Jack and the beanstalk

Evan is reading a story about Jack and the beanstalk. We are doing a fun project about this story. I got this idea from a homeschool mom's website.
First, I lay down a piece of large white paper on the floor and draw a tree like plant. Evan is the one have to color it with green color to make it just like a giant bean stalk. He sure having fun doing that.



Then, he cut out the plant.


I taped it on the back of the door. We find several pictures of him and Ethan and then cut out the body outline.



This is the close up of the beanstalk which Ethan and Evan are "climbing" it.

Family lapbook

Evan is learning how to write Chinese words daily since last year. He is still in learning stage so I have to review the words he learned everyday. Chinese words need a lot of memorizing, the more they see the words, the familiar they are with those words. Making a lapbook is a fun way to encourage him to apply what he learned so far. Today we are making a family lapbook.

Chinese Poem with craft

I am amazed to see how quickly Evan learn to memorize and recite the Chinese poems. Besides reciting the poem, I let him do some craft associate with the poem. This week, we are learning a poem about bee.






【蜂】 作者：罗隐

　　不论平地与山尖，无限风光尽被占。采得百花成蜜后，为谁辛苦为谁甜？

　　提示：

　　不论在平地或是山顶，都有蜜蜂在辛勤劳动，美好的风光几乎都有它的踪迹。采得花粉酿成蜜却属于他人，为谁辛苦为谁甜啊？

It is a easy craft. First, I let him draw and color few flowers. Then, he cut and paste them on a black paper. This is a collage technique.


Then, I poured some tempera yellow paint and asked him to do finger painting for the bee body.. This is a fun way to let small kid to experience the finger painting. I used some small brush to make the line on the bee body.


He used the white crayon to draw the wings on the bees.

My little body

This is an easy project to do with small kids from preschool to Kinder. First, find a big piece of white paper and ask the kid lay down on top of it. The adult can trace his or her body with pencil. Then, they can trace around their own body layout with a marker pen. Then, they can draw their eyes, nose, mouth and teeth on the face.

I teach Evan Chinese and English at the same time. So, he got to learn to recognize both body's vocabulary. So far, he learns mostly about the body part on the face and hand and feet. I used two different color papers to write down the English and Chinese words. Then, he got to match the body part with those words.

Ear 耳
Eye 眼
Nose 鼻
Mouth 口
Head 头
Teeth 牙
Hand 手
Feet 脚

Mr.Seahorse (海马先生)

This is a very interesting book about seahorse daddy taking care of his babies. I found this book in Chinese version. After reading it, I let Evan do some painting and cutting to make a collage out of the pictures.






First, I drew a big seahorse and three little seahorse. Then, he just paint whatever color he likes on them.
He cut some green stripes to make the seaweed and pasted on the blue paper.
This is the final product.

Texas Wildlife

http://theteohs.blogspot.com/2010/05/texas-wildlife.html

It is coming to the end of May. Besides finishing up the worksheet, we attend classes in local science museum along with other homeschoolers.

Building helicopter

I like to buy constructive toys for my boys. Ethan is quick temper person and I would like to train him to be more patience. Building this helicopter of course took a lot of effort out of him. At first, he did not want to do it because it seemed hard to construct. I then encouraged him to do it together with me. Finally, a helicopter is built... .

Observing dirt

Earth Day is a good time to show the boys how to appreciate the earth. From one of the program in PBS channel, I got an idea for the science project. It is easy to do and we just do it from our backyard. That is digging out the dirt and observing it.

Field trip to Houston Natural Science Museum

The museums in Houston always offering good educational program. Thanks to one of the mom from a homeschool group who organizes different kinds of field trip to the museum. This time we joined the other families for this field trip learning about Paleontology. The boys got the chance to see all kinds of fossils and the dino's exhibition.

http://theteohs.blogspot.com/2010/05/houston-natural-science-museum.html

A visit to Houston Audobon

Exploring nature is one part of our homeschool curriculum. The Houston Audobon is a great place to explore during spring time.

http://theteohs.blogspot.com/2010/05/houston-audubon.html

Spring Break

This week is the school spring break. I let the boys have a short one week off. They still have some worksheet to do but not as much as regular week.

We went to the Houston Children Museum yesterday. That is a cool fun place for the children. They sure had fun there.

Basically, Ethan did all of his first grade worksheets for past few months. Now, I am giving him some test to see how far he learned so far.

Week 28

Learning about graph:
We record the type of weather for February. Now, is the time to do the graph about it. Ethan has to figure out what kinds of weather occurs last month and how many time per month. Then, he drew a graph out of it.

This is a good learning tool for little kids. Math is everywhere.






http://theteohs.blogspot.com/2010/03/nature-scavenger-hunt.html


Exploring nature is another way to educate the kids how to appreciate the things surrounding them.

This week, we have two field trip. One is the Houston Arboretum center and another is Sugarland Natural Science Museum. The first one is just by our own and the museum trip is with one of the Homeschool group that we joined recently.

We check out a book from the library --A very hungry caterpillar in Chinese version. After reading the book, the boys made a simple craft of caterpillar and butterfly. Ethan had to write the caterpillar in chinese and he drew quite a cute caterpillar too.

Week 27

Geography:
Ethan is learning all the America 50 states. We are doing the southeastern states this week. I drew a map as below while telling him the exact location of each states on the map. I used the Man In the Map book to introduce him all the states. I really like this book because it uses simple clues to let us to remember all the states in no time. I am learning as well.



I bought this wooden U.S map puzzle pieces at the garage sale for $1... cheap


Ethan finished all the basic first grade worksheets. I am now focusing on unit study with topics that interests him and Evan.

Simple machines:
They are designing his own machine.


Ethan first drawing of his imaginary machines.


Second drawing



Evan's drawing of his machine.


Using legos to build their machines.


Our homeschool schedule is all year round. We take a break when we need some time to relax. Since we are going to move to the new house, I think I will slow down a bit on the work for the boys.

Week 26

As usual, Ethan got a routine worksheet to finish which include spelling, math, science, social study and Language Art. He did the Beestar.org math practices twice a week. He had to write Chinese everyday too.

We put aside the Dinosaur unit study this week. Since it is still during Chinese New Year, we did a dragon art this week. It is an easy art project..

Material:
A disposable cup. Cut into slit as show in picture for the mouth of the dragon. Put two black dot on each side of the cup for the eyes.

Cut a long strip of paper and decorated it as the dragon body. Cut a semicircle on the first part of the paper and paste it on the back of the cup.

Cut a small hole on the cup and slit a straw into it so that the kid can hold it as they are holding the dragon body.

Tape a stick ( we use the chopstick) on the dragon body so that the kid can hold it with another hand.











Evan is learning to write number 8. To my surprise, he can write it well. I taught him to write it as he is driving along the racing car track.



Learning number with stickers.
I wrote certain numbers on the papers. Evan put the stickers on each line according to the numbers written on the left side.




Natural is the best place to educate the kids. We like to walk around the condo area and enjoy the natural scene. We found there was a pile of white pebbles near the dumpster and on the other side of the pool. We decided to pick them up and put inside our aquarium. Before we do that, I let the boys observed the pebbles and compared them to the other rocks. Those pebbles are so smooth and white in color.

Estimation game:
I like to ask the boys some math questions whenever I got a chance. I asked them to estimate how many white pebbles in total. They both gave me some answers and started to count them all.
Ethan suggested to count them by tens.