Spring Surprises (sorta late, huh?)

I know, I know, I know, I promised this back two months ago and where have I been? I have no idea. I was probably in the kitchen loading or unloading the dishwasher. Anyway, I am here now. As I start this I wonder when I will finish. Today is Thursday, July 14. What day will it be when I finish? I can't even finish this paragraph without having to turn the sink on for a peach covered girl. Oh well. I will make my best attempt. For those of you who read our adventures you don't seem to mind my scattered thoughts and ramblings or you at least skip over them.

Back to Spring Surprises. Zoey just took the book for Spring Surprises that I printed out to use for our studies. She loves to go back and review stuff. Some things she remembers some things she forgets.

So here is what it was all about...

Now that the weather's warming, are your kids out exploring?

How many ways can you combine your child's enthusiasm for learning and exciting activities with all the delights of springtime? Begin counting with this adventure!

Day 1: What Is Spring?
Day 2: Science Secrets of Spring
Day 3: People and Places of Spring
Day 4: Time for Tips and Treasures of Spring
Day 5: Goodies and Surprises of Spring

We started off with Day 1- imagine that - watching some online videos of spring and seasons. I liked the one that showed the four seasons of an oak tree in fifteen seconds. Zoey then drew a picture of what she thinks of when she thinks about spring. She drew people, leaves, flowers, the sun, rain, a castle (ok?), some seeds and the word change. She then wrote out Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Summer and Winter were written perfectly backwards. I love when kids do this. As adults most of us find this extremely difficult but children can do it with ease. So then we talked about why we have spring, and how the earth revolves around the sun and the angle of the earth axis. I still don't know if she really understands all of this. I write down her answers to questions like What outdoor activities take place in spring and what changes do you see happening. We attempt to write a spring acrostic. This does not go well. Last but not least we go on our spring nature walk and then write about it. Zoey prefers to draw pictures at this point rather than write. This is what I would expect from a five-year-old child though.

Taking pictures on our nature walk

Day 2 - Science Secrets of Spring. This day is all about seeds and plants growing. The time lapse videos of seeds sprouting and of plants growing are very amusing to us all. There are also instructions on how to force forsythia to bloom indoors but in Charlotte it is already blooming everywhere so there is no need to do that. More things discussed this day are clothes you wear in the spring and what time sunrise and sunset happen each day for our nature walk. Zoey rode her bike and then drew a picture of her riding her bike and me pushing Sierra in the jogging stroller. It is very cute.

Getting ready to plant some seeds

Day 3 - People and Places of Spring.  (Now I have to get Sierra up from her nap. I bet nothing will get done on this until tonight or tomorrow. Did I mention I love the draft mode on Blogger? I do.) Sierra is not ready to wake up so I will leave her alone for now. She wakes up like me. It can be scary. But she still takes naps and for that I am so ever thankful. Now back to day three. We learned about rainbows, Noah's ark, George Washington Carver and his inventions. He invented peanut butter. Did you know that? Zoey loved all of the Noah's ark and rainbow activities but not so much the George Washington Carver. I was not surprised. Since these unit studies are aimed at the K-4th grade range I know there is going to be stuff that goes over her head or that she is just not interested in. We talked about being an inventor. When asked what she would like to invent Zoey said, "Shoes that teach you how to dance." Then she drew a picture of a dancer. On today's nature walk we looked for and found bird nests in trees.

Noah sacrificing an animal to Jehovah after they came out of the ark.

Zoey's drawing of Noah's ark.

Day 4 - Time for Tips and Treasures of Spring. We start today with videos of birds feeding their babies and baby robins from eggs to first flight. Zoey and Sierra loved, loved, loved this. We watched them over and over and over. And once again when Daddy got home to show him. We decided that the baby birds were cute and ugly at the same time. We continue the day learning about birds and different types of nests. We have a robin nest in our tree at this point of our study so this was especially interesting. Next we learned about the life cycle of a frog. Zoey already knew all about this so it was a review to her but she still loved it. After that was parts of a tree and why a tree has roots. Our nature walk was last. Zoey's favorite part of the walk was, "going really fast on my bicycle." This makes me miss spring. I am looking forward to the cooler weather we are expecting this weekend.

