Me, Jack, Jill, and Little Bill on a dino statue at the Audubon Zoo.
Adding the stomach to our body poster paves the way to discuss digestion, and the intestines go up as well. Find the stomach printable here, the small intestines here, and the large intestines here. Telling the kids about the incredible length of the intestines is one thing. But show them? Oh, fun! I found this idea in an old Mailbox magazine. You need four colors of yarn, and you cut them to the typical length of the digestive system parts. So cut one color to 25cm for the esophagus, one to 25cm for the stomach, one to 480cm for the small intestine, and one to 150cm for the large intestine. Knot each piece together in the order given, and label each part with a piece of masking tape folded over the yarn and stuck to itself to create a tab. Now the kids can see just how impressive their digestive systems are!
I also found an experiment that sort of makes the digestive process a more concrete concept to learn about. You need 1C vinegar (to be digestive juices), 2 ziplock bags (to be stomachs), a sugar cube (to be food not broken down), 1/2tsp sugar (to be food that has been chewed and broken down), and a timer. Can you figure out the experiment?
We recently went on a family trip to New Orleans. It is a 10-12 hour drive (depending on stops & traffic), so we needed lots of travel activities! Here's what I came up with:
---> I went to the dollar store (can you tell I love this place yet?) and bought a felt coloring poster of two tropical fish for Jill and Buzz Lightyear for Little Bill. They came with markers and cost a whopping $1! I also bought a travel size Connect Four game for the kids to play in the car together. The game was $5. Finally, I bought a pack of dry erase markers for the next idea . . .
---> I made homemade car activity books using folders, plastic page protectors, and dry erase markers. For each of the kids I printed: two travel scavenger hunt games, tic tac toe board, a few mazes, a find-it page, a paper Battleship game board, and a map of our route to follow along with. For Little Bill I also added a few dot-to-dots and simple mazes. I also pulled some I Spy and What's Wrong With This Picture pages from his magazines and loaded them into the page protectors. For Jill I also printed some word finds and more difficult mazes. By loading all of these into page protectors, they can be used again and again with the dry erase markers. You can find travel printables at Family Fun and Mom's Minivan.
---> I packed coloring books and crayons, and a magnet set for Little Bill.
---> Before moving to our current city, we were fortunate enough to have a very well-stocked children's library. At our current library, not so much. We used to check out stories on CD as well as children's music. So I did an online search and found some free children's story audios for download. I found lots of Robert Munsch, who is lots of fun. I burned stories onto CD to bring in the car with us. You can find Robert Munsch stories here. You can find more audio stories to download at StoryNory.
---> I gave Jack an iTunes card and together we picked and downloaded some songs for him to listen to on his MP3 player.
---> I packed everything up into car organizers that hang on the backs of the front seats. These you can buy in the baby section of Toys R Us for about $10 each. They have multiple compartments and are great even for everyday car usage.
---> As for snacks, I bought a pack of plastic storage cups and filled them with: trail mix, dried fruits, applesauce, dry cereal, and cheese crackers. I also packed water bottles.
---> On our way out of New Orleans we stopped at Borders and I found a great wooden travel memory game by Melissa & Doug.
What do you do to keep your kids learning & having fun in the car?
Quick Update:
1. Obviously I still stink at writing regularly! But I usually get up before the children, get dressed, and have coffee on my back deck - kind of starting my day in a slow, peaceful way before the munchkins join me. So I have decided to start each day by posting on my blogs instead! This should get me into the habit of writing daily. To my readers who have their own blogs - please share with us when you fit blogging activities into your days!
2. The human body unit dragged out way too long! Even if I were posting daily, I think it drags out too long. I think I will complete a unit with the kideos first, then post it all in one or two posts so that you have access to it all at once.
3. Summer is coming! There are three things I want to do with this blog over the summer: One is to provide lots of info on what you can do over the summer with the kids, as well as cool resources I find around the web. Two is to post what we are working on over the summer which is to teach the kids household skills, such as cooking and cleaning, and school skills such as outlining, taking notes, studying, memorization techniques, etc. Finally, number three is to fill the blog with several multi-age unit studies so they are up and ready to go for next year.
Meet you back here tomorrow! Woo-hoo! =)
Good Luck To Me,
Tanya
P.S. Please feel free to keep the e-mails or comments coming, telling me what you'd like to see on a multi-age blog! I <3 my readers!
