Week 10: Brazil & Rain Forests

We are continuing to learn about Brazil, South America, and tropical rain forests. Lindsey loves learning about all the unique animals who call the rain forest home.

 

Science

We finished our study of feliforms in zoology with the cougar eats the deer experiment. We quickly ran out of paper deer! I wish more were included in the notebook. We cut squares of white paper to represent the extra deer we needed. Lindsey had fun throwing the cougar into the square we had marked off on our kitchen floor and seeing how many deer he would eat. By the end of the experiment though she was glad it was finally over - twenty generations took a long time. She did learn how the population of the deer must increase for the population of the cougars to increase. Then as the cougar population grew the deer started to decrease and then the cougars decreased too. I think she understands how they keep each other balanced. With twenty generations she was able to see the whole cycle.

To learn more about rain forests and the animals that live there we looked some up at San Diego Zoo http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/habitats/tropical-rain-forest and National Geographic Kids http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/  At National Geographic Kids you can also search for info by country and there are some great games on their site. My daughter loves to play Animal Jam, she learned about birds of paradise while playing it this week. We also looked up the difference between anteaters and aardvarks.

Geography

After the first week of studying South America, Lindsey had memorized all the countries and the geography game became easy for her. In order to make the game more challenging I found some flag cards to add to the game. They only cost a dollar. They also included capitols for each country. I purchased the ones for North America too, and we'll add North America back to the game next week.

The cards are in a PDF file with several options. I used the ones that fold in half and used a glue stick to glue them after folding. The front of the card has the flag of the country. The back of the card has a small flag image next to the name of the country and lists the capitol. I used a colored pencil to color in the flag to match the continent color of the original game cards.

To start I showed her the flag card and gave her the name of the country and the capitol so she could get familiar with them. Next I showed her the flag and if she needed a hint I told her what letter the country (or capitol) started with. She is doing well learning the flags and capitols, and she loves to play the game.

Adding Flags to the Geography Game - these are the flag cards I bought -
http://pinayhomeschooler.blogspot.com/2013/04/continent-study-flags-by-continent.html

Continent Box

I found a nice box on clearance at Michael's and decided to use it for a continent box. I added some animal and plant flashcards I found plus a few other things we had for South America. I plan to change the contents and use the same box for each continent.

South America Flash Cards for Animals & Plants -
http://pinayhomeschooler.blogspot.com/2013/03/free-printables.html

Art Projects

We continued using "Crafts for Kids Who Are Wild About Rainforests" by Kathy Ross for our art projects this week. We love this book! Lindsey chose to make the Macaw and the Anteater this week.

We made the Macaw first. I helped her trace her hands on different colors of construction paper for the Macaw's wings and tail. She traced her shoe for the body. Then she glued them together with a glue stick and added feet, a beak, and eyes. When it was finished I ran some fishing line through some of the feathers on the back and hung it in our window.

For the Anteater, we used a paper grocery bag for his body. Lindsey drew him, then cut through two layers so the front and back would line up. We stapled him together then added the tongue complete with a velcro sticky dot for picking up felt ants. She drew the face and claws. The straw allows you to control his tongue and pick up the ants - very cute!

Reading

As I've mentioned before I love Jan Brett, this week we read The Umbrella. The illustrations are wonderful. I also printed bookmarks from her website to use during our study, and one for Lindsey to give our librarian who has been so helpful. You can find them here: http://janbrett.com/bookmarks/bookmarks_umbrella.htm  There are several other nice printables on her site too.

Lindsey is also reading Bruchko. She reads two chapters a night then narrates them to me. It's not her favorite book, but she likes it okay. Parts of it are pretty gross, but she is learning what some missionaries go through and how different some other cultures are. After she reads her two required chapters she gets to read for fun, this week she is reading Hunger Games.

We are suppose to be reading Nate Saint as well, but I can't find where our book disappeared to... At least next week I can read her the story from the teacher's manual. That will have to be enough for now.

Math

We are using some worksheets on percents from Math Mammoth this week and Lindsey likes them a lot. She needed a break from Khan Academy. I'll see how she does with them, I may purchase more and add them to our curriculum for some more variety.


We have one more week studying South America... We'd love to hear from you, please leave a comment below and let us know about your homeschool adventures.