France ~ Jacques Cousteau

As part of our French unit we spent a brief amount of time looking more closely at the very famous French Scientist and Conservationist Jacques Cousteau.  What an interesting man!

We began simply by chatting about him as  I wanted to find out what knowledge the kids already had.  Which as it turned out was very little. I grew up watching Cousteau so for me that was a little sad to see.



I played this brief video clip to give everyone a broad over view of his life and a glimpse at some of his accomplishments and then it was time for the picture book component.

This part of our France unit was created for the primary aged children in the group so I hunted a picture book to use as our spine.

I chose this particular book because of the simple flow of text. I only had one hour and I knew I wanted to include some art work, I needed a book that would get across what I wanted but that didn't take an exorbitant amount of time to read.

My other reason for choosing this particular book, were the stunning illustrations. They are pieces of art themselves. In fact, in the end these are what I used as our inspiration for our art activity.

Whilst there were a few steps involved in creating these each step is a simple process. If you have the time I'd probably recommend you complete these over a couple of days though. It was quite a big job to tackle all of this in one block of time.

I made sure to purchase the heavier weighted water colour paper in A3. I knew we would be using plenty of very wet paint and given the general heavy handedness of most young children we needed a thicker paper to ensure it didn't tear during the process.

First up I had the kids draw wavy ocean like lines across their pages in white oil pastel. Yes you can't see them and that is on purpose. I simply told the kids they needed to wait for the surprise.

Next up was to paint the entire page to appear as though it is under the ocean, so we used a combination of blues and greens. All in water colour paints that were heavily watered down as we only needed a muted effect for this. Now their wavy ocean lines will start to show through.

As soon as the page was covered in paint and before it had a chance to dry we sprinkled salt across it. This is a trial and error thing to attempt. The idea is that when the salt combines with the paint and slowly dries it will cause little bursts of colour to appear on the page. This worked better on some pages than on others.

Once it is all completely dry you can simply brush off the excess salt.

Whilst our backgrounds were drying we set about organising our chosen Cousteau divers. To save time I had already traced some of these images from the picture book pages. The kids simply chose the design they preferred and cut out their own versions.

They then set about painting and colouring them as they wished.

Whilst our divers were drying we needed to get to work on some of the smaller finishing pieces. Things like seaweed, fish , shells and all manner of objects that one would find whilst diving.

This part was completely free form and the kids simply played around with their own ideas and drawings.

Once everything was dry and neatly trimmed we glued it all onto the background sheet.

Whilst this was a huge task to try and tackle in a single hour the kids did an awesome job and they turned out way better than I could've imagined.

Be sure to pin this so you can easily find it again later!

PIN THIS NOW!!!

More Cousteau Activities

Ticia over at Adventures in Mommydom used this exact same book but used it to encourage her kids to design an underwater home. Way cool, and it would make a great activity to include in a unit on this fabulous man! 

More France Themed Ideas

Our study of the Eiffel Tower
Our time with Madeline
The Glorious Flight 

Take a look at my France Pinterest Board for even more ideas for your France Unit Study

More Ocean Themed Ideas  

10 Easy Ocean Diorama Crafts

Oceans Of The World

Ocean Lapbook

Take a look at my Oceans Pinterest Board for even more ideas for your Ocean Unit Study

Have a blast learning more about Jacques Cousteau and our amazing oceans!

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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Captain Cook - A Brief History Of Australia

Did you see my introductory post on our Brief History Of Australia Unit? If not you might want to go visit that one first.

We've moved forward a considerable amount of time and are now looking at Captain Cook.

Please note, this is not an exhaustive covering of Australian History, there will be many things left out. This is deliberate for a few reasons.

Firstly I have prepared this to work with our micro school and needed to fit in with our term blocks. Secondly, I wanted to use picture books and therefore most of what I chose has been based on the books I was able to access. Finally, this is purely just an introduction into the history of our nation, these kids have plenty of years ahead of them where they will spend time delving deeper.

Of course you could use these ideas simply as a jumping off point, there is no need to have to finish each topic with a single one hour lesson block.

Captain Cook is such an easy topic when it comes to book choices, there really a good number of picture books out there, for varying age levels. The one I chose is a longer more in depth look at the man himself.

Whilst I read the kids water coloured their timeline page of Captain Cook. You can download this for free via the link at the bottom of this post.

After watching a brief you tube clip we headed off to complete the corresponding art activity I had planned - mapping Cook's expedition to Australia.

