Caterpillars in the Snow

Wow, what a kooky winter we are having here in the Mitten state!! We've only had about 3 snowfalls all season! We're taking full advantage of sledding opportunities with each short round of winter, but I think the unusual temperatures and overall lack of snow has more than just humans scratching their heads. The bugs are puzzled too! Back in January, the kids and I found a little caterpillar crawling along our back porch, wondering where to go next! "He must be confused," the kids concluded... to be honest, so am I! :)
Ironically, my friend Lori just recently shared this great link with me for fun caterpillar activities and cute snacks--just what we need to get by as we wait for the real spring to start in a few more weeks! Very Hungry Caterpillar activities






Also, you can check out the unit study I made last year on butterflies: Awesome Butterfly Moments.

More Fun Groundhog Day Activities!

Don't miss my Groundhog Day Unit Study post that shares a lot of fun ideas for celebrating Groundhog Day with learning about groundhogs, hibernation, the science of shadows and more. Here are some pictures from last year, as well, when other moms added even more spring activities, like planting grass seed in individual trays. We had fun experimenting more with silhouettes and shadows, and of course more burrowing tunnel fun.








Happy Groundhog Day!!
And here's a cute little video your kids can watch to draw a cartoon of a Groundhog!!

There was an old lady... delighting in the classics

We recently borrowed a few cute titles from the library that we stretched a little further into more activities. For "There was an Old Lady who swallowed a Fly," the kids used some cheap plastic spider rings to wriggle on their finger every time the line, "that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her" came along. We also did this cute craft where the kids pulled the animals through the old lady as we sang the song. I KNOW AN OLD LADY CRAFT.

The second book was, "There was an Old Lady who swallowed some Leaves" which was really cute, and featured, "perhaps she'll sneeze." At the end she sneezes out a scarecrow, which the kids of course thought was hilarious, and afterward we built our own little mini scarecrows using paper bags, leaves and fresh hay... which they had so much fun pretending to sneeze out that they had fallen apart by the end of the afternoon! ;) What a fun adventure for fall!

Johnny Appleseed Day!

We hosted a small apple unit study today to celebrate Johnny Appleseed Day. The kids had a couple of friends over (with the help of a great homeschool mom friend!) and we made Johnny Appleseed books filled with various apple crafts, experiments, math and geography studies related to apples and the story of John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed. The kids helped make Apple Muffins & Apple Pie and we enjoyed cider, applesauce and many different kinds of apples and the seeds inside--which we used to play a fun Apple Seed Toss game. Fun day!


One of the coolest projects we did was each of the kids picked an apple out of the bowl and studied it. They answered questions about it, filled out a worksheet (is it lopsided, does it have any dents or color streaks, is the stem long or short, etc.) and even named their apples. When they were done, they put the apples back into the bowl and we mixed all 9 of them up again, and the kids had to find their same apple again. It worked, they all could find their same apple. :)










And here's Disney's 1948 Johnny Appleseed movie on YouTube. :) (It's in multiple parts)


Apple Muffin Recipe
1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup applesauce
1 apple, peeled seeded and finely chopped
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Grease/paper 12 cup muffin pan. Sift dry ingredients in large bowl. In another bowl, mix egg, sugar, applesauce, apple and oil. Combine wet and dry. Diving into muffin cups, bake 20-25 minutes.

Sugar Bush Tour and Maple Syrup Merriment

To further our studies of Where Things Come From this year, a field trip to the Sugar Bush at Blandford Nature Center was perfect for us this month. The tour was amazing, and extremely educational. We learned not only the process in which the tree makes it's sap and how we tap and produce maple syrup, but also the history of how maple syrup was made by Native Americans and by Pioneers. The kids got to take turns drilling a hole to tap a tree, taste maple sugar and maple syrup and see hands-on demonstrations of the process from both historical and modern perspectives.











To prepare and follow-up, I used the adorable story of At Grandpa's Sugar Bush, by Margaret Carney. This beautiful book tells the enchanting tale of tradition and sugaring through the eyes of a young boy helping his Grandpa make maple syrup from their sugar bush forest. It subtly includes other signs of nature and wildlife as the story unfolds and is truly a delight. Here is an educational resource for it: Education World link.
We also used plenty of the wonderful, wonderful free resources from the Homeschool Share website, the time and energy this site saves me is immeasurable and incredible: Maple Syrup Unit Study.
Here's a fun recipe we used (with the fresh syrup we bought at the nature center):
Maple Syrup Milk Shakes
1 pt. vanilla ice cream, softened
1 qt. cold milk
1/2 c. maple syrup
Put ingredients in blender/mixer and serve cold.

You can find more recipes and maple syrup activities at Grandmother Wren.

Sweet Times!

Blizzard 2011

Groundhog day this year brought a blizzard of activities in our homeschool: we studied the word blizzard and how to look it up in a dictionary, then did various snow science experiments such as timing and observing a gallon of snow melting (they were amazed how little water is left after the snow shrinks away), measuring how much water expands when it freezes into ice, dying snow with food coloring and more. We also tried this delicious snow ice cream recipe, which the kids had a lot of fun with!

Groundhog Day Unit Study

With February 2 just a shadow's length away, I thought I would share my Groundhog unit that I prepared last year for our homeschool group and held at the community center. I'm holding it again this year, with some new activities mixed in, but here are the highlights from last year.

There are a lot of fun Groundhog day books out there, but the best by far (imo) is "Groundhog Day!" by Gail Gibbons. Accompanying the beautiful illustrations, Gail not only includes the history of the holiday but information about groundhogs and hibernation also. Start off reading this book first so the kids understand the activities more.

Craft: Cut two pieces of brown felt the size of your child's finger and glue them together (instant fast-sticking fabric glue works best), cut small pieces of tan and white felt for the eyes, teeth, hair, etc. and create a groundhog finger puppet. Take a small paper cup and turn it upside down, cut a hole in the bottom of the cup large enough for your child's finger to fit comfortably in and out of. Viola! Your child will love popping their groundhog in and out of ground. (You can decorate the cup to look more like the ground also, by adding green construction paper for grass, brown for the earth etc, but I just used the cups that have flower print on them to simplify.)


Games: Wack-a-mole game and a tunnel for the kids to "burrow" in.


Science Experiments: Set up a flood light against a wall with large paper taped up. Have each child sit in a chair in front of it while an adult or another child traces their shadowed silhouette. Last year we didn't really have enough darkness to make this as efficient as I would have liked; this year we'll be in my basement so it should work much better.
We also categorized animals that live or sleep below ground and above ground. For each animal that I had printed and cut out, I had the kids guess whether they thought it was an animal that slept above ground or underground. It was fun.


Also printed out lots of coloring pages, a groundhog puzzle, groundhog word searches and scrambles, etc. Here's a great website to find those for free. I found a lot of printable activities at The Official Website of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.



Snack: Teddy Grahams (bears hibernate!), and juice.

Here are some more I've found for this year, including a great geography activity for Punxsutawney (Link). More free groundhog printables.
Happy Groundhog Day!!!