Star Wars Unit Study ~ Day 1

We started our school day out with a lunch fit for any Star Wars fan!

Top row: moon of Endor pesto pizza, blue Bantha milk, "That's not a moon!" pizza

Bottom row: carrots (yeah. They're just carrots), white chocolate snowflake from the planet Hoth, "Banana The Hut"

Then we moved on to school work.  This is set up as a workbox system unit study.  6 to 10 boxes per day are dedicated to our Star Wars study.  The other boxes have their regular school stuff in them.  These are the Star Wars bits.  :)

Day 1 for Cyan (grades 2 – 5)

1. Star Wars easy wordsearch (Feel free to copy and print the picture for the wordsearch.  I still have not been able to figure out how to attach a PDF file.)

2. Story Starter *Moving to Hoth* – This was split between three boxes.

Your mom and you are moving to the planet of Hoth. You don’t want to go but are trying to make the best of it. Your mom says you can bring one pet. What would it be? What supplies would you need to move it to Hoth? What would happen if I changed Hoth to Endor? How would it be different?

• a. Hoth = Antarctica
• b. Endor = Northern CA Forest
• * I printed out three sheets of lined paper appropriate for her writing level from Donna Young and printed the ‘Moving to Hoth’ story starter and stapled them all together. 
• * Today we were focusing on Hoth.  (Endor will be tomorrow)  I had Cyan watch the Brain Pop on the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Tundra.  This is what the planet of Hoth was based off of.  The movie was shot in New Zealand and so I focused on the Antarctic animals with my examples but she could pick any cold weather critter she wanted. Then I had her pick an animal that was suitable for living in those conditions out of the Animal Encyclopedia.  She chose an Ermine. 
• * After she had picked her animal I had her write out the story.  She could illustrate if she wanted (she wanted).

3. We got the copy of the original Star Wars radio show for them to listen to while doing our craft for today.  Cyan’s craft was to cut out a Leia paper doll and her outfit from Hoth. 

 

Day 1 for Alex (grades 6 – 9)

1. I printed out a premade word search for this one.  It can be found here.

2. Story Starters *Robotic Hand* – This portion was two workboxes.

You wake up and you realize you have a robotic hand. How does it feel to have a robotic hand? As you lay in your hospital bed being looked over by your medical droids, things start to come back to you slowly. Who are you and how did you lose your human hand?

Of course, with Alex being so much older, I required much more of him for the writing assignment portion of the lesson.  I gave him the more abstract Story Starter and I also gave him quite a bit more leeway to put in what he wanted.  I made it due at the end of the week (Monday for us) and just required that he write it in cursive (something he has been working on).  I did have him watch the Brain Pop on robotics and robots to get his mind working in the right direction. 

3. Snap Circuits – I had him do the first project in a borrowed copy of the snap circuits game. 

4. I gave him instructions on how to fold an Origami X Wing fighter to do while we were listening to the Star Wars Radio Show.

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More fun tomorrow!!!

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away…. Star Wars Unit Study

Inspiration comes from the strangest places.  This week is the last week of the Pacific Science Center’s Star Wars exhibit.  We are HUGE Star Wars fans.  I should say Don is a huge Star Wars fan and my children have all followed suit.  I like it, but wouldn’t say I am as into it as they are.

So we go to the Science Center, and I am thrilled to watch the butterflies hatch and play with all of the other spaces… my kids and husband are dragging me to the Star Wars area.  But once I got in there I have to say I was completely inspired!  There were tables of robotics, presentations on costuming, videos on planetary conditions, and real life holographic and hovercraft.  It was quite inspiring!

We spent about an hour at the table with the robotics.  The goