Holbrook Heroes: Earth Day and the End of Mexico

It's mostly the end of April, and with it comes the end of our unit on Mexico. We also took a short break to focus on Earth Day, doing a few fun activities to celebrate it. Speaking of celebrating, Hayden finished up his last lesson in our language arts curriculum. I promised him that we would take a break from the norm after he completed the whole book, and in keeping with that promise, we are going to use the Magic Treehouse books that he really enjoys as our language arts curriculum. We've already read the first 16 books in this series. So, we are starting our MTH curriculum with book #17, Tonight on the Titanic. We are already off to a great start. So, before I go into it too much, let me bring you up to speed on the last two weeks:

Language Arts:

A Fill-in-the-Blank Story to work on nouns and verbs. Both Hayden and Sawyer
did this. Hayden wrote his own while Sawyer dictated for me.

Working on the long /u/ sound. After blending some letters together to make words,
Hayden also had to find some of them in his reader, "What a Rule!".

Learning how to research via the iPad. He looked up information on the tiger,
his favorite animal at the zoo. Then he wrote 3-4 facts that he learned in his
journal and illustrated it.

Writing about the tiger in his journal.

Sawyer's book of the week was "Dear Dragon Goes to the Zoo".
This activity focused on the /z/ sound and how it can be spelled with a z or an s.
After I read each word to him, he would place the word in the correct column depending
on which letter the word used.

Handwriting Without Tears workbook.

More Handwriting Without Tears.

ABC Order activity.
Sawyer had to put all these flash cards in alphabetical order. In helping him with this
activity, I realized that I need to focus on this sort of thing with him more. He knows his
letters, but he doesn't always remember where they are in the alphabet.

Serious concentration and decision making going on down there.

Short vowel review

Long vowel review

Using the different readers to find an example of each of the long vowel letter blends.

End of the book assessment.
After writing the words as I called them out, he was able to go back and check
his own work. Out of 12 words, he missed just 2, but was able to correct them
without assistance.

Math:

Using a group of stuffed animals to review the term middle and get a visual
understanding of it.

Using the abacus and a stack of books to solve word problems.

Completing equations by using the abacus to find the answer.
(You can see at the bottom of the picture that he's trying to use his fingers)

Worksheet of addition equations to practice what he just learned.

Using tiles and tally marks to count objects.

Playing a memory game with all 4 types of counting cards.

More Adding!!

Hayden was introduced to Roman numerals.

Roman numerals 1-29

Roman numerals 30-44 (he was supposed to go to 49, but petered out)!

Learning Roman numerals 50-99

Worksheet to practice what he's learned so far. Sorry it's sideways!

Comparing 2, 20, 200, and 2000

Entering numbers onto the abacus on side 2, then writing them out in Roman numerals.

Venn diagram on multiples of 2 and 5.

Working out word problems as equations in Roman numerals.

A little fun review with the Rows and Columns game to find numbers totaling to 15.

Social Studies:

So, this will end our unit on Mexico. We studied the Aztec and Maya civilizations briefly, celebrated the Day of the Dead (in April), and made a dinner of tamales, beans & rice, and Mexican flan. We will take a short break from Little Passports and Galloping the Globe after this to enjoy traveling via the Magic Treehouse. For now, here is Mexico!

The boys drew Aztec sun stones. An idea I got from The Elementary Art Room.

Sun stone beginning.

Adding color with pastels.

Then we mounted them on construction paper.

Ugh! Sorry, for the sideways picture (again!)

Drinking some hot chocolate and eating mini cinnamon rolls after learning about
the Aztecs. Aztec hot chocolate was a little too much for them. So, they opted for
Swiss Miss instead. Oh well. It's the thought that counts, right?

And Hayden had to explore "the dip" with his snack.

MY Aztec chocolate drink with cinnamon rolls. That was some rich stuff, folks.
And with a little bit o' kick at the end. I couldn't finish it!

For studying about the Day of the Dead, we had a picnic of pan de los muertos
in one of the local cemeteries.

Our pan de los muertos.

The boys each colored a calaveras.

They were pretty awesome.

The soaking of corn husks for tamale making!

Carnitas for the tamales!

Weighing the corn flour for the dough.

The mise en place (I know, that's French) for tamales.

Tamales are wrapped and in the steamer!!
FYI, we actually ate these the following night because I failed to notice the 2 hour
cooking time needed. It would've been after 9:00pm before we got the chance to eat
them. Thankfully, they can be refrigerated and then reheated.

Our Mexican plates of tamales with cheesy black beans and rice!

The boys were not entirely fond of the tamales. But kudos to them for trying them anyway!

