Japan, weeks 27 and 28

We had so much fun on our "trip" to Japan! We read some great books and learned some interesting facts about the country. I think our favorite thing was all the fun art projects we enjoyed.
Of course, you can't study Japan without trying your hand at a little origami. The beginner designs were perfect for us, lol. We got a little frustrated at the harder ones!


We built little woodland scenes with bits of nature that we found. In Japan, this is called Moribana Flower Scenery. The girls played with these for days outside on the back porch! Unfortunately, a rain storm came through one afternoon and did significant damage to their little boxes, but it was fun while it lasted!



We made a fun Japanese game called Kai-awase by drawing pictures on shells and then using them in a type of "memory" game. The twist was that each time you made a match, you have to tell a story or sing a song or make up a poem about the picture on the shell. We all had a lot of laughs with this one!





I saw this really cute cherry blossom painting craft on another blog and loved it. I've been so excited about this project all year long! I think we may have used the wrong kind of paint for the trees, but otherwise, it was lots of fun. The idea was to blow the paint with a straw to create the thin little branches of the tree. We made little stamps out of pencils and foam for the cherry blossoms.





We created carp windsocks when we studied "Children's Day", even though in Japan, it's really just the boys who get the carp kites. My girls didn't think that was very fair at all, lol!



I found these Japanese fans at a 99cent store in Alabama before we ever started schooling. They were so pretty and the girls loved playing with these. Two of them are still decorating our school room, one has been moved to the dress up box for playtime and one is awaiting repair. They have been well loved fans!


Here, Maryella writes something for her Japan lapbook. We have really enjoyed making these lapbooks all year. It's neat to watch the girls go back and look at the older ones and be able to remember the things we studied.


We finished off our study of Japan with a trip to a Japanese restaurant (another thing I've been looking forward to all year!) The girls loved it! Well, Kaylin and Annlee did. Maryella was covering her face here and Elianna isn't in the picture because she's hiding behind me while I take the picture. Those two were a little intimidated by the fire!




We learned more about oceans in science. We did some fascinating water experiments. The first was to fill the bathtub with hot water and then take a water bottle filled with very cold blue colored water and pour it slowly into the tub. The cold water is denser and will sink immediately to the bottom. This is why the ocean gets colder the deeper you go.



We also did an experiment with salt water and fresh water when we discussed estuaries.
Here, we were putting blue fresh water into clear salt water. You can see that the fresh water is staying on top of the salt water.


The same was true when we added green salt water to the clear fresh water. The salt water went straight to the bottom.


This was a fascinating experiment to observe how fresh and salt water react to being together in an estuary. They do eventually mix, but the denser salt water sinks below the fresh water. Plants and animals in that environment have to be able to live in both fresh and salt water settings. As you can see here, the girls loved this "up close and personal look" at this, lol.


Our family started a tradition a long time ago of collecting sand from every beach we go to. This came in handy when we were talking about beaches. It was so neat to see how sand looks different depending on where it comes from.


We made our own sand by crushing rocks and shells. We then compared it to some of the sand we already had and it was very similar.



We finished up our salt crystal experiment we started a few weeks ago. Very neat to watch the crystals form on the string as the rest of the water evaporates.


Here are some other pictures of our weeks.
We got a new patio table, so we have been doing school outside a lot lately, it's been perfect!


Maryella works on finding that sneaky "e" by being a sneaky e detective!


Maryella has started trying to write funny sentences for her sight word pages. She tries to make me laugh.


Maryella takes a spelling test on the computer.


Here she is taking her math test. The only way I could get her to sit and do it was to time her and let her try to beat the clock.


We got a chance to begin a sewing class with some friends. Kaylin was so excited about using that sewing machine! I have been feeling rather guilty that I can't teach her anything in that area. She's so interesting in learning. I hope to see how she does with this and if it seems like it's something she wants to stick with, we may have to get her her own machine and sign her up for some classes. That would be a dream come true for her!



Elianna was home with us during one week of our Japan studies because her preschool was on Spring Break. She got to do school with us, which was fun at first, but she was ready to go back and play with her friends by Tuesday, I think.





Here's one more picture that should have been included in our China studies. The girls had fun playing Chinese Checkers one night. Elianna beat them all! She was really good at it!

China, Weeks 25 and 26

I have to say, I was glad to see our China travels come to a close. The subject matter itself was fine and had the potential to be really fun, but it was just a tough couple of weeks for us. I had more cake orders than normal, Annlee had her oral surgery, our science was just a hodge podge of various things, and it just seemed like I was in a funk the whole time. I told myself that we just had to get through it and then we could move on and it would be better. (We are now one week into our Japan studies and it's been TONS better! Everyone has recovered from their surgeries, bad attitudes, etc., lol)
So, China! We made Chinese paper lanterns and hung them in the dining room for decoration. Here is Annlee showing hers off the day after her surgery, bless her heart.



We had made stamps because China was where the printing press first originated. We used those stamps to decorate our lanterns.


We built our own version of the Great Wall of China. This was a lot of fun! The girls love any kind of craft and they were anticipating doing this one for days leading up to it! Of course, now that we've built it, I'm kinda wondering where to keep it...



We added to our languages of Asia worksheet. The girls love taking turns looking up the official country languages online.


We read The Story of Ping and did quite a few activities to go along with the book. I had found a site online with all this all prepared so I just had to print it off. They did graphing exercises, word searches, and this story sequencing activity.


I looked up online to find out how to write each of their names in Chinese and they copied them for their lapbooks.


We learned all about Chinese New Year thanks to a friend of ours who is a public school teacher and has been sharing her extra Scholastic booklets with us! This one fit in perfectly with our lessons! Thank you Renee!


We read a book about tangrams, a shape puzzle that originated in China. We made our own and they practiced making various animals as I read. Please excuse the dirty table in the picture with Maryella. That was from our salt experiments that I'll get to in a bit.



We studied how to eat with chopsticks and practiced picking up mini marshmallows. The girls thought this was awesome!


And naturally, practicing with chopsticks led up to our Chinese meal at home! This is the part I had been looking forward too! Mmm, Chinese food!


Everyone used chopsticks to the best of their abilities, lol!




Maryella requested mooncakes for dessert. She had learned about those from watching Kai-lan on tv. Jeff asked and they said that mooncakes are a fall treat, but they had other things that were very similar. Maryella was satisfied and LOVED them! Can you tell?


Here are our lapbooks we made for China. We just couldn't make everything fit the way we wanted to so that chopstick booklet is sort of hanging our in the middle. It works though.






I usually have them draw pictures of various facts we learn about the countries we study. I love seeing how these turn out! Here are Kaylin's to include in her lapbook.


As I said earlier, our science was sort of all over the place for these weeks. During the second week though, we began a 3 week study on oceans. Most of that will be a part of the next post from Japan, but we did do a few fun experiments with salt water during this week.
We saw how an egg will sink in tap water but floats after adding (A LOT) of salt.


We also started an experiment making salt crystals. We were able to watch the water evaporate over the course of a couple weeks and the salt left crystals on the string. Here are the first couple of days. It didn't take long to see some action!



You'll have to wait until the next post to see the final results! It was pretty cool!

St. Patrick's Day fell during this time, but it was on a Sunday. I hated to make them do any "real" work, so instead they did some color pages, word search, and crossword puzzles while they ate some gold (chocolate) coins and listened to me read the history of the day.


Maryella is still enjoying a variety of reading spots. Her pick for this week seemed to be spralled out across the dining room table. I am seriously willing to try almost anything to get her to enjoy reading. Ugh!


And one final, fun picture... Elianna having fun with our Math U See manipulatives one afternoon. Silly girl!