Where happy little Bluebirds Fly...♥ and so can I ♥

Remember this book from last weeks read alouds? Well we read it but didn't get a chance to do much with it, so I kept it for this week. We re-read the book and studied the amazing illustrations. While listening to the cd of music included with the book, the kids painted rainbows. They were told to mimic the painting style used in the book, I think they did a great job! 

The Art Gallery

by S

by B

by C

by T

by L

they all picked out their favorite aspects of the illustrations to use.  Bright bold rainbows on teal skys, glittery stars, smiling moons, soaring bluebirds and wispy clouds.

the Artists hard at work:

if we have time later today we will be painting with watercolors, for our book The Odious Ogre

for the ♥ of reading

real quick, just a few of the awesome books we found at the library to read together this week

remember to read to your kids this week, even the ones that can read to themselves :) 

Asteroid Madness

My poor blog has been neglected this week, but I promise the midgets and their homeschooling has not :)

Just finished studying Mercury, and of course we needed to do an experiment.....

We recreated the craters on Mercury with pans of flours (the surface of Mercury is covered in thick dust), using rocks and balls as asteroids. Not sure what the educational value of this was......we did compare the size and shape of craters made. But anywho....they enjoyed it and hopefully it helped cement some "Mercury Facts" into their brains :) 

the Crater throwers ready to fire....

 craters made of rocks

 golf ball crater

 juggling ball crater

and marble craters. 

Cuneiform

I am back from an amazing womens retreat and feeling great! (wish I could say the same about my hubby who has a cold and my kiddos who are not listening well today...)
Today we studied Mesopotamia, the Sumerians,  and Cuneiform. Some times I wonder if the kids are really listening to me when I read our history book??? They have a hard time sitting still and never seem to be paying attention, but they can always answer my questions at the end.

So AnyWho...being  wedFUNday we had to do something fun with our history, so cuneiform tablets it was :)
I couldn't find any real cuneiform letters that were translated from us to copy, so we made our own!

a real cuneiform tablet

Our tablets:

autumn fun

After enjoying one of our read alouds on fall leaves we went on a nature walk.

 Our book talked about different shaped leaves, above the kids found "spiky" leaves 

L found a leaf made up of 5 leaflets 

Picking out the best leaves to do some leaf rubbings :) 

And the art showcase.......

I remember doing rubbings like this in school when I was a kid, always a fun break from math or english :) 

the kiddos seemed to really enjoy the time to be artistic!