O is for Owl

We recently spent time learning and having loads of fun with Owls. The kids really got into this topic, considering that seeing an owl in the wild for us here is pretty rare, they were really very engaged.

We read the delightful story of Owl Moon on several occasions. Heading out into the moonlight on a snowy winters night is not something that my kids will get to experience any time soon, so this was quite a magical way for us to experience this through the story.

We completed some of the lapbooking activities found over at Homeschool Share. I hope to post on that one soon.

I found these super cute Paper Plate Owls online and knew we had to make some. They look great hanging from the ceiling and would have to be one of the simplest crafts we've done.

Owl Babies by Martin Wardell, this is a truly delightful story and whilst aimed at the younger crowd I'm fortunate enough to have an 11 year old that can still see the beauty in such a story.

This fabulous little guy is thanks to my delightful friend that played with us as we learned about owls. Once again a simple craft, found via google, but very effective. Although the help of a glue gun for this one is quite useful!

They each researched an owl of choice using the internet. Generally after a little looking around we tend to always come back to our favourite sites for animal research, Wikipedia and Animals A-Z.

I have been very pleasantly surprised as to the level of enthusiasm the kids have with these research documents. It's wonderful too watch.

We read Owls by Gail Gibbons. Yet another informative and interesting book by Gail. A couple of the pages focus mainly on American Owls, which is expected, but thought I should mention for any Australian readers. This book is full of facts and information presented with great illustrations.

Each of the kids water coloured an owl page and gave a brief narration on some of what they learned about owls. We still have some work to do on narrations, but they are improving and making progress in this area.

I purchased an Owl Puke kit for each of them to dissect. This was a little bit gross, but a whole lot of fun too! I would have to put it up there as something every child should do. The oohs and ahhs were running hot during the dissecting.

Whilst we have completed the dissection and found what creatures were devoured by our owls, I would love to reconstruct the skeletons. It's a big job as the pieces are so tiny and fine. Will see how we go.

Finally we rounded it all out with some art, as we always try to do with our units.

Fairy Princess 8 was very proud of this piece and so am I. Not necessarily for the finished product, but for her stamina and perseverance. She spent a great deal of time working on this, made a huge effort when it came to filling the entire page and finished with a smile. Often her art attempts end up in tears as what she has in her head isn't replicated on her paper. We've been spending a great deal of time talking about this and I think those discussions are starting to pay off.

Owls are such interesting creatures, we all learned so much from our time spent exploring them.

>>> Check out my Owl Themed Pinterest board for lots of ideas and links.

>>> Download the Animal Notebooking pages by clicking here.


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Book Adventures: The Glorious Flight

We recently spent some time learning about the History of Flight.

In particular the first man to fly across the English Channel, Louis Bleriot.

This is an interesting story, although it didn't have the kids on the edge of their seats. It's slow and methodical but we all learned a great deal about flight, perseverance and Louis Bleriot.

We completed several of the lapbook components found over at Homeschool Share. A huge thank you to all that contribute over there. It is a fabulous resource.

When Lego Lover saw what the younger crew were up to he was fast to jump in and ask for his own copy of the lapbooking materials. He has always had a keen interest in flight so I wasn't surprised when he asked to do this one.

Here's a closer look at some of the mini books.

We found and labeled all of the parts on an airplane.

We had some fabulous discussions about trying your hardest, 'getting back up on that horse' so to speak and perseverance with the pack of quotes that are included. We found many ways to relate these quotes back to ourselves so now when someone looks like giving up we jump in with a reminder about Louis Bleriot and his perseverance.

We found France and England on the globe, looking at the English Channel and coloured a small map to go along with that. It took Bleriot thirty six minutes to cross the channel back in the early 1900's.

The kids used google image search to find various images of "ways to travel'.

You simply cannot read this story without looking more closely at the History of Flight itself, this timeline is included in the lapbook materials.

I found this short clip on You Tube - The Animated History of Aviation. It is very well done. Albeit very short and you need to be watching very carefully to see all of the details.

This You Tube Clip is done by a boy for a school project, it's not too bad for covering this in just a few short minutes.

Our cute little popstick plane magnets were a hit and oh so simple!

One of the books we used along with The Glorious Flight was How People Learned To Fly put out by Lets Read & Find Out Science. This covers the history of flight from a scientific viewpoint but is aimed at and written for children. As always with this series it was a great addition to the theme.

Once again I displayed whatever items we have on hand to go along with the current topic/theme. The kids did a quick run around and found any planes we had, which wasn't many so they decided to put one together with bristle blocks.

Whilst not one of our most exciting Book Adventures we sure did learn a great deal.

Please visit my Pinterest Board for all of the links to the printable materials, crafts and other Glorious Flight activities.

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Teaching With Books - Share yours

It wasn't long ago that I posted a handful of links on Teaching History with Picture Books. I've been searching and gathering all sorts of lists of great books, not only with a focus on History.

There are some fabulous ideas out there if you have the time to spend hunting them down.

I've included those few links that I found here again here in this post:


Teaching US History Through Terrific Picture Books
World History Reading List
Children's Picture Books from Australia
Australian Living Books
Australian History Books
Children's Book List from Are So Happy
Picture This - Using Books To Introduce Or Teach Skills

However I'd dearly love more and I know that there has got to be so many more ideas and lists out there. So I thought there's no better way to share with everyone than using a Linky Tools List.

If you teach with Books, Picture Books, Living Books and/or have gathered lists of great books please share them with us here.

A couple of points on adding your link:

• Please be sure to link back to this post on your blog so others can benefit from all of the sharing.

• In your Linky Title please include the theme or the subject that you are linking to so it is easy for others to find what they are looking for.

• The post you link up here must either be a list of book titles relating to a theme or subject or details of your actual work done teaching with a book or books. Or in the event that your entire blog or website is all about teaching with books then of course the home page is fine.
  

Thanks for linking up and for sharing.