I had outlined a map each for them onto brown paper, simply because I knew our time was limited. We wanted the maps to have an aged feel and everyone certainly enjoyed scrunching the maps up to give them that.

They set about adding water colours to their maps. During the drying time we briefly looked at the Compass Rose, discussed compass points and made our own simple one to place onto our map.

Once they were dry we added, first in pencil, the route Captain Cook took on his voyage to Australia. These turned out fabulously well. The kids were all very proud of their maps.

Once again, after all of our discussions were complete each child coloured and added some notes inside their mini Captain Cook booklet, in preparation to add to their lapbook.

Would you like a copy of the A4 Timeline Colouring Page for Captain Cook? Please use this link to download one for your personal use.

Other posts in the Brief History Of Australia Series

• The First Australians

Happy Homeschooling
Kylie

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The First Australians - A Brief History Of Australia

If you've been a reader for a while now you already know that we participate in a small home based micro school or co-op with three other families.

I have been writing down some details to share with you all about how these days work and how simple it is for you to have a go at getting one off the ground. I hope to have that post to share with you soon.

One of the subjects we decided to focus on this year was that of Australian History. We have our kids break into two groups, a lower high school aged group and a primary aged group. I chose to work with the primary kids for this topic.

I really wanted this introduction to Australian History to be as fun and as interactive as possible, so rather than trudge through various texts or long narratives I chose to put together A Brief History Of Australia, using picture books, crafts, You Tube videos and lapbooking activities.

The first topic we covered was the always fun and interesting First Australians. I only have one hour to cover everything that I want to, so it is quite a fast paced block of time, but that generally keeps all interested as we are always changing gears.

I had booked earlier in the year a group visit to the always fabulous Ngutana Lui, preparing for the fact that we would be covering this topic. I had no idea that when I made the booking it would coincide with the exact same week we did this mini study. Don't you just love when things work out like that!

For each brief history lesson I wanted to try and follow a similar predictable pattern, each topic will be based around a picture book. Some of them were tricky to find and if there were any issues all of the topics are covered in The Australia Book, so really you could get by without any of the picture books at all.

There are so many children's books available about our First Australians that I thought it would be a really simple exercise to choose which book would be our focus.

It was not!

I really wanted the story to show the traditional way of life and not just focus on dreamtime stories or a particular topic. In the end I decided on You and Me, Murrawee. It is a lovely story and does cover some way of life elements.

Whilst I read the children water coloured an A4 timeline colouring page. They will continue to add to these with each lesson to create a quick glimpse full colour (brief) timeline of Australian History.

I'm sharing this download with you, via a link at the end of this post.

We spent time chatting about how early Australians lived in comparison to our current day way of life.

From there it was time to get our hands dirty with some dot painting. I encouraged everyone to first watch an artist at work to view their technique and the things they included in their pieces.

Whilst we painted we listened to and watched a few animated Dreamtime stories.

My kids are not first timers to the dot painting technique. Not only did they complete some lovely art during their visit to Ngutana Lui but they've also explored dot painting during art lessons, like this one here and this particular post, which is still one of my most visited blog posts.

During the last few minutes of our lesson we recapped all that we had learned by completing the first mini book in the series. I gave the kids total autonomy as to what they added in terms of written details inside their booklet. I wanted them to record things that were important to them.

We will continue adding to the mini books with each history lesson and will compile them into a lapbook at the end of our unit.

To download the First Australians Colouring Timeline Page please visit this link.

Be sure to keep an eye out for future posts in this Brief History Of Australia series.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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The Bilbies First Easter Activities

Their farm was baked dry by drought. But with hope, faith, and the help of the bilbies, William makes an Easter surprise more magical than any bunny could deliver. (fishpond)

We spent Good Friday with family, the kids enjoyed some fun activity time with Grandma, who brought along her 'The Bilbies' First Easter' story sack.

They began by reading the story of The Bilbies' First Easter, before moving into some fun hands on activities to help bring the book alive.

Everyone was keen to make their very own chocolate Easter Bilby.

Eating the chocolate, though was a whole lot more fun.

mmmmm Yum, these Easter Bilbies' are good.

In the story the Bilbies' paint rainbow coloured eggs to bring to William, for a simpler version the kids simply decorated their eggs with rainbow coloured felt pens.

The older members of the crew made themselves (with Grandma's help) a cute Bilby pencil topper.

Materials Required:

• Pencil
• Grey Pipe Cleaner
• Pink Pipe Cleaner
• Pink Pony Bead
• Goggle Eyes
• Pink Felt

Begin by wrapping the grey pipe cleaner around the top of the pencil. Use only about half of the pipe cleaner. Shape the end half into two long bilby ears and secure the end of the pipe cleaner with a twist.

