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Here is a challenging dot-to-dot that involves skip-counting by six! This will help your child build multiplication skills.

Today the girls had a great little activity to show the formation of a protostar and it's development into a star. I started the presentation with a discussion about how everything in the world (and space!) is made from atoms, then I showed 4 small balls of play doh and said they represented some atoms of hydrogen floating in space, gravity pulls these atoms together the girls then made loads more 'hydrogen atoms' and I used gravity to again pull these atoms into my original creating a protostar. We discussed how a protostar is not a star as it produces no heat or light (great little language exercise - guess what the word protostar means - proto meaning first, earliest form of) Next I talked about when it gets big enough the gravity and pressure causes some of the original hydrogen atoms to change into something else. I ripped the ball in half (much to their dismay) and pulled out my original 4 balls of playdoh and swapped them for a larger ball in a different colour and explained that this was now helium, when the helium atoms form a small bit of hydrogen gets left over and this left over bit is the fuel that the protostart burns to create light and heat thus turning it into a star. (we did go abit more in depth with terms like stellar nucleosynthesis and nebula but only the older ones picked up on it) we looked at the life cycle of a star chart from Counting Coconuts and added our protostar step in. The girls then took it in turns to narrate and act out the presentation. They finished by the younger girls playing star play doh, star pegging basket and star imprinting (again using the play doh) while the older girls did their write up and then used some great 3 part cards from Montessori Print Shop.

Explore this photo album by Chris "wunztwice" on Flickr!

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Create your very own constellation chart with this cut-out template, perfect for stargazing on a clear night!

So a couple weeks ago I told ya'll (I lived in Virginia for 5 yrs, picked up a bit of southern :) that I had a Chicken Dance Pronoun Song. The first time I found the song was at Practicum this summer, in the hotel with two of my girls sleeping in the bed next to me. I was planning our sample week to share with the other Foundations Tutors. I found the great song somewhere online. WHERE? I can't find it. Someone commented on the post a couple weeks ago that they had looked and couldn't find it. Could I find the link? Nope. I searched for an hour and a half. I know I didn't look that long the first time. So, I'm wondering if it got taken down. Could just be lost in cyber space. Or hiding from me. So, I told this reader I'd do the song in a video and post it. Why did I say that? A moment of crazy weakness? Yes. No. I can do the song. I had to get my mom back on her way to Wyoming and get our school year started. I am ready now, well, as ready as I'll be. My kids think it's great to post videos on youtube or facebook. They say "we're famous". Well, I'm not looking to be famous, and it's a good thing... any fame I was on the way to, I'm taking a couple steps back here. If it can help my fellow tutors and CC moms, I'll do what is needed. So weeks 4-9 in chicken dance style... Well, my first video. Maybe shouldn't have done it right after I woke from a much needed nap. I hope you can use this in your class. You could add actions more than just the clapping, but this was enough of a stretch for me just doing the video. :) For some reason I couldn't pin the picture of the video, so I had to take a screen shot, add it to the post, then pin the pic of the video. So, below is not the video, but the pic. confusing, but wanted to get it on pinterest for those of you who follow me that way :)

These are the props I used this summer, when doing constellation programs at some local libraries. We did a quick review of what a constellation is and then I started to "quiz" them. First, I showed them a picture of some stars and they had to decide what picture they might see in those stars. Then I showed them those same stars with the "dots connected," and asked them again what picture they might imagine from that shape. And finally, I showed them a picture that had the stars and lines drawn in. At that point I shared some of the stories associated with each of the constellations. We incorporated as many different culture's variations on the myths and legends as I could find, which helped the children understand that the people making up the stories were using images and themes that were part of their everyday life. We also discussed the great use of imagination in some of the constellations. It was a good reminder that we were talking about groups of people for whom this was a form of evening entertainment - there weren't televisions or computers or iPods available. There weren't even books readily available to some of these groups of people. Here's another set:

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Last year, Crecia at Taking It One Day at a Time made awesome geography cards that we used for review. Since God is leading Crecia dow...

Timeline: Today after the song and hand motions I'll try to allow for kids to lead the song while pointing to the cards. Science: Yipee!!! Space! I've been anxiously waiting for the weeks about space. I thought we could do an acrostic. Good Daughters Visit New Nanas You can also draw a star and write each type in an arm. Mine is too little. Make yours bigger:) History: We'll do the good ol' song. Then on the dry erase board we'll erase a word or two each time we go through the song. Geography: We are really just going to repeat, repeat, repeat the peninsulas and trace them on our Geography folders Math: We did this for the 7's, but it's worth doing again. We just have thirteens this week. We'll do the cakewalk approach. Our class has eight kids so I'll lay out 7 foam sheets. One student will start in the middle, the others around on the foam sheets in a circle. We'll sing the 13's song and I'll randomly stop them and whoever is on the foam sheet marked with a star (appropriate for today) will move to the spot in the middle. English: stickin' with the Chicken (song)! Latin: Introduce the endings and how the pictures tie in. Sing the CC song. Review Game: This will be our first time playing our Simple Sponge Stack game.