Maple Harvest Festival

Ian using a pioneer drill.

Last weekend, we attended the Maple Harvest Festival at Shaver's Creek Environmental Center.  The Maple Sugaring Demonstrations tour included:

• History of Maple Sugaring: From American Indians to Pioneers
• Identifying Sugar Maples
• Measuring and Tapping a Maple Tree
• Collecting Sap
• Making Maple Syrup at the Sugar Shack

We also ate pancakes & maple syrup, listened to live folk music, and viewed the other Shaver's Creek exhibits.

Books:  Maple Syrup Season by Purmell;  Welcome To Our Sugarhouse by Fischer

Wegman's Field Trip

Road signs, building, tree farm, and car pulling motor boat on trailer that we made at home.

This week we joined a homeschool field trip to Wegman's, a local grocery store.  We visited the following departments: produce, bakery, meat, seafood, and dairy.  Department representatives lectured about the food groups and their nutritional benefits.  Eric's favorite part of the tour was looking at live lobsters.  Ian's favorite part of the tour was sampling sheep cheese.  

Books:  The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons;  What's So Good about Vegetables? by Randall;  Rah, Rah, Radishes! by Sayre;  What's for Lunch: Oranges by Llewellyn

Spirit of Uganda

This week we attended the performance Spirit of Uganda at the Eisenhower Auditorium.  The performance included East African music, dancing, and storytelling.

We also borrowed the Africa concept kit from our public library and did the following activities:

• "How Jerboa Tricked Lion" (Travel the Globe by Webber) flannel board story
• played African instruments
• played with African animal puppets

Books:  Jaha and Jamil Went Down the Hill: An African Mother Goose by Kroll;  African Animals by Squire;  One Child, One Seed by Cave

Reference Books:  The Animal Atlas by Taylor

Shapes

Pattern block pictures Ian made

Ian was excited to show me the semi-circle shape he found on our bike trailer.  We looked closer and found more semi-circles, rectangles, triangles, and parallelograms on the trailer.  Ian can also identify pentagons, hexagons, octagons, parallel & intersecting lines, cones, and cylinders.

Ian enjoyed completing "Geometry in a Box Pattern Blocks" activities and making his own shapes with the pattern blocks.  The book Shapes in Transportation has been a favorite this month.

Books:  Fire Engine Shapes by McMillan;  Shapes in Transportation by Roy;  Shapes in Sports by Rissman

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

We recently joined a homeschooling co-op that meets once a week.  This week's lesson celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday.  We read several Dr. Seuss books, did matching & pattern worksheets, played a fishing game, and learned about how Dr. Seuss became an author.  The most popular Dr. Seuss book at our house this month is The Lorax. 

Books:  The Foot Book by Seuss;  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Seuss;  Oh, the Places You'll Go by Seuss;  The Lorax by Seuss