Community III: Neighborhood Treasure Hunt!

November 12, 2009:

Today we started at Caiden's house, where Lynn brought us a message from her friend, Old Blackbeard. Check back for Blackbeard's wonderful prose - I can't begin to recreate it, so until I have it for you, I'll just give you the blow-by-blow of what we did:

In perfect pirate dialect, Lynn read Blackbeard's message, which told everyone to start off by finding direction on his pirate ship. Now where can that be?




Ah ha! And on it was a cache of compasses for everyone to navigate their way through the neighborhood!



Our next clue was to walk 30 paces until we saw the Bell...

Where's the bell? A doorbell?


Ah ha! And then we were to go west until we saw monkeys swinging in a jungle.

Can't get any jungle-y-er than the park (monkeys not shown) (actually, all these kids were born in the year of the monkey, how about that? So ignore the last comment.)!

Waiting for them at the park was a treasure of juice treats!




The next clue led them to...

Spencer's house!



Where they got bags of pencils and pirate stickers and some piratey tattoos. Arr!

Then it was on to the final treasure:


West again to the street named after an island:


To find the treasure hidden underneath a SNAKE!


Whew, not a real snake!



Thanks, Lynn, it was wonderfully done!

Community II: Country Maps and the Globe

November 5, 2009:

Back to Lynn's house, where the kids talked about states and countries they've visited or have family in. Caiden has been to Norway to visit his grandma, and Lily goes to see her grandparents in Vermont and New York.

Then everyone assembled puzzles of the US and looked at a globe, and the day closed with another round of compass tag.

Jack was out sick that day, so I didn't go and don't have pictures, but I hear a good time was had by all!

Community I: Maps and Compasses

October 29, 2009

For this lesson (and the next several), we met at Lynn's house, where the kids talked about the kinds of things you find in a community: stores, schools, doctors, libraries, parks, and lots of people. Lynn then talked about maps and how one orients oneself relative to a map. She showed everyone the cool trick of how to make your own compass:

Rub a pin on a magnet



And float it on a cork - easy!



Then everyone got to make their own maps.




Lily's:


Fiona's (I think?):

Jack's:


Spencer's - he drew a map of Angel stadium:



Caiden's:



Sarah's (yes, Lynn?):


We finished up the game with a round of compass tag. Whee!

First Art Project - Pottery

October 22, 2009:

We all gathered at Heather's for our first art project. To complete our anatomy session, we finished with family trees, so the first task on art day was to make tiles that represented something about our families:


Then the kids were set free to do their creative best. I hear the pottery has been fired, and I'll look forward to hearing about when it can be glazed and brought home!








The day finished on Caiden's awesome pirate ship out back. See more about that in a few weeks!

Bodies: Lesson 4 - Heredity

First of all, thanks to everyone for bringing your family tree and pictures with the kids - we enjoyed seeing who your kids take after!

I first asked the kids to tell me about things their bodies do. I was informed that our bodies eat and jump and that our hearts beat. I asked them if they knew that we also use our bodies to make new people? They've all seen pregnant women, of course, but how does that work?

For those who had trepidation (none of you seemed to) - fear not! The mechanics of how exactly the embryo gets its start didn't come up with our kindergartners. You'll all have to forge those waters on your own.

We looked through a beautiful book on fetal development that Lynn brought, from sperm-meets-egg to the end of gestation. Then we talked about how the mom is not just the carrier of the baby, but that her body or, more specifically, her DNA, gives the baby half of its characteristics, and that the Dad's sperm has the DNA to give the baby the other half.





For the record, I totally did not mean for that to look like a naked lady.

We did an exercise where we tried to guess whether a baby's eyes would be blue or brown by looking at what color the parents' eyes are. Of course, we all know that the picture is a lot more complicated than that - Pat and I have hazel and blue eyes, respectively, and we have two brown-eyed children - but it gave a flavor for how genes get passed on. Maybe I should have done Mendel's wrinkled pea experiment instead :)

Next we got out our pictures and talked about the families we came from. This was Jack's family tree:



We also talked about how Sarah and Fiona have the same DNA, but that other kinds of twins are just like regular brothers and sisters.

Finally, we sat the kids down and had them make DNA strands out of foam sheets and pipe cleaners. Then the kids started a little pipe cleaner jewelry enterprise, and Jack started to make pipe cleaner ninja stars. It was all good!









We ended the session with more tag. One of these days we'll make up a game that actually goes along with the lesson. Until then... onward and upward!

Bodies: Lesson 3 - Microbes

On October 8, we met to discuss germs and microbes. We started off the session by talking about how our bodies are made of cells, but that cells are too small to see without strong microscopes. Although we can't see most cells with our at-home microscopes, we did look at hair, fingernail clippings, and tooth guk, provided by an accommodating Lily. Which is not to imply that I thought she had more to share than anyone else, she was just the most willing to let me scrape her teeth. :)






While three kids looked at the microscopes and drew what they saw, the other three drew what they thought germs looked like.

Next we decided to collect some germs and grow them in a petri dish in an agar medium. To show that cleaning does eliminate germs, we took two samples from each area - one before and one after cleaning it.



Our samples came from:



The Toilet - before (section 1) and after cleaning (section 2)



The garbage can - before (section 3) and after cleaning (section 4)



Under a fingernail (section 5) and after cleaning (section 6)

Apparently I'm not so great at growing germs, though - I intended to show them the colonies of bacteria the next week, but nothing grew, I think because I kept the petri dish in a place that's too cold. We'll try again sometime and see if we can grow some nasty bugs.

Then I showed them pictures of and we talked about the kinds of germs we're most likely to meet: bacteria, viruses, and fungi. We compared the kids' drawings of germs to pictures of real germs, and I have to say, the kids' imaginations meet the reality pretty well!

Fiona's looked to me most like a staph infection:




Jack, Caiden and Spencer drew germs that looked like bacteria:



Lily drew a scary-looking virus:



And Sarah was into the fungi:




And keep in mind that they drew these before I showed them the pictures of the real germs! Pretty creative! We also talked about how to keep germs at bay.

The last 15 minutes we played "sneeze tag" on the front lawn. It's kind of like regular tag, except that we call it sneeze tag. Yeah, I was too lazy to make up rules, so sue me.

Thanks, everyone, for another fun week!