Babar To Duet or not To Duet
Last week we read the Babar Story by Jellybean Press, Babar: To Duet or not To Duet. As I mentioned in my last post, we enjoyed learning about music this week, and we always enjoy Babar. This story is about humility, knowing your limitations and learning from others mistakes.
Our vocabulary words this week were quite difficult: Illusion, Affectation, Limitations, and Regulations. We learned about etiquette and manners, as well as how to give a speech. Then we practiced.
For math we learned about fractions. We began with a whole pie (a paper plate colored to look like pie:) then cut it in half and again, and again. Then when we had our pie cut into eighths we each ate one slice. We said that even one eighth of our pie was a large piece and maybe some people would like half of that! One sixteenth!!! Then I introduced the music notes and how they are whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth. They all look different and hopefully the children will remember which is which.
For Social Studies, we decided that based on all that we know about Celesteville, it is an imaginary place. We placed our story disk off of the map of the world. We discussed humility, knowing one's limitations, and learning from other people.
Most of our art involved music, however we also talked about the simple shapes and basic colors used in the Babar illustrations. I had the children trace shapes found in the pictures while they listened to Franz Joseph Haydn's symphonies on the cd player. They enjoyed this activity so much, I was able to leave them to it for over half an hour and get some house work done in the meantime. In addition to listening to Haydn this week we learned about the orchestra, how it is composed and then about each instrument in the group. Thanks to Classical Conversations introducing us to the orchestra song, we have been singing that every day before learning about the different instruments.
We are reading a Babar story in French, Et Ce Coquin D'Arthur by Laurent de Brunhoff and learn new words each day as we work through the story. Roi-king, Reine-Queen, Veille Dame- Old Lady, Gare-Train Station, etc. We will continue reading this one into next week, in an attempt to learn as many new words as we can before we give it back to the Library.
We've had a blast doing science this week, as always. We learned about elephants. We learned about the human ear and its anatomy and I was thrilled to have the kids color a page from the Gray's Anatomy Coloring book (after blowing the dust off of it, He he). It was neat to learn that the eardrum is called the tympanic membrane and the big kettle drum in the orchestra is called the tympani. We learned about how we hear and then did a few experiments about sound. I got some ideas from this website http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chhearing.html. I love how this one gives ideas for all ages from k-12.
Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying the sound experiments.
Our vocabulary words this week were quite difficult: Illusion, Affectation, Limitations, and Regulations. We learned about etiquette and manners, as well as how to give a speech. Then we practiced.
For math we learned about fractions. We began with a whole pie (a paper plate colored to look like pie:) then cut it in half and again, and again. Then when we had our pie cut into eighths we each ate one slice. We said that even one eighth of our pie was a large piece and maybe some people would like half of that! One sixteenth!!! Then I introduced the music notes and how they are whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth. They all look different and hopefully the children will remember which is which.
For Social Studies, we decided that based on all that we know about Celesteville, it is an imaginary place. We placed our story disk off of the map of the world. We discussed humility, knowing one's limitations, and learning from other people.
Most of our art involved music, however we also talked about the simple shapes and basic colors used in the Babar illustrations. I had the children trace shapes found in the pictures while they listened to Franz Joseph Haydn's symphonies on the cd player. They enjoyed this activity so much, I was able to leave them to it for over half an hour and get some house work done in the meantime. In addition to listening to Haydn this week we learned about the orchestra, how it is composed and then about each instrument in the group. Thanks to Classical Conversations introducing us to the orchestra song, we have been singing that every day before learning about the different instruments.
We are reading a Babar story in French, Et Ce Coquin D'Arthur by Laurent de Brunhoff and learn new words each day as we work through the story. Roi-king, Reine-Queen, Veille Dame- Old Lady, Gare-Train Station, etc. We will continue reading this one into next week, in an attempt to learn as many new words as we can before we give it back to the Library.
We've had a blast doing science this week, as always. We learned about elephants. We learned about the human ear and its anatomy and I was thrilled to have the kids color a page from the Gray's Anatomy Coloring book (after blowing the dust off of it, He he). It was neat to learn that the eardrum is called the tympanic membrane and the big kettle drum in the orchestra is called the tympani. We learned about how we hear and then did a few experiments about sound. I got some ideas from this website http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chhearing.html. I love how this one gives ideas for all ages from k-12.
Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying the sound experiments.
Other books we enjoyed this week: Meet the Orchestra, by Ann Hayes
Maestro Mouse and the Missing Baton, by Peter Barnes
Manners, by Aliki
Elephant, by Joe Van Wormer
The Orchestra, by Michael Hurd (Beautiful, large photographs of each instrument as well as a brief history)
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