Counting Money with Coin Caterpillars

My son just wrapped up a four-week math summer camp and loved it (he clearly has his father’s genes). One of the things his teacher mentioned that he should continue to work on was counting money. Imagine my glee when that very same day Miss Kindergarten shared an amazing activity and printable on counting coins on her blog. (Yes, I do believe in fate.) Her Coin Caterpillars idea was EXACTLY what we needed!

Rather than just hand my son some pocket change and her worksheet, I decided to make some caterpillar faces so we could create caterpillar problems to do now and later.

To make the caterpillar faces:

1. I traced a quarter onto construction paper and an empty cardboard cracker box I pulled out of our recycle bin and cut them out. 
2. I cut and bent a pipe cleaner in the shape of a “V” and hot glued it to the cardboard circle. 
3. I added glue on top and put the construction paper circle over it, sandwiching the pipe cleaner in the middle. 
4. Then I laid a pencil over the pipe cleaner and wrapped both ends around the pencil to make the squiggly antennae.
5. All that was left to do was glue on some googly eyes and draw a smile.

To make his coin caterpillars, I asked him to pick several coins and line them up in a row with a caterpillar face at the beginning. Underneath he wrote the values of the coins and then used a 1-100 numbers grid to count forward (i.e. add the values together).

So cute. So fun. And such good practice. Thank you, Miss Kindergarten!


Find this idea and loads of other great math activities listed on love2learn2day's Math Monday blog hop here.

How to Make a Thinking Cap

“But, Mom, what about the brain?!?!” was my son’s question when we finished his human organs tee shirt. Truth be told, I thought that we’d just read up on the brain and add what we learned to his Body Book (visit this post for links to download the Body Book pages free). But, ohhhh no, that wasn’t going to cut it for my son. Apparently I’d set the bar too high with our other human body-related activities. (I have no one to blame but myself.)

Frantically searching the web for a fun craft to do, I found the Brain Child blog. Hallelujah! This incredible site had the perfect activity to cap off (excuse the corny pun) our lessons on the human body.

Before we got crafty, we read Pamela Hill Nettleton’s book “Think, Think, Think: Learning about Your Brain.” It taught us what the three parts of your brain are used for:

• The cerebrum helps you think.
• The cerebellum helps you move.
• The brain stem keeps your heart and lungs working.

Now it was time for my son to make his very own thinking cap!

What we used:

A can of Great Stuff foam sealant (cost: approximately $4)

Lots of aluminum foil

Disposable gloves (a pair for you AND a pair for your child)

Protective eyewear

A disposable bowl that fits your son/daughter’s head

Waxed paper

What we did:

1. I covered the top of my son’s head in aluminum foil. I’d recommend finding a bowl that’s a snug fit and covering it completely with foil. If you omit the bowl, use LOTS of foil to make your foiled hat thick and stiff. This will serve as a permanent base for your "brain."
2. After we removed the foil form, we put on gloves and eyewear and sprayed the foam sealant, covering our foil hat completely. Before handing over the can, I showed my son how to make folds like what you’d see in the cerebrum. 
3. We set our “brain” on top of waxed paper to dry, threw out the gloves, and gave each other a high-five. “That was cool, Mom,” my son said. I agreed!
4. I checked the brain cap a few hours later and as it was drying, gently pulled the waxed paper away from the bottom where it was sticking. Then I turned it over since the top was dry, letting the bottom dry thoroughly overnight.

Note: We did this in our garage with the door open so there was plenty of ventilation. While the sealant’s can didn’t give this warning, I thought it best to control the mess and protect our brains.

Paint-Your-Organs Shirt and Printable Body Book

When the skeleton activity was such a hit with my son, I knew that it was time to move on to discuss some of the organs in the human body. I created a printable book for my son to record what he learned and planned six days of exploring organs. (Thank you, library, for all the wonderful resources!)

Each day we read about an important organ in our torso: lungs, heart, liver, stomach, intestines, and kidneys and bladder (we lumped these last two into one activity).


We used the following books in our exploration of the human body:
“Breathe In, Breathe Out: Learning About Your Lungs” by Pamela Hill Nettleton
“Hear Your Heart” by Paul Showers
“Thump-Thump: Learning About Your Heart” by Pamela Hill Nettleton
“My Digestive System: An Exciting Way to Learn about your Body” by Sally Hewitt
“Human Organs” by Kristi Lew
“What’s Inside Me? My Stomach” by Dana Meachen Rau
“See inside Your Body” by Katie Daynes and Colin King


After reading up, we conducted a few other fun activities like:

• Using an empty paper towel tube to listen to each other's hearts.
• Making smoothies in a blender to simulate the stomach mushing up food.
• Pouring four cups of water into glasses to show how much urine the bladder can hold. 
• Pulling a measuring tape out to 12 feet to show the length of a child's small intestine.

