We had such a great time kicking off our unit about bodies and blood today! Before I get to the ooey gooey details I'll share that we're doing fantastic with our reading lessons. We learned about the sight word "the" by practicing touching our top teeth and sticking out our tongues to say the /th/ sound and then opening up the sound in our mouth to say "the". We're using the Amazing Action Alphabet mini reader books to practice blending letter sounds to read words. We're also learning about vowels and consonants. Being able to sort vowels and consonants helps us to identify them as we learn advanced phonics such as vowel teams to make the long vowel sound. (Note: each child only participated in one lesson, the letters and sight word lesson or the vowels and consonants lesson, whichever was appropriate for them.)
Now for the ooey gooey stuff! We had so much fun learning about blood and bodies today. We started off listing questions and curiosities about blood on our wall chart. Then we watched the video called "The Bloodmobile" by They Might Be Giants. By dissecting the song we learned about the parts of blood (red blood cells and white blood cells is all this week). As each item came up I dumped our pretend version of the "blood" into our "vein" containers. We also explored the different jobs that the blood does through the song and added the foam representations to our "vein" as we learned about them. Following the introduction we got to dive in and explore the "blood"! We talked about being brave enough to touch it because it was a little ooey gooey for some of the kids. It was fascinating watching the kids play with the pieces and act out delivering the "messages" and "taking out the trash". They even had the white blood cells fighting off the germs.
We were then able to take the opportunity to write about what we were exploring in our journals. We added pictures (and learned how to draw people) and words to match our experiences. Each child got to sit in the teacher's chair and share their learning with the whole group. They are getting so good at sharing their thoughts loud and clear for everyone to hear. The next step in exploring the human body was to color and cut out life size organs and add them to our body maps that we've been working on. Today we added a brain, face, lungs and the heart to our bodies. We'll continue adding the other basic elements (muscles, bones and digestive system) next week. By the time we're done adding to our body maps they'll be quite elaborate and display both things that physically exist and images that demonstrate the passions in our hearts and brains.
Every Kindergarten day strives to have enough time to throw in some painting :). During our math time we learned about dominoes and dice and got to play and explore with them.
Here is my own little buddy enjoying his day at Options today.
A week ago our homeschool group, LEARN, had a fun activity based on They Might Be Giants Here Comes Science The Bloodmobile. My boys have loved that album forever and we decided to explore some of the songs for deeper understanding. My hope is that when they listen to the songs in the future they'll remember the hands on activities that made the lyrics make sense. I've written a little bit about the development of this lesson idea already the origin of the idea in Finally Looking Forward and a midweek blog Schoology, Minecraft and Fitbits make Science. I decided to put together a quick video of how the project turned out, I hope you enjoy it!
My ultimate favorite quote from the interviews of the kids, "I killed germ-bies." (pronounced like zombies, just "germ" instead of "zom")
And because I'm growing tired of listening to myself explain how cool this project was and how it became an inspiring and energizing activity that will lead our future activities, I asked another mom what she thought:
From the perspective of a homeschool mom:
"The bloodmobile was a wonderful educational experience that used multiple platforms of hands-on experiential learning and the utilization of technology. Schoology listed the assignments and provided instructions including an amusing video and book. My children are in the beginning states of using an iPad and enjoyed exploring Schoology. I was impressed at how simple the process was to use and was grateful for the step by step instructions. One aspect of the blood mobile learning experience was a virtual Minecraft Realm where the kids got the opportunity to explore the human body. My children have had little to no computer experience and have never used a mouse. It was awesome to watch my oldest learn to navigate through the human body and recognize the brain, heart, lungs, intestines, stomach, etc. The last component that brought the entire experience to life was the Bloodmobile homeschooling group session where the video was watched again followed by a red water bead sensory activity that ended with all the students exploring the Minecraft human body simultaneously. The song from the video is constantly being sung throughout my home as the girls discuss blood cells, plasma, antibodies, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nutrients. At dinner, my girls explained to my husband how broccoli turns into nurients that feeds the cells. They were so excited about what they had learned that they wanted to share the video, book, Minecraft body and sensory learning experience with him. I was very pleased with the entire experience."
I have had a great time learning about schoology and making a mock up first lesson on the platform. I've even dragged my friends into the process to help me learn to better use it and get unique feedback from parents. It's been nice to have CJ and EMan also "taking" the class along with us.
In case you're new here, we're learning about blood this week. We're learning the parts of blood and what blood does for our bodies.
An added bonus: Typing, spelling and critical thinking in an engaging environment
I decided to make a body in a Minecraft world. It's coming along nicely and I LOVE having help from my super brilliant husband who has explored the game more in depth than I have. We're on day 3 of our Schoology/Minecraft Blood lesson today. As a trial run, I think it's working out quite well. We're certainly fixing things along the way.
A good friend even stayed after our preschool lesson today to walk through the Minecraft world and make sure she had an understanding of what she'd be doing with her daughter.
Oh, how do Fitbits make Science? Well, we had a bit of Minecraft OVERLOAD since January 2nd (CJ's 6th birthday: when he received the game). Steve and I decided that the amount of time they were allowed to play Minecraft would be related to the number of steps they take in a day. Once they hit 2,000 steps on their Fitbit they are allowed to play Minecraft for 1 hour. Today they didn't get to play all day long with regular schooling and such taking up most of the day. So now, at 5pm, they each have 4,000+ steps and are allowed to play for up to 2 hours. Though I have no solid opinion on regulating time spent on digital devices, I do enjoy the requirement of "breaks" to get some movement in.
I've not done any direct instruction with our science lesson so far. They've watched the music video. Read a book and explored the Minecraft world. This is EMan (4.5 years old) explaining what he is working on today.
Seriously. Have you checked out They Might Be Giants, Here Comes Science? Music I'm happy listening too and the kids love. Plus, they're learning from it. This morning CJ told me that he had the "Elements" song stuck in his head and asked if I could play the music video during breakfast. I remembered that I love the album and that I'd really like to get our homeschool group together and discuss the information in each of the songs. A little co-op/play-date learning. Maybe I still will someday...
