Goodbye Ale!!!

We have hosted 35 students in our home in the last 5 years. We absolutely LOVE opening our home to people around the world! Ale is a precious girl from Mexico!! Her brother stayed with us a couple years ago and it was a joy having her become a part of our family the last three months. Why does this matter to our home school adventures? My children LOVE greeting our students from different countries. It gives them an experience in opening their hearts to many cultures and allows them to learn about different foods, beliefs, languages and such! We will miss our friend Ale dearly!!



 
Here we are celebrating Ale’s birthday!! Oh how the boys LOVE her!

She LOVED playing with the boys!! Here they are beautifying her!! We also taught Ale about St. Patrick's Day by making green cupcakes!!

China!!

We have started learning about China this week. We have spent a lot of time on it as the boys are half Chinese! We started off the week building the great wall of China. The kids were fascinated by it! We watched some real wonderful You-Tube videos produced by National Geographic about how the wall was built and what it was used for. The kids thought we would see pictures of the bad guys and were dissapointed that the wall stands for friendship now! Pretty cute!!
Erica at http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ has fantastic instructions on how she made this wall! The kids LOVED it!!!
First we started out by drawing some lines on white foam board and started gluing the craft blocks to it.


Then we made funny faces!! No just kidding! Here is the base of the Great Wall of China!

Then we put a layer of paper for support and added more layers!



The boys thought it was so funny that they could see each other on the other side! And Mateo is thinking about the Great Wall!!!
             
And… the final product!! The perfect touch…….Darth Vader and the clone wars!!! Might as well reenact what the wall was originally used for!!! This was an extremely fun project to do!!



This week we have learned where China is on the map, that is in the Northern Hemisphere and on the continent of Asia. The boys learned Yangtze and the Huang He rivers and located them on a map. We learned about the Yuan, we practiced writing our names in Chinese and much more!!

We read about what children are like in China, what their school day is like, what sports they like to play, and what foods they like to eat. The kids thought it was very cool that EVERYONE in China eats with chopsticks! My kids grew up using them! My little thought we should move to China since we do that already!! I told him I would move there any day!!


We put the most common animals of China on our animal wall. Here the kids are pointing to their favorite animal from China!! (See: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ for a list of these animals.)


Here we made Chinese Lanterns! See: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ for directions or the book A Trip Around the World.



I am not quite finished, however above the kids beds, I have painted their Chinese names!!! This was lots of fun!!!

Japan

As soon as we heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I wanted to take the opportunity to teach my children about the country and teach them about what had happened there.
We had so much fun learning about Japan!
We started off by dating our passports.

  
We then located Japan on our globe. We learned the population of Japan, the official language, and capital and the ocean that surrounds it.


My oldest is teaching the youngest about earthquakes. In this picture he is describing how the plates shift. Hmmm….surprised that my 5 year old can explain that! Smart kid!!  The kids thought it was amazing that Japan is actually made up of many earthquakes!!

We also prayed for the people and the devastation of Japan. We host international students and were able to get a hold of all the ones who stayed in our home. We were extremely happy when we found out all 15 of them and their families are okay!!

My youngest did not really enjoy the Japanese snack we had!
   

We learned about the most famous and important shrine in Japan: Itsukushima Shrine. My plan was to try and get the kids to make it out of play-dough….here is their creations! (We’ll  have to try again!!)
 
We also learned about the meaning of the Japanese flag. My oldest thought it was so amazing that the red circle symbolizes the sun rising! He now thinks that Japan is REALLY hot since their sun is red!!
 
Here the kids are trying to write their names in Japanese. I went to Google and got a translator that translated the kids names. This was quite fun! My three year old even loved it!!

We made Carp necklaces and learned how important these fish are to the people in Japan. These fish are considered to be very strong because they swim upstream. On Children's day in Japan, many children will make these necklaces and hang a kite-like banner of Carp to symbolize the strength.
  
My oldest completed a lap book activity about Japan.

We learned about the animals from Japan and graphed them accordingly onto our graph. Here the kids are pointing to their favorite one!!


Origami is a very popular craft in Japan! We made these that I found at Michaels.
 



Other things we learned this week was about the seven continents, the five oceans, how to say hello and thank you in Japanese, sand a Japanese song,   and then we ended our Japan experience going for SUSHI!! My oldest could eat sushi every day of his life!! So….then next day for lunch we went out for SUSHI again!!!

** All ideas taken from http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/. Erica has an incredible website and we used her geography curriculum.

The Letter M!!! Money, M and M’s, Monster Trucks and MORE!!

 
My little Monkeys!! In my little guy’s workbox I had these magnetic letters and he had to find the letter M’s. He is always asking me how to spell things. The funny thing is is that he has no idea what he is talking about, but because his older brother likes to spell, he just wants to join in on the fun! What fun letter practice for him! Here is spelled “Monster truck” which is definitely his favorite thing!!
My youngest turned three this month and he received money in the mail from Nana and Grandpa. Perfect timing Nana for the letter M!!!

We have our own “Letter Tree.” Idea had been taken from my favorite home school website http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/.  Each week the kids get a chance to put the letters on the tree. My youngest is making a “sad” face because he has the wrong letter! Silly boy!
The next activity was our letter do-a-dot pages! My youngest LOVES these pages. He likes putting stickers on the circles and using the do-a-dot markes! He is also tracing the M and M pages with a dry erase marker. (I did laminate these as to use them again!) Both of these pages were found at http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/.

   


The next activity we did this week was to make a “Moose craft.” The boys traced their hands, cut them out and attached it to a Moose head. They glued googly eyes and coloured their masterpiece! I used a craft idea from a wonderful book about alphabet crafts called Arts and Crafts From A to Z.


The other day we were in a story and a lady passed my us and made small talk with the boys. She asked them what their names were and my youngest said to her, “My name is Monkey.” Se, what better craft that a monkey one!!! (My oldest is working on a jungle one!) I found these in the dollar bins at Michaels craft store. I tend to navigate down these aisles every time I am there and stock up on fun crafts!



We made M and M cookies this week! I think the whole family loved it! My inlaws and our student from Mexico loved it as well! The kids thought it was perfect that our friend/student was from Mexico (letter M!)




Marshmallows are always a hit at our house!! This idea was from http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/. I am pretty sure that half of the marshmallows ended up somewhere else (tummy!) Hmmm a mystery!! My oldest LOVES math….might as well do math with marshmallows in your mouth!!

Who says you cannot have a BLAST with M and M’s!? We decided to play with our food and build patters with them! It was their favorite workbox! They actually raced through all their other boxes to get to this one! Nothing like some sweet motivation!
      

My little guy LOVES searching for letters! Here he had to circle the letter M’s!

Measuring: let’s find out which box holds more: the blue or orange? We made these boxes (which were made from different shapes: one a square and one a rectangle). My son filled each box up and then counted to see which shape held more.


I know this one is hard to see, however we did make a trip to McDonalds. My kids know how much I despise McDonalds, so to go here was indeed a treat. You know you have made an impression on your children when they keep it a secret from mommy when daddy and them go to McDonalds when Mommy is at work. They will say, “Mommy, Dad took us somewhere that is unhealthy.” Love it!