Photos from the Classroom

My last post of photos from the classroom was September 25th. At that time we were building a Rube Goldberg Machine to wrap up our Physics block.

Here is a peek at some of what we've been working on over the past month.
Our main lesson blocks were Jataka Tales and Creative Writing (also called Wonder, Wish & Surprise):

thickly covering a sheet of paper with oil pastels, then carefully painting black acrylic paint on top

our scratch art:  a cave full of gleaming eyes

laying on our backs on yoga mats outside, to sketch a tree arching overhead

reviewing nomenclature for Landforms and Water Features, and beginning to create our own imaginary islands

laying out the three part cards for the Parts of the Fish nomenclature

choosing a fish for Fish Printing

creating a rough draft of a sentence, getting an edit, and then copying it into the main lesson book

adding the fish print as the illustration for the story

summarizing a story in one sentence:

"When the monkey found out what the crocodile was up to he tricked him by saying, 'My heart is in a tree.'"

the kids loved photographing our Fig Still Life
(yes, a student took this lovely photo)

I enlarged the photos, then we taped them to a sunny window and carefully traced the shapes of the fruit

using water soluble oil pastels to draw our Fig Still Life, using the traced shapes to guide us

of course, Zac has his own piece of paper and oil pastels!

making a citrus sensory bin for Zac... with nine kinds of citrus

Snap Circuits Green

proudly displaying her first-ever potholder!

our lovely new Biomes of the Continents Cards

these are edged in orange to show they are for North America

we now have cards for every biome on every continent... 

great for research or just to browse for fun...

 compare all the different kinds of plants and animals on one continent... 

or pick a biome and look at it across continents, seeing how the plants and animals have developed to have similar adaptations all over the world

Word Study: Antonyms

Stamp Game

monoprinting with a Gelli plate

Grammar Box: Collective Nouns

dyeing rice green for a sensory bin for Zac

Word Study: Dictionary Usage

art supplies for Imaginary Island art:  watercolor pencils and gelatos

Natalie's island in process

writing creative stories which take place on each island

collecting black walnuts to make ink

and making ink with pokeberries

field trip to Bandy's Pumpkin Patch!

adding the island artwork and creative stories to the main lesson book

creating intricate feathers for The Beautiful Parrots, a Jataka tale

stamping a large pile of gold coins for The Black Bull, a Jataka tale

United States Location Color Map

Cut-Out Labeled Fraction Circles

starting our day with SSR each morning

a wonderful history field trip... starting with a location on the Trail of Tears, then visiting the Chester Bridge over the Mississippi River

a picnic lunch in historic Maeystown IL

visiting Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site 

climbing to the top of the 100 foot high Monks Mound, the largest earthwork in North America!

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!