Temperature: Fahrenheit and Celsius and math

 Fahrenheit and how it came to be:

The math we practiced to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius:

The Celsius scale:

We followed up with a review about how to convert fractions to decimals to get our answer:

History of Ice Skating + Art Study

Many of the resources we used for our study were from the WillowandOwl.com Ice Skating Unit 

We notebook our findings!

Our kids love ice skating outside and at our indoor rink.  M just finished taking a term of lessons and with it being winter, it was a fun time for us to do an ice skating study with a field trip to go skate!

Dutch Artist: Hendrick Avercamp "Winter Landscape with Skaters" and other paintings. We learned that Avercamp was deaf and mute.  He used his powerful observation skills to paint amazing winter scenes! It is fun to watch the video about the history of skating and then look at fine art and notice the different skates and how they evolve over time!

History of Ice Skating:

an older design in action-history of ice skating

Another Ice Skating History video (animated)

How to draw an ice skater

Henry Takes the Ice Read aloud

We also enjoyed the art of Jean-Georges Beraud "Women Skating" and Gilbert Stuart's "The Skater" --portrait of Scotsman William Stuart (1782).

We enjoyed looking at these old magazines and patent pictures from the Spalding company in 1916 via the online library.

And just for fun, we watched ice sailing too! It's amazing to see how technology has changed the humble ice skate!

And Ice Yachting!

Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year)

Celebrating the Chinese New Year at the foot of the Great Wall 2024

 

Traditions:

Video of the legend about how New Year traditions started and how the Chinese New Year is celebrated.

Video about some of the traditions.

Legend of the animals associated with each Chinese New Year:

Winter Plant Study: Conifers and Lichens and TAIGA Biome

 For our winter plant study we are looking at conifers.

We wanted to know how to tell the difference when we see different kinds of pine trees.  This video gave us some tools which were perfect to watch before our winter walk!

If you are new to nature study, I highly recommend the Handbook of Nature Study.  It is rich with information!

What is Taiga?  We wanted to know.  We learned where the Boreal Forest is and why!

We learned about how reindeer eat lichen in Sweden during our Christmas around the world study.  We were surprised to find out about the symbiotic relationship that make lichen possible!

Light---Science, Christmas, Solstice, Scripture

 What is Light?

Our world is ordered by light.  Think about that for a minute.  Everything we do is ordered by the sun and light.  What foods we eat, what we wear, how we travel, the activities we choose, the seasons of the year, etc. It all is because of light. Light organizes and brings harmony to our world.

It makes sense then that our The Light of the world, Jesus Christ would do the same for us.

Christmas Around the World 2022--South Africa

 We are beginning our Christmas trip around the world with countries in Africa and South America and then moving to countries in Europe because that is where our studies have been this semester. 

We are also focusing on Light in our science studies as we observe the change in light as we move to the Solstice and anticipate Christmas and celebrating The Light the World, Jesus Christ, As we travel around the world we will be looking for light and participating in the Light the World challenge.

First Stop on our trip around the world: Christmas in South Africa!

We listened to some beautiful African Christmas music first:

 African Carol: Sing Noel

Drummer Boy, Mzansi Youth Choir

Drummer Boy: Alex Boye and Genesis Choir

We have been learning about some African Instruments.  The Kalimba is a neat "thumb piano" and we enjoyed watching this performance.

We learned some things about what South Africans eat and do to celebrate Christmas here. There are many countries listed and we are looking forward to learning a lot of new things! This is a great resource!

Christmas from Both Worlds is a picture book about Armani who goes to visit South Africa for Christmas.

If you have older children:

A video of someone talking about what it is like to celebrate Christmas in South Africa,

A video of photos and how to say Merry Christmas in different languages spoken in Africa

Pumpkins

We watched a few time lapses of pumpkins growing including this giant one and this one decomposing.

We enjoyed the book, Pumpkin Jack that showed the whole process.

non-fiction Pumpkins book that we listened to while we sketched pumpkins, leaves, flowers, and seeds.