Once we'd read enough to be in awe of our body's organs and their capabilities, my son recorded the important work the organ we explored is doing in his Body Book. (To make your own body book, download pages 1-3 front and pages 1-3 back, as well as assembly instructions.)

Finally, he added the organ to a tee shirt using freezer paper stencils, fabric paint, and a sponge brush. 

The human organ shapes are also available for free download. These were designed to fit on a child's size small tee shirt. Click on each of the links below to print.

lungs

liver_stomach_heart

kidneys_bladder

intestines

Just download, print, place behind a piece of freezer paper and trace the shape with an Exacto knife to cut out. Iron the paper waxy side down onto a pre-washed cotton tee shirt using medium-high heat. Place a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to prevent the paint from bleeding through. Paint, dry, and peel off the paper. Heat set each organ before painting the next one. For a tutorial on using freezer paper stencils, click here.


Help your child finish their Body Book by learning about the brain. Visit the "How to Make a Thinking Cap" post for instructions on how to make a brain hat to wear with the organs tee shirt!

Paper Airplane Competition

For Father’s Day, I took the suggestion of a fellow blogger at Modern Kids Messy Parents and ordered my husband the book “Handy Dad” by Todd Davis. I’m not sure who spent more time oohing and awing over the projects in its pages: my oldest son or his father.

Last weekend, they embarked on the first of the book’s projects: a paper airplane. Ever since, my son has been fascinated. He even asked me if one of our activities could be paper airplanes. Who am I to say no?

I found an amazing website that provided great free written and animated instructions to make 10 airplanes (check out 10paperairplanes.com). With a little help from me, my son made five of the planes – the arrow, dart, stealth (in progress pictured below), moth, and kite.

I had some scrapbooking papers lying around, so we used those. After each was made, he labeled the planes with their names and listed them in his notebook. When all five were done, I taped a ruler to the ground (the starting line) and he flew them.

The competition was fierce to see which would fly the farthest. Some of the planes that looked the fastest weren’t. Others curved and swooped. It was like having a front-row seat at our own private air show!

I gave him a measuring tape so he could measure the distance each flew and record the number (in inches) next to the plane’s name in his notebook. Once the competition was over, I asked him to figure out how the planes had placed.

I asked questions like, “Is it a good thing if the plane flew a little ways or a long ways? Would the number be big or small if it flew a long ways? Which number is the biggest?” He wrote the numbers one through five next to the plane’s name to indicate who’d placed first, second, third, etc. And then he played with his new planes for a solid 30 minutes before a growling stomach distracted him.

Next time it’s raining and you just can’t listen to another “Moooommmm, I’m SO bored,” grab some paper and help your child make paper airplanes!

Studying (and Making) Our Own Skeleton

The human body is so cool. To kick off some lessons related to our anatomy, I thought we’d read up on bones. Our first book was “Bones” by Stephen Krensky. Even though it’s a step 2 Step Into Reading book, I read it to my son. This non-fiction book talked about bones at my son’s level and I was thrilled to have found it at our local library.

Afterwards, I gave my son a skeleton puzzle. (Well, that’s what I called it, anyway.) I downloaded these great bone cut-outs from The Crafty Crow website, then printed, cut out, and punched holes in them. All that was left to do was assemble. My son was up to the challenge.

Right away, he grabbed the skull and ribs (I reminded him what these bones were called) and he taped them together. Then he attached the pelvis with one of the brads I’d set out.

Now, he was stumped. Then I reminded him of what we’d learned in Krensky’s book: that the longest bones in our body are in our legs! That was just the hint he needed to push on. It wasn’t long before the whole skeleton was assembled.

When he asked me why we were using brads instead of tape to connect the bones, I reminded him about joints and showed him how we’d walk if we couldn’t bend our knees.

After our skeleton was complete, my son read Jo Cleland’s non-fiction book, “Why Do I Have Bones?” The repetitive phrases and simple words made this book ideal for my almost-six-year-old son to read on his own.

To wrap up our lesson on bones, we watched “The Skeleton Dance” on YouTube.

I wonder how long I’ll have “Dem Bones, dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones …” stuck in my head!

This is a great activity for young learners and the books we used were instrumental and age-appropriate for kindergarteners or first graders. They helped teach my son lots of fun facts about the human skeleton. A few hours after we'd completed the activity, I overheard my son tell his younger brother, "If we didn't have bones, we'd be blobs." HA!

Make your own skeleton by downloading Kate from Mini-Eco’s skeleton parts on The Crafty Crow here.