Day 5 - Goodies and Gadgets of Spring. Videos of baby ducks start the day off followed by a discussion of fruits. We were supposed to make something from one of the strawberry recipes - oops! Next we learned about baseball and spring training. We found the states on the map where spring training happens. I shared with Zoey my experience with spring training and all of the traffic that it brought. We also learned about Claude Monet and looked at some of his artwork online. (Just went in and checked on Sierra again. She is sitting up. When she saw me she said, "GO!" I left. Now she just came around the corner and said, "The sun is up." At night I tell her to stay in bed quietly until I come and get her and that I will come and get her when the sun comes up. I started this in the winter when she was crying for me at 5:30 or 6:00 am. Now she just sleeps until 7:30 or later. I love her so much. Back to Monet. Zoey attempted to do her own copy of a Monet. She did quite well, my little artist. However she was not interested in doing the lapbooking activity, "Facts about Claude Monet." Today the nature walk either didn't happen or we didn't write anything about it.

Zoey pitching for Sierra. Can you see the ball in mid air?

Funny Stuff

Throughout the week there were various lapbook activities. Some we did, some we skipped. However, we never put the lapbook together. I guess we will work on that soon if Zoey is interested. She enjoyed making the pieces we just need to glue them in a file folder and it will be done.

The funniest thing happened on the last day. Mat had bought one of the cheap plastic baseball and bat sets from Wal-mart. Zoey had been asking for one for a long time and we thought with our studies this week and the nice weather it would be a great time to get it. Also, as mentioned earlier, we had been learning about birds, nests and eggs. We watched a robin make a birds nest in our back yard a few weeks before we started the unit study. I checked on it a few times and never saw anything. I figured they had given up on that nest. I guessed that the girls came outside one day and with all the noise they make the bird left and never came back. Back to the baseball set. I surprised Zoey with it at the end of the school day and we went right outside to try it out. Zoey missed the first few. Can't really blame her. I blame the pitcher, me. The first time she hit the ball it went between the trees. The second time she hit the ball it went straight to the top of the tree with the nest in it. For a second I thought it was going to be stuck at the top but it started falling down through the tree. It fell, bouncing all the way, through the tree and landed right on top of the bird's nest. At that same instant we heard a loud, SQUAWK, and see a robin fly frantically away from the nest. The ball fell to the ground. Zoey and I stood there shocked for a second and then we went to investigate. Sure enough there were four blue robin's eggs. They really are beautiful. The nest was low enough that I could easily lift Zoey up to see it. We moved our game to the front yard so hopefully the robin would come back to the nest.  Well they did. Both mom and dad robin tended to the eggs and eventually the babies. We were able to check on the nest every few days and see the progression of the babies. It was great! Except the part where the parents dive bombed us to keep us away from the nest. Actually even that was funny when it wasn't me.



The beutiful Robin's eggs.

Here you can see momma bird with one of the babies poking its head out.



The next Friday after the whole baseball and bird incident I was sharing the story with our friend Tristen who go to gymnastics with us. After this anytime Zoey got an adult who would listen to her she would tell them the whole story and if you think it is long when I tell it you should hear her. I just laugh every time I hear her tell it. She even uses the sound effects that I used.

Now, I don't know how you could plan a better unit study than to have a robin make a nest in your yard the same week you are learning about them but one thing I know for sure, we all learned so much and best of all - we had a fantastic time. In the weeks following this we also discovered a wren's nest in a planter near our back sliding glass door. We were able to watch the wrens come and go as they brought food to their little ones. We even got to see three of them leave the nest. There also was another robin that made a nest in the tree in our front yard down low so we could watch it. Unfortunately is was also low enough for a cat or something to get to the nest when the babies were a few weeks old. We learned from this too. I think was more upset than the girls.

In the white bowl on its side in the planter is where Wrens made their nest.

Next week we will be doing the Summer unit study and while I am sure it will be fun. I doubt it will come close to the discoveries we had while learning all about Spring.

We painted with some pretty spring colors.