Twist the pink pipe cleaner around the base of the grey pipe cleaner, just a couple of times (enough to hold it securely) place a pony bead on the end and twist up the pipe cleaner to ensure the bead doesn't fall off. This is the Bilby tail.

Now simply add his facial details, eyes, a small triangular nose and his little pink ears. And there you have your very own special Bilby.

A few simple hands on activities can really bring a book alive.

"Grandma" operates Butterfly Wings: Butterfly Wings Child Parent Programs (BWCPP) are Early Intervention and Early Literacy programs focusing on singing traditional and contemporary rhymes and songs and playing simple singing games which help children and adults to become familiar with each other and form secure attachments.

You can visit their website by clicking here and follow Butterfly Wings on facebook by clicking here.

Why not take a look at some of our other Aussie Book Adventures.

Don't forget to check out where I am linking this post.

What Aussie Book adventures have you gotten up to lately?

Sail Away, The Ballad of Skip & Nell - Activities, Printables, Crafts

We've been spending time with two delightful little dingoes of late. Sail Away, The Ballad of Skip & Nell is a story about a journey. A rather long journey, which takes these two adventurers around Australia, in search of a boat race.

This story is a great introduction to Australian Geography and Australian Animals.

Freezing objects in ice is nothing new to the blog world, but it was a new experience for us. I grabbed a couple of different packs of Australian Animal figurines and froze them into three separate containers of ice.

This was our introduction activity to the book. Initially, I left it up to them as to how they were going to excavate the animals from the ice.

Initially they all ran for the cutlery draw, grabbing knives and forks and began pounding away at their ice block. Little Surfer Dude thought his wooden hammer might do the trick.

The chipping away was working but they quickly realised that the ice would probably melt faster than they could work.

That's when I opened up the discussion about melting ice and ways in which that could be done.  We live in a warm climate and the children have had no experience with snow or ice as part of our local weather.

Fairy Princess asked me to heat her hot pack to give that a try and whilst initially it appeared to be working the water was quickly saturating the material of the pack.

We tried salt on the ice with minimal success.

We boiled the kettle and used small jugs to pour over the ice, now this was working, but it was still slow going.

The sure fire quickest way to remove those animals from the ice was under the running warm water tap. Everyone marveled at the holes in the ice that were formed from the water and how each piece disinegrated differently.

We spent some time simply playing with and talking about the animals. Then we ventured into the read aloud.

Lego Lover made lists of the destinations and the animals along the way.

Little Surfer Dude, matched up the animal replicas to the cards I made.

Fairy Princess extended the cards and used all 3 parts for some vocabulary work. Little Surfer Dude also enjoyed this activity and completed it successfully several times on his own.

I placed the 3 part cards and animals onto our "Australia" work area so the children could play with them at their leisure.

I had planned a couple of art and craft activities to go along with this story, but this particular one was completely instigated by Lego Lover. The double page spread illustration of the Frilled next Lizard caught his eye and even though he isn't actually a part of the storyline itself, Lego Lover was keen to replicate it.

Of course everyone had to try their hand at this.

Lego Lover's Frilled Neck Lizard.

Fairy Princess used a combination of pencil and oil pastel.

As did Little Surfer Dude.

It was the journey around our great land that inspired Lego Lover to create his map from Lego.

Now there is no mention of it in the story but it's pretty clear to me that this journey was to take the animals to a race, a very special boat race, during a very special year - the year Australia WON The America's Cup!!

This story build up and this illustration tells it all. I thought we could have some fun recreating it but in more of a 3D kind of way.

We began with a lesson on Horizon lines. We looked through the story and noticed several of the illustrations have very clear horizon lines.

We took a stroll outside and saw first hand, the real life horizon lines that surround our home.

I googled horizon line art lessons and showed the kids this one and this one which helped them to get more visuals.

I hand drew some sails and cut them out in varying sizes and the kids decorated them in anyway they pleased. They then set about placing them on their paintings where they felt looked best.

You'll notice all the streamers in the air in the illustration. We decided to use real streamers, twisted them a little and glued them to the page.

Fairy Princess simply attached hers so they could move about freely.

Lego Lover chose not to add any at all.

We've enjoyed delving more into this story and I have more activities to share with you, but this post is getting quite long so stay tuned for Part 2, which will include some printables to go along with the book, Sail Away The Ballad Of Skip & Nell.

Check out where I am linking this post.