Monday, November 14, 2011

Are You Ready for Winter?

Learning about how animals get ready for winter is an interesting topic, but it’s even better when you can pretend to be those animals. That’s what we and few of our friends did today at the Kuehn Conservation Center’s nature program.

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First, a few of the kids got to dress up as animals that tough winter out, hibernate,and migrate. The naturalist helped the kids think about what teach type of animal does to survive winter.

Next, the kids got to pretend to be squirrels by making a nest under a tree and then grabbing a nut one at a time to bring back to their nest. Then they got to touch and see other animals native to Iowa and learn about how they survive winter.

Finally, after a hike in the woods to build more nests, they got to crack open some hickory nuts with rocks and eat them.

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As an added bonus, there was an Indian tepee the kids could explore and play in.

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What a fun way to relish in a gorgeous November day, learning about and exploring God’s creation.

Cell Craft

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Today we began a unit on the human body for science. Our first topic was cells. We talked about what their purpose is and looked at pictures of them in a book called Cells by Michael George.

After reading about it, I had the girls make a model of a cell from a diagram I got from Crayola.com.

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They drew a circle and then glued a button in the middle to represent the nucleus. Then they used gems and colored macaroni to represent the other cell parts.

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Learning is more fun when you can use glue!

First Snow

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We had our first snow last Wednesday. The girls were so excited that got themselves dressed in their gear and headed out to play. They spent about an hour running around and throwing snowballs at each other and the house. It would have been the perfect snow to make a snowman out of, but they didn’t get around to that.

We got a late start to school that day, but it was worth to see them enjoying the first snow.