours.

Sarah absolutely has a God-given gift for what she is doing. Her heart is 100% for the children.

Please read the post I linked above. Please feel the love Sarah has for all God's children. Please pray for her ministry and for our trip. And please read some more of her blog and meet all the children we will be meeting when we go.

I can't wait to hold them and love them, play with them and teach them, share their joy and their tears. KNOW them. They are human. They are GOD's children.

Growing Seeds

I bought these neato-mosquito containers at Oriental Trading Company about two years ago. This week, while cleaning out the school closet I decided it was high time we used them. The girls ran for their stash of seeds and they soaked them in warm water overnight. Each did two different beans, a pea and corn. Then we folded paper towel and dropped a seed in on each side of the paper towel. We fit four seeds in the container this way. The paper towel keeps the seed in place and soaks up moisture for it.

They only took about a week to grow all lush and green


What I love about the containers is that you can see the seed as it sprouts and grows. Not a very good picture of the roots here, but you get the idea.

The very sad part of our experiment, which had Pepper in tears, is that our cat thought we planted these greens for HIM. He has chomped off the tops of all of them.

Next experiment: Growing cat grass....

Friday Art: Rainbows (and a family portrait)

We are still plugging along in our book, Using Color in Your Art. This week's assignment was to imagine what is at the end of the rainbow--in other words, what does the rainbow "do" where it hits the earth?

In the example, the child colored all the flowers at the end of the rainbow in rainbow colors. I chose to make the water the rainbow "touched" spread out in rainbow colors.

So did the girls. The other part of the assignment was to paint the sky in a wash and then dab it with a papertowel to remove some of the color and make clouds.

Here is Pepper's painting.

Banana Boy's grass turned all rainbowey.

Daisy's rainbow

And finally, the family portrait, drawn by Sunshine. Isn't this cute?! It's the first time he's drawn people and I love it! I'm the big one.

More Spelling Resources

Here is a website listing lots of low-tech (no computer needed) ideas for practicing spelling words. There are also some websites listed where you can do creative things with your words like create mp3s from them and listen to them, animate them and more. I haven't checked out all the links, so proceed with caution. Wordle is pretty neat!

Lastly, if you are looking for something very simple, Scholastic has a Spelling Wizard that allows you to enter 10 words, then creates either an unscramble puzzle or a wordsearch.

Website Review: spellingcity.com

Another online spelling practice website review (see post below). This is for Spelling City

Enter your word list as individual words or in a list separated by commas. As far as I can tell, your list is not saved from one visit to the next as at kidsspell.com unless you create a personal homepage for this purpose (homepage provided by the website). This site has more spelling-related games, and the games are more puzzles than arcade-style. Some of the games are printable and handwriting practice sheets, using your list, are available to print.

Teach me: choose a spelling word from a drop down list of your words. The word is spelled by a variety of female voices and each letter appears in a box as it is spelled. Kids will see and hear the word spelled. The word is used in context in a sentence and the word is repeated once more. Kids must choose each of the words from the drop-down menu to have it "taught."

Play a Game: a variety of games are offered and some are printable so you can take them offline.

Word Search: chooses 8 of your list words and puts them into a fairly tricky word search. The words are forward and backward, up and down and diagonal and the filler letters are many duplicates of letters in your word, so it's a challenging puzzle. It's fun to click and drag the little red circle around your word. Also printable. Customizable by easy/hard, long game/short game and timed or not.

Match It: This game asks you to match by connecting a line between a spelling word (list of 10) and a sentence using the word. Two issues I had with this game a)it is really practicing vocabulary, not spelling (which is fine if that is your goal) and b) the sentences, because they are computer-generated, are sometimes very weird.

examples: word: ally sentence: The ally volunteered at many homeless shelters (isn't an ally someone who is on your side?)

word: lullaby sentence: She whistled a lullaby (who WHISTLES a lullaby???)

word: supply sentence: Can you supply me in an hour? (with what, cocaine?)

I got four wrong out of 10 in this game! (although I did get the lullaby correct!)

HangMouse: As in hangman, spelling word displayed in dashes with the alphabet below. Correct guesses get the mouse a tidbit of cheese, incorrect wakes the cat up just a little more each time.

This game is fine. If you play it to success, you do practice spelling your word. However, it is much more fun to wake the cat with incorrect guesses! Not printable.

Alphabetize: alphabetize 10 of your words by clicking them in order and moving them to the other box.

Provides practice with and familiarity with the word list, as well as alphabetizing practice. I had one out of order and was able to click and drag it to its correct spot before submitting my list, so I got 100%. Printable.

Unscramble: One word is presented in scrambled form. User drags the letters, in the correct order, into the box below to unscramble the word.

I like this game! The user needs to be able to spell the word correctly to get a right answer. It provides good spelling practice in dragging the letters correctly to the box. Letters can be easily rearranged if they've been placed in the wrong order. A pleasant sprinkle of stars and some gentle applause greet you when you are correct. The only tricky thing is that each letter has its own "space" in the box. I began placing them over one spot and then ran out of room in the box for the last letter. I had to drag each one over one place (there is nothing to show the spaces, the letters just bounce into their spot when you drop them. Not a huge deal)

Audio Word Match: Typical memory game where you choose two tiles and if they match they disappear, if not, they flip back over. The word is spoken and read when you choose it.

Not spelling, but good for familiarity with the words. Audio and visual reinforcement. It's always fun to play Memory.

Which Word?: Same silly sentences as before only now there is a choice of four of your words below. Click on the correct word.

I didn't like the sentence before, don't like them now.
One of my sentences: The dog will _____ the walkers. Choices: multiply, spy, horrify, satisfy YOU fill in the blank.

Missing Letter: Choose from four letters to fill in the blank in the word. Only these weren't my words. Not sure where this rogue word list came from.

Sentence Unscramble: Same terrible sentences, only now scrambled.

dog will the horrify walkers Ick.

Crossword: Makes a crossword grid using your words. To get the clue, hover your mouse over the word. No numbers are used in the grid, just arrows showing whether the word goes across or down. The crossword is not traditional in the sense that many nonsense words are made by placing your words next to each other--somewhat confusing.

Guess what the clues are? You should be familiar with which word goes in the nonsensical sentence by this point in the game. I would not ask my child to navigate this confusing game.

Test Me! Provides a box for each word, a button labeled "Say it" which says just the word and a button labeled "sentence" which gives you the word in the sentence. Using the tab key after entering each word automatically says the word. I couldn't get the page to load on my Mac after I hit Check Me, so I'm not sure how it presents the scores. According to the verbage on the home page, once the test is completed, the student can print a report, retake the whole test or retake just the words they missed.

Other than the doofy sentences generated for your words, I like this site much better than kidsspell. I feel like the games are much better for practicing actual spelling of the word list. I would explore the homepage feature for the saving of lists. If you chose not to go that route, I would type the words into Word, separated by commas, and then each time you came to the website, at least you could just copy and paste your list in quickly.

I think I'll have Daisy try a few of these games.