Thursday, February 9, 2012
Posted by Cindy on December 4, 2009
We enjoyed Duke Ellington a lot! It was refreshing to hear a different style of music than we’ve been listening to so far this semester. We aren’t studying a composer in December. I’ll have resources in the sidebar again in January!
Duke Ellington
Making Music Fun – Biography and You Tube Performances
Books We’ll Read
CD’s We’ll Listen To
Posted by Cindy on November 1, 2009
I hope these resources come in handy as you plan a study of George Gershwin!
George Gershwin
Books We’ll Read
CD’s We’ll Listen To
Posted by Cindy on September 29, 2009
Vivaldi’s music and story have made for wonderful studies this month! We’re off to a more contemporary composer, George Gershwin, for the month of October.
Antonio Vivaldi
Book We Read
CD’s We Listened To
Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!
Posted by Cindy on August 28, 2009
I admit that wildflowers are quite possibly my favorite of all nature studies. I’m always in awe of God’s creativeness, beauty and majesty through such delicate little things like wildflowers. I’m also amazed at how each season presents me with new flowers that I’ve never noticed before – each with awesome characteristics that are different from any other flower.
A field of wildflowers can move me, while a single wildflower observed closely makes me marvel at the constant, yet diverse design that makes a flower a flower. And to think that wildflowers are “planted by God” reminds me that He cares about me enough to bring me flowers!
I have posted at Shining Dawn Books about this week’s identification walk. I hope you’ll take a minute to hop over there and read An Abundance of Wildflowers as it’s somewhat of a continuation of this post.
Last week, we took a very up-close and personal look at wildflowers through comparisons and dissection. There was no long nature walk involved – only long enough to collect several flower samples to bring back inside. Since the yard wasn’t off limits for picking, the kiddos brought in a couple of flowers that aren’t considered wild. No matter, it made for a great opportunity to discuss the difference between the two!
The first activity was to compare two completely different flowers for similarities and differences. This is another of the notebooking pages that comes with the Wonderful Wildflowers NaturExplorers unit.
The second activity was flower dissection to identify all the parts of a flower.
We own a very old dissection kit that made the dissection not only easy, but exciting for the kids.
We were able to see the ovules (eggs) in the ovary on this hollyhock (not a wildflower).
Eli always gets in on the action!
The third activity was drawing the cross-section of a flower and labeling all the parts.
And the final activity was to complete a watercolor still-life of wildflowers. We have been studying Cezanne, who painted several still-life works, so this tied art and nature study together quite well. And to get composer study in the mix, we listened to a CD of Chopin (our composer of the month.)
“Wildflowers in the Rain”
Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2009
Here’s Chopin’s sidebar info. You’ll probably see this in the sidebar next school year, too!
Frederic Chopin
Book We’ll Read
