Pelle's New Suit Circle, Week 2

This was our second week working with this Circle composed by Nancy Blanning and inspired by Elsa Beskow's classic story, first published in 1890.

We continued with our Songs, Verses & Movement for classroom routines.

Circle Time Introduction

#1 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#2 - "Morning Verse"
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 13

#3 - "We Stretch Right Up to the Star of Our Birth" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 56

#4 - "Beautiful Bird" pose
from Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, page 18

#5 - "Windmills" pose
from Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, page 67

Monday

• crockpot dyeing wool
• "Pelle's New Suit" Circle, pages 77-82
  from Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures: Therapeutic Support for Early Childhood, Volume 1 by Nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark
• lamb movement game with "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti
  from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 98

Today we dyed our lovely washed and carded wool from last week!

We loaded three crockpots with natural dyestuffs plus white wool batting, water, and a generous portion of white vinegar. The vinegar is a mordant, which helps the dye to stick to the wool. One crockpot had turmeric root, one had frozen blueberries (wrapped in a piece of cotton fabric tightly tied closed), and one had dandelion flowers. During outdoor playtime the children gathered additional dandelion blossoms to add to that pot. I "cooked" the wool and dyestuff on low for 12 hours, then turned off the crockpots and let the wool stay in the color as it cooled overnight.

The children carefully drew pictures on our signs identifying each dyestuff.

We also continued looking at plants as they grow... a topic of constant fascination in the Springtime. Unfortunately, Zac was too tempted by the sweet baby grasses in our Dish Gardens and kept pulling out shoots in the evenings, so we started an avocado seed in water and a sweet potato in water and placed them on the Nature table to see if they would sprout, and threw plenty of grass seed out onto bare places in the lawn so we could watch the grass grow unimpeded. Sowing grass seed was great fun!

Tuesday

• "Spinning Wool" from Earthways, page 147
• "Pelle's New Suit" Circle, pages 77-82
  from Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures: Therapeutic Support for Early Childhood, Volume 1 by Nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark
• lamb movement game with "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti
  from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 98

The children were so excited to see the results of our wool dyeing experiments! Even the older children came to see the big reveal. We looked first at the wool the older group dyed in February, with beetroot, and then at the undyed wool to compare its color. Then we opened each crockpot lid and I pulled some of the wool out and placed it in a dish. You could definitely smell the vinegar ("It smells very like a pickle") but it wasn't unpleasant.

The dandelion flowers made an earthy green-brown.

The turmeric root made a strong sunny golden yellow.

The frozen blueberries made a deep rich purple.

The children have loved to continue to card wool, and they also watched me demonstrate how to use a drop spindle to spin wool roving. I showed them how to spin wool by hand by rubbing it back and forth on their legs to get some twist in the fibers, and they really enjoyed that! It is fun to pull and tug on the results and see how much stronger wool is when it has twist in it.

Thursday

• "Weaving with Wool Yarn" from Earthways, page 148-149
• read The Lion and the Little Red Bird by Elisa Kleven

The children spun pieces of our crockpot dyed wool, which was now dry. We went outside to plant the tulips and hyacinths, which I had in pots, from previous stories & activities. After enjoying the digging, the planting, and the sunshine, the children found branches with nice forks in them and I warped them for Branch Weaving. One child, the oldest, really stuck with it. Zac was content to watch. They could use our naturally dyed wool spun into yarn, or any yarn they wanted from my baskets of colors.

Our story was The Lion and the Little Red Bird by Elisa Kleven, a beautiful tie-in with all of our dyeing work. For Easter we will continue our natural dyeing activities with some egg decorating projects.

Today we had mango, strawberries, and blackberries as our Fruit Salad contributions. I also made the Honey Ricotta recipe on page 192 of The Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook by Toby Amidor to go alongside it. So yummy!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Tall Tales & U.S. Geography Week 3

Finishing up tall tales and American frontier legends from the Southeast and the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys, and moving into the Midwest region.

Monday, April 1

• recall our field trip, Mike Fink, and his friendship with Davy Crockett; listen to Ballad of Davy Crockett recorded by Fess Parker
• rough draft summary and illustration, add Mike Fink to MLB
• pass out Blank United States Maps, read off the states in order of statehood, have children color each state as it joins the Union so that they can see Westward Expansion happen (update: when I wrote to this TpT teacher to leave feedback on her product and tell her how we were using her blank U.S. map, she updated the product to include a new map which shows the states numbered in order of statehood!)
• read The Story of Johnny Appleseed by Aliki
  

Tuesday, April 2

• sing the "Johnny Appleseed" blessing from This is the Way We Wash-a-Day (CD track 56) or The Singing Day (CD track 27)


• read Johnny Appleseed: The Story of a Legend retold and illustrated by Will Moses
  
• rough draft summary and illustration, add John Chapman to MLB
• use pp.15-16 of States and Capitals to take notes on the states and capitals of the Midwest Region (10 states)
• recall Westward Expansion, look at maps
  Territorial Expansion of the United States
  series of overhead transparencies, 1968

  Pioneer Roads and Trails - Westward Development of the U.S.
  vintage Britannica Junior encyclopedia

  Routes in the West
  series of overhead transparencies, 1972

  Indian Lands in the United States (PDF)
  modern resource from the Bureau of Indian Affairs

• look at Native American Tribes of Illinois then and now

Thursday, April 4

• do state identification activity on pp.4-5 of Blank United States Maps
• look at my beautiful and freshly arrived USA Puzzle Map
• read Big Paul Bunyan and His Blue Ox, Babe: A Tall Tale of the Forests of Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as told by Loggers in the Lumber Camps from Olive Beaupre Miller's Tall Tales book

Friday, April 5

• play Here Is... Where Is game with the United States Control Map (unlabeled version this time for more practice in state identification)
• read Paul Bunyan by Steven Kellogg
  
• review the geography of the Great Lakes region with the Waseca Biomes North America Biome Puzzle and the North America Stencil
• rough draft summary and illustration, add Paul Bunyan to MLB
• read The Sad Story of Febold Feboldson and His Enormous Load of Sand: A Popular Tale of Nebraska from Olive Beaupre Miller's book

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Pelle's New Suit Circle, Week 1

This was our first week working with this Circle composed by Nancy Blanning and inspired by Elsa Beskow's classic story, first published in 1890.

