Weeks 29 & 30, Russia

Whew, these past two weeks have flown by! Russia was a really fun country to study, I didn't expect that. Plus, we are beginning to see various year long curriculums being completed and that's certainly a fun thing! It's hard to believe that we just have 4 weeks left until our first year is officially over. Wow! Where did the time go??
Here are some of our exciting activities from the last two weeks...
The one thing that always reminds me of Russia is the faberge egg. We made our own version by using real egg shells I had blown out. Those were fun!




We also made Russian nesting dolls, called matrioshka dolls. I saw that Hobby Lobby had kits to make them and asked my mom to grab some before she came to visit. The girls were so thrilled! This may have been their favorite craft all year so far. Fun!



Kaylin's dolls:

Annlee's dolls:

Maryella's dolls:


We talked about ballet since classical ballet came from Russia. The curriculum suggested talking to a ballet teacher about the positions in ballet. I happen to have 4 little girls living in my house who know the positions already, though. Maryella wanted to demonstrate and asked me to put the pictures here.


Here is the lapbook piece we made for ballet information


Our Russia lapbooks turned out great. I was proud of how they decorated the covers. Sometimes they don't want to take the time to draw on them, but they all did a good job with these.





These are their animals they drew from the tundra to include in their lapbooks. I thought they did such a great job with these!
Kaylin's animals


Annlee's animals


Maryella's animals


Each of those animal pictures has a fun fact about that animal on the back. Here is Kaylin writing her polar bear fact.



Studying the tundra was our science topic for these past two weeks. It's a pretty interesting place. We did an experiment to help us understand permafrost and why the ground is wet and muddy. During the summer, when the snow and ice melts, it can't seep into the ground because once you go down a little in the ground, you get to the permafrost layer.
Top soil on the permafrost (represented by jello):

Adding "snow" to the top of our "tundra":


After the snow melted, it left very muddy dirt that couldn't soak down deep because the permafrost (jello) was solid. So it just sat on top, just like in the real tundra during the summertime.


We did this experiment with ice and gloves to see how the layers of fur and blubber help to keep animals warm in the tundra.



We tried pulling heavy books on a smooth surface and a rough surface to understand why sleds are used a lot on the ice for a means of travel.



I thought Annlee did a great job with this. This is a geyser that she drew during our vocabulary time.


We watched several videos about Russia and the Arctic tundra. These were two of them. We also watched Peter and the Wolf. (We listened to it as well)


And then this picture gets a big Woo Hoo! Maryella finished her All About Spelling Level 1 curriculum. Exciting stuff!


I love this picture! When the girls get finished with their work for the day, they have become fascinated with watching animal videos on You Tube. This one was a National Geographic video following the life of an elephant named Echo on a reserve in Africa. It was very long and they were glued to it the whole time.

I love how curious they are! I am encouraging this latest phase but at the same time, I'm keeping a close eye on them. You never know what you might stumble across on You Tube!

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!