BFB Blog Giveaway!

I just received an announcement from Beautiful Feet Books. They are having a GIVEAWAY on their blog. One person will win 2 FREE  downloads of their study guides PLUS 1 download for a FRIEND! Isn't that nice?

Don't know about BFB? Check them out HERE! I have downloaded a couple of guides from them. They are nice little guides with book lists and suggested activities. There are different levels for most of the subjects.

If you would like to enter the giveaway you can visit the BFB Blog.

Good luck!

Happy Day!

What's the Weather?

Weather is all around us. It effects pretty much everything we do.

We love spending time outside when the weather is nice!

For the next couple of weeks we are going to be looking at the weather and breaking it down, trying to solve some of it's mysteries. 

To help us I have gathered a few library books:

On the Same Day in March

a Tour of the World's Weather    By Marilyn Singer

*This one goes all over the world showing how the seasons are different in other places at the same time.

What's the Weather Today?   By Allan Fowler

*A quick little read (easy) that takes a first look at different types of weather

DK Nature Activities 

Weather watcher       By John Woodward

* This is a great little book with good explanations with pictures and activities to do, we are using this a lot throughout our study

Sequences of Earth & Space

Rain       By Andres Llamas Ruiz

*This book takes you through the water cycle with great illustrations

I face the Wind   By Vicki Cobb

*A fun book about air and what it does, with some activities to help promote your own observations about air.

The Rainbow and You    By E.C. Krupp

*Become a "Rainbow Watcher" with this book. It teaches about light and colors.

And we already had this book in our own library that we have used throughout our Earth Science studies this year:

(Reader's Digest) How the Earth Works    By John Farndon

*Lots of activities listed in this book and some good info, not very good for just reading from, but a good resource for planning and gathering facts.

I think I have planned this pretty well. I have used my Mini Unit Guide to plan it out and we have 8 weeks of weather study and activities all lined up. We are going to read stories, keep a weather log, and do lots of fun experiments. To keep track of it all I have created this Weather Journal:

You can download this for FREE!

Some other resources we will be using will include documentaries about weather that I find on Netflix and I have also downloaded a few things from Currclick:

Simple Days Unit Studies: All About Weather

*A nice little ebook with basic info about the weather 

My Little Weather Book

*A great preschool weather journal for my little ones

Whatever the Weather (Teacher Book Bag)

*Weather picture cards and weather word cards 

Looks like a cloudy/overcast day here today.....What's the weather in your neck of the woods?

Have a

Happy Day!

Update:
A blog I follow, livinglifeintentionally, posted a FREE weather unit on her blog. Go here to check it out or find her blog button on my sidebar.

Spring Planning

These are books we bought at last years Scholastic Warehouse Sale!
I got a little excited.....

It is that time again. To gather resources and plan our next couple months of study in more detail. I have our year outlined, but every couple of months I sit down and look at what we will be doing so I can make book and supply lists and plan any other fun activities we might want to do as well. This way I can track with my Kiddos progress as we go, giving focus to their current needs. I also like to set any needed goals and evaluate ones we are already working on.

On my planning list:

Create a Science Unit about Weather with a background theme of Rainbows that spreads to other subjects such as Art, and giving a basis for some fun preschool activities fitting the theme.

Art: Explore the colors of the rainbow and experiment with mixing colors. For the younger ones learn names of colors if not already known and play matching games.

Literature: Read books about Rainbows, Weather, and current Ancient Times studies (Story of the World).

Grammy Award Winner!
I bought the MP3 Album from Deseret Book.
The link below will take you there

Music Study: Create a fun unit based on Jenny Oaks Baker's "When you Wish Upon a Star". I would like us to listen to selections, identify each song within the selections (if you haven't heard it before click on the album title link. She has done amazing mixes of Disney Melodies with her Violin.). I hope to have some copywork pages, and worksheets for filling out song titles, instruments heard, Movies they are in, and a place for writing (or drawing) how the songs make them feel. We will probably spend about a week on each song.

As I have been jotting down ideas for these upcoming Mini Units (I call them "mini" because we usually only spend  from one to six weeks on them and they don't cover every subject) I decided I needed a better planning worksheet than what I already have on hand.

So I created these:

The above worksheets are for the initial brainstorming and gathering of ideas and resources. I may use several drafts of these until I get it right!

The worksheets below are for pulling it all together and planning when to implement all of the fun! I made two different kinds. One is just a general by week planning guide. I would use this one for lessons planned for the whole family, or if you are planning for only one child. The other worksheet is if you want to only view one week at a time and what each individual student will be working on. There are spots for up to 5 students ( because that's how many I have) but you could make extra copies for however many you needed. This one is good if you have many age ranges  and levels of study, so you can give individual assignments and projects required for each. Maybe you will use both...I probably will!

scroll down for the link!

Download it here for FREE!

Happy Planning!

What are you planning for Spring?