We continued with our Songs, Verses & Movement for classroom routines.

Circle Time Introduction

#1 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#2 - "Morning Verse"
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 13

#3 - "We Stretch Right Up to the Star of Our Birth" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 56

#4 - "Beautiful Bird" pose
from Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, page 18

#5 - "Windmills" pose
from Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, page 67

Monday

• read Pelle's New Suit by Elsa Beskow
• "Washing Raw Wool" from Earthways, page 144

Feeling the greasiness of raw wool (a fleece sheared by my sister-in-law from their sheep, Molly)... washing the lanolin out of the wool with warm water and baby shampoo... paper airplanes and Frisbees outside at recess.

Tuesday

• make simple wool sheep
• sheep puppetry with "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti
  from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 98

I placed a bit of pure lanolin on the palms of each child and let them feel its greasiness. Then I gave each child some plain white wool stuffing and they shaped it into a ball and patted it. The sticky lanolin helped the sheep to hold its form. They were so sweet! Then we all used our sheep to act out the "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti. Outside we had another beautiful warm day so we celebrated with bubbles and sidewalk chalk and a picnic lunch.

Thursday

• "Pelle's New Suit" Circle, pages 77-82
  from Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures: Therapeutic Support for Early Childhood, Volume 1 by Nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark
• "Carding" from Earthways, page 145
• lamb movement game with "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti
  from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 98

Carefully carding our clean washed wool... helping blend up delicious smoothies... examining the seed of the mango closely... turning the "Lambs" poem into a game... enjoying the movements and songs of our new Circle.

Today we chose to blend part of our fruit contributions into a lovely Fruit Smoothie and keep the rest of the diced fruit as a yummy Fruit Salad. We had four whole entire mangoes! Thank you! It was great fun for Zac to nibble all of the sweet juicy flesh off one mango seed so that we could see its surprising size and shape. Next week we will attempt to get it to germinate.

Here was our list of group contributions this week:

mango
strawberry
banana
frozen wild blueberries
almond milk

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Photos Feb + Mar

A few miscellaneous classroom photos to wrap up the months of February and March...

painting with watercolors on blocks of ice

sprinkling on salt to see the dramatic effects

the paint helps us see the interesting new texture clearly

the salt slowly eats a hole in the ice

long division with the Stamp Game

the Jeweled Layout aka the Decanomial

a geometric representation of the multiplication tables

from 1 x 1 up to 10 x 10

working with the grammar material and the Everglades Habitat Mat

notice that the cards match the color of the Grammar symbols

making pop-up cards for Valentine's Day

a knitted lion pattern laid out flat before stuffing

working together to untangle and wind up balls of yarn

teaching a friend how to finger knit

building elaborate constructions...

and joyfully knocking them down

the finger puppet I made for our story by Suzanne Down

"The Valentine Baker of Pink"

our Nature table on Valentine's Day

thank you to the family who brought us such beautiful roses!

Becca's Chemistry experiments inspired by Michael Faraday's

The Chemical History of a Candle

the ground and water are finished; time to weave the sky

practicing apostrophes for contractions

elaborate division problems require a lot of trading

using the Bank Game for long multiplication

this material comes after the Checker Board and is closer to abstraction

the sweet knitted chicken

bird watching through binoculars

using sandpaper to smooth driftwood even further

walking on a student-created path of timbers 

adding more to the path!

the team works together to plan their design

adding a few drawing lessons into the the Fibers & Clothing block

careful notetaking during the sink/float bin activity

the next item...

everyone feels it and makes a prediction

testing it to see what will happen

it floats!

germinating raw flax seeds and hemp seeds from the grocery store

Becca tries experiment #1 from her new book

The Book of Ingeniously Daring Chemistry

making a scale model of the distance from a hydrogen atom's 

nucleus all the way out to its lone electron

taking a break in between my SWI conference in Chicago

and my AWSNA conference in North Carolina

to visit the lovely 

Sandhills Horticultural Gardens in Pinehurst NC

complete with a Secret Garden-esque gate

back to school after the break, the students and Chad are

hard at work clearing out our own vegetable garden beds for Spring

marble mazes galore

and wonderful fort building with playstands and silks

and sofa cushions, of course

US State Elimination game helps me assess student prior knowledge

of state names and locations at the start of our Tall Tales block

there was a lot of variety in which states the teams could

successfully identify (and which states were mysteries)

making our first fruit salad of Spring

the older children are eager to help too

 

one child stands on a rug and weaves on the tapestry loom...

while another actively weaves part of the hula hoop loom under her feet!

sentence symbolizing work from the Grammar Cabinet

playing I Have... Who Has

to practice state locations

working together on a long multiplication problem

"magic wands" made in Art class with Miss Kelly

using watercolor pencils to create the detailed textures of Jupiter

in Science Club

and don't forget to swing by our upcoming sessions of 

Homeschool Without Borders at the public library in April and May

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!