Backyard Rock Classification

The soil in our yard is filled with rocks. While my husband and I found this frustrating, our sons were overjoyed. During multiple weekends adding landscaping beds to our backyard, the boys occupied themselves picking up rocks from the freshly turned dirt. Being the geeky mother that I am, I seized the opportunity to use my sons’ growing rock collection as an educational activity.

I hit the local library in search of books about rocks, but was discouraged by the overly technical details most contained. The non-fiction available there was WAY beyond my son’s understanding. I did grab Melinda Lilly’s “Read and Do Science: Rocks” book, though. It provided a brief explanation of the three types of rocks (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary). I also read "Let's Go Rock Collecting" by Roma Gans to my son before he began sorting, measuring, and studying his own rock collection.

I instructed my son to pick eight rocks of varying shapes, colors, and sizes from his stash. Then I gave him a ruler and a rock classification worksheet I’d made. He wrote the numbers one through eight on sticky notes and we placed each rock on top, to keep them straight.

Download a copy of this worksheet here.

Then one by one my son examined each rock. What color is it? Is it shiny or dull? Rough or smooth? How long is it? Does it look like metal or glass? When he’d made check marks or filled in the appropriate boxes on his chart, we moved the rocks (and sticky notes) around on the table, putting them in order biggest to smallest and wrote the corresponding numbers at the bottom.

I planned this activity to teach my son about observation, but instead the lesson ended up being more about characteristics and measuring. It never occurred to me when I prepped for this, that my son wouldn’t know what shiny and dull meant or how to read a ruler (aside from the big numbers).

So what did I learn from this? That sometimes the best kind of learning is accidental.

Brown Baggin' It: A Touch-and-Feel Game

Too many worksheets make for one uncooperative boy. It’s easy to get in a rut. Ask a soon-to-be-first-grader and they’ll tell you: ruts are NOT fun. To mix it up, I put together a guessing game for my son that I discovered in “Rainy Days and Saturdays” by Linda Hetzer.

I labeled brown lunch sacks with the numbers one through 10. Then I ran around the house and collected 10 objects (e.g., an apple, crayon, flip-flop sandal, etc.) when my son was out of the house, stuffed one object in each bag, and stapled the top shut. When he got home, the fun began. I gave him the bags to feel and guess what was inside. 

A scotch tape dispenser is the same shape as a snail. I had never noticed this before, but my son sure did. (Clever, huh?)

He listed the guesses on a page of his spiral notebook.

When he finished touching, smashing, and squeezing each bag, he opened them and wrote down each of the objects in the second column next to his guesses.

My son only guessed one object correctly and he was disappointed. I told him that we sure rely on our eyes a lot to tell us what things are; he agreed. I applauded his creative guesses and his mood changed from deflated to proud.

I have a feeling we’ll be playing this little game again sometime.

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!