Mexican flan. I actually had trouble making this dish as well. I couldn't get the
caramel portion done correctly. So, it came out a bit liquid-y. Still tasted good though.

Hayden liked it. Sawyer, not so much.

Ceviche tacos.
The boys didn't have these. If the tamales had worked out the first night, then
they would have. These couldn't be saved for the following night, however, so
the hubs and I ate them for our dinner.

The books we read these last two weeks:
Donald's Fantastic Fiesta - An Adventure in Mexico
The Three Little Tamales by Eric A. Kimmel
Family Pictures by Carmen Lomas Garza
Hands of the Maya - Villagers at Work and Play by Rachel Crandell
The Aztecs, Life in Tenochtitlan by Matt Doedan
Aztec, Inca & Maya (Eyewitness Books) by Elizabeth Baquedano

Earth Day Activities

We started off Earth Day by reading Earth Smart, How to Take Care of the Environment by Leslie Garrett. Then, the boys each wrote in their journals about something that they could do to help protect the Earth.

Sawyer's journal entry
(he dictated for me, then traced what I wrote).

Hayden's journal entry

Then, I found this awesome idea on the blog, Inner Child Fun - how to build a geodesic dome out of newspapers. It took a while for us to do it (with me doing most of the work), but it turned out great, and the boys kept it up all week. It broke apart on us several times, so I finally went ahead and tossed it into the recycle bin.

The boys helped by stacking the newspapers for me. Four to a stack. I tried
showing them how to roll them up, but they kept slipping, and the whole roll
would come undone. So, the rolling was left up to me.

They kept track of how many newspaper "logs" we made.

Then, we connected them, three at a time, to form triangles.

Then we connected all the triangles together, and took four more
logs to connect the top of the triangles.

I missed getting a picture of them holding the triangles up and bringing them together
to form the pentagon because it kept falling down on them. So, here is the final structure
after the final 5 logs were connected to form a star, and then secured to make the top of
the dome.

Yea! We did it!

The last thing we did for Earth Day, we actually saved for the end of the week. We went to Losco Park, one of the parks we regularly visit with some of our homeschool buddies, and we did a park clean up. We did this a couple of years ago, too, and found a $10 bill then. Not this time. Oh well. We did find some ducks, turtles, and minnows that enjoyed our bread scraps, though. And, the baby got to help this time, too. Win win!

And finally......

Our Magic Treehouse Book: Tonight on the Titanic by Mary Pope Osbourne.

As I said in the beginning of this post, we have already read the first 16 books of the Magic Treehouse series. So, I decided to start with #17. Hayden was itching to read it anyway. This decision to do a MTH unit is going to require a little more legwork on my part, but I'm finding that THIS is the type of stuff that the boys really get a lot out of. I'm hoping that I can keep it up (at least for the month of May) without feeling overwhelmed.

We don't have a treehouse, but we do have a swing set with a loft. Close enough!!
We read the entire book in less than an hour up here. (My back is not happy with
me either!)

There was a lot of good information in this book. I'd have to say that this one
is one of our favorites.

We did an experiment on how a boat floats using clay and our water table. First, we dropped a ball of clay in the water to see if it would sink or float (it sank. obviously.). Then, I gave both boys their own ball of clay, and their challenge was to shape it in a way that it COULD float. I don't know if it was the clay or the clay workers, but we could never get those dang balls of clay to float, no matter how boat-like we got them.

Bless their hearts, they did try.

All we did was turn the beautiful clear water into a white murky mess.

I finally decided to go with the ole reliable Play-doh. I got a container for each of them, and we worked like crazy again to get these things to float. Just so you know, water is NOT your friend when you are trying to shape and mold a piece of clay/playdoh. It made it all gross and squishy, and I must've gone through half a roll of paper towels trying to keep it dry enough to work with (kind of counterbalances our efforts on Earth Day....whoops).

Hayden working his magic.

Sawyer, determined as well. He finally gave up because it kept cracking on him.
So, I took over to help him out.

Time for the test.....

WOOT!! Finally!!

And YES!! Hayden's did, too!! YAYYY!!

Now, we could test out how many pennies it could hold before it sunk!

Sawyer's got to 6 pennies before it went down.

Hayden's only got to 3, but in his defense, his piece of play-doh was smaller,
and we also learned that the shape of the hull had a big effect on how much
weight it could carry. Hayden's hull had a sloping keel whereas Sawyer's was
more like a flat-bottomed boat.

Later, we watched a few video clips on the building of the Titanic, a virtual tour inside the Titanic (pretty cool), and a portion of the movie, Titanic, when the ship hit the iceberg and how it sunk. This next picture shows them watching that last part.