Exploring Saint Patrick's Day Through Our Senses

We started off our lesson by reading Usborne's How Your Senses Work and then from our reading list read  Saint Patrick's Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting, pieces of Shamrocks, harps, and shillelaghs  by Edna Barth, and Harp o'gold by  Teresa Bateman. We learned out messages are sent from your eyes to your brain, or from your hands to your brain. As we read the stories the girls pointed out when different senses were used.

I made a Saint Patrick's Day Senses chart inspired by one I saw on Enchanted Learning.  The girls marked off the appropriate box for each item with star stickers.

                       


We watched some Riverdance videos on youtube and then they spent the afternoon making up their own dances while listening to Celtic music on Pandora. For dinner we had traditional Irish Soda Bread made with this recipe. It was really good!

It kind of looks like a brain, or cauliflower but it was yummy!

We also had baked potatoes and bbq chicken.

The girls had a blast using all five senses to explore Saint Patrick's Day!



How to Make a *raglan* Shirt

Once I get an idea in my head it is awfully hard for me to get it out. I had just such an idea about what I wanted Haden's birthday shirt to look like. It was a raglan shirt and I could not find one! Sure, they have them at Academy but they are too big, they have them at various wholesale shirt sites online but not in his size, and they have one on Old Navy's website in his size but I'm not paying $7.50 for shipping and when one's husband is still without a job one does not have the pleasure of ordering $50 worth of clothing to score free shipping.

So, I was going to settle. Settle for a plain white long sleeved tee from Target that was $6. Overpriced in my opinion. I decided to try Old Navy in person. Maybe someone had returned the raglan that I wanted. That didn't happen but I did find an orange Halloween shirt marked down to 47 cents and a white short sleeved pocket tee for $4. It had pink spots on the inside of the collar so they marked it damaged and gave it to me for $2. The wheels started turning.

Here is how I made the "raglan" shirt.

First I ripped the pocket off the white tee.





with pocket



no pocket

Then I ripped out the sleeves from both shirts. All of this was done with a seam ripper. My hands hurt for a long time =)

Then I laid the sleeves out and thought for a minute about what to do next.

Now you want to turn the shirt inside out, but not the sleeves. You are going to put the sleeve inside the arm hole with the right sides together. So the arm of the sleeve will be inside the shirt. Pin the edges together. I lined up the seams on the bottom of the arm hole and sleeve and pinned from there.



Notice that it looks like mine isn't lined up all that well. The sleeves were from a 2T shirt and the shirt is 12-18 months. I just made sure the top and the bottom were lined up and then made it even around with a bit of hangover. I followed the line of holes left from ripping out the previous sleeves. Do this very carefully and make sure you don't accidentally sew the arm hole shut or catch anything that doesn't need to be sewn.

voila! I went back and trimmed off the extra orange material from the sleeves on the inside and zigzagged the raw edges. Then I decided the collar needed to be orange too so I ripped the collar out of the Halloween shirt. And then I cheated.

Instead of ripping out the collar from the white shirt I just put the orange collar over it. Since it is folded in half I lined up one side on the outside of the shirt and then brought the other half over and lined it up on the inside of the shirt. I did 2 lines of straight stitching to secure it and then to help the raw edges from fraying too bad I zigzagged around the bottom.

Stay tuned to how this shirt will transform even more into a cute birthday shirt for a cute little boy.

**DO NOT USE PICTURES OF MY KIDS**

Thanks





Science Sunday {Rainbow Plants} & Catching Up

We have had so much fun with our Saint Patrick's Day studies! We are continuing to learn about the beautiful colors of the rainbow. Towards the end of the month we will read (and watch) Planting a Rainbow. We jumped a bit ahead and planted a rainbow today so that we will hopefully see some rainbow sprouts by the end of the month.

I picked up this Rainbow Plant kit at Hobby Lobby yesterday. It is made by Dune Craft.

First we dropped the soil pellet into the little pot. The pot stays inside the plastic wrapper which doubles as a terarium.

 The directions say that the pellet will rapidly expand after water is added but it wasn't very rapid. There was some sort of wrapping around the pellet that I ended up pulling off to help in the expansion process. Maybe we were supposed to do that before pouring the water on but the directions did not indicate so.

Next we poured the teeny tiny seeds onto the soil trying to spread them out some and then gently pressed them into the soil.

The terarium has found a home in our kitchen window. We'll check for progress everday and should see rainbow sprouts in 10 days.



We The girls have had a great time playing with the hide-n-seek jar we made last week.

Their favorite treasure is the fool's gold and the gold coin.

Can you spot the fool's gold above and gold coin below?

They also finished coloring their maps of Ireland.

I just noticed that E & W are backwards. What kind of teacher am I? =)

I found this map on http://www.enchantedlearning.com/ . There are some things there that require a membership to access but plenty that is free, including the map.

For more Science Sunday adventures visit:

Roy G Biv

Today was the usual busy Wednesday. We had Bible study this morning. Today we studied about the name Jehovah Raah - The Lord My Shepherd. How awesome is it to know that the Lord goes BEFORE us and doesn't follow behind us?? The Shepherd also knows each sheep in his flock's name. Someone mentioned that reminded them of the song "He Knows My Name." I, however, had the Veggie Tales song "Good Shepherd"  stuck in my head. All I could think of was 'baa, baa, baa - I'm a little sheep. baa, baa, baa - I'm a little sheep. Good Shepherd, Good Shepherd I'll follow you." And now it's stuck in yours!!

Because of our busy day (did I mention we hung out with friends at Chuck E Cheese for a while?) we had a short lesson on rainbows today. Well, technically yesterday since it's already after midnight? How does that happen??

We read The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow by Sean Callahan. The leprechaun's name is Roy G Biv. The girls are very familiar with the colors of the rainbow but it was a fun review and a nice introduction to the acronym.

After our lesson we started on this project. I LOVE it!

We used a spaghetti sauce jar for our Hide-n-Seek jar. When coloring your popcorn make sure you use a liquid food coloring. I'm sure that is common knowledge but my blue/red mixture was not making a pretty purple so I used my purple gel coloring. It was choosing not to dry and was all clumpy. I threw away that batch (plus the previous!) and used candy coloring. It worked much better!

I printed out a label for the top with what little treasures were hiding inside. I cut the lab to fit the lid and mod podged it on. I like labeling to complicate things.

 The girls picked out an assortment of small toys. I have a feeling they'll like playing with this well past Saint Patrick's Day so their toys weren't just one color.

After the kernels were dry I layered them in the jar according to the spectrum. I stuck the toys in a couple at a time after each layer. The girls were in bed before the project was finished so I'm leaving it in all of its layered beauty until they can get their hands on it.

The Irish Flag

We started studying about Ireland today. We looked up Ireland on the world map. We traced a path from our home, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Ireland. The girls decided it is probably further away than Texas. I read to them from Ireland, by Jean F Blashfield, and from Shamrocks, Harps, and Shillelaghs : The Story of the St. Patrick's Day Symbols, by  Edna Barth.

We turned our focus to the flag of Ireland. The flag is tri-colored - green, white & orange. Green represents the Catholics, Orange represents the Protestants and White represents unity between the two -- or separation between the two when they aren't getting along.

After our lessons the girls painted their own Irish flags.

I've always wanted to go to Ireland. This study is increasing that desire. Maybe Adam should turn his job hunt international!

Kool Dough

We spent the evening getting ready for our March lessons; printing out maps of Ireland, coloring pictures for a "flannelgraph" story, and making green play dough.

This is the first I've tried making play dough with Kool-Aid and I really, really liked it. Very simple. And I loved not having to cook the dough.

You'll need

2 1/2 cups flour
2 packets kool-aid
1/2 cup salt
2 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons cooking oil

Mix the dry ingredients

Boil 2 cups of water

Add oil and boiling water to dry ingredients. Mix quickly.

Once the dough has cooled knead it a bit. Store in air tight container.

Very simple and it smells yummy! 







March Reading List

Saint Patrick's Day

Lucky O'Leprechaun
by Dillon, Jana.
 
The leprechaun who lost his rainbow
by Callahan, Sean,
 
Patrick : patron saint of Ireland
by DePaola, Tomie
 
St. Patrick's Day
by Rockwell, Anne F.
 
O'Sullivan stew : a tale cooked up in Ireland
by Talbott, Hudson.
 
St. Patrick's Day
by Gibbons, Gail.
 
Shamrocks, harps, and shillelaghs : the story of the St. Patrick's Day symbols
by Barth, Edna
 
St. Patrick's Day
by Landau, Elaine
 
St. Patrick's Day in the morning
by Bunting, Eve


That's what leprechauns do
by Bunting, Eve

Ireland

Count your way through Ireland
by Haskins, James

Ireland 
by Blashfield, Jean F

This is Ireland.
by Sasek, M. (Miroslav)

Tim O'Toole and the wee folk : an Irish tale
by McDermott, Gerald

Harp o'gold
by Bateman, Teresa

Fin M'Coul : the giant of Knockmany Hill
by DePaola, Tomie

Fair, Brown & Trembling : an Irish Cinderella story
by Daly, Jude

DVD

World geography. Disc 2, Europe


Rainbows

Planting a rainbow
by Ehlert, Lois
 
Experiments with weather and climate
by Bassett, John
 
Experiments with light and color
by Jackson, Tom
 
Duckie's rainbow
by Barry, Frances

DVDs


Bill Nye the Science Guy - Light & Color

Scholastic's Planting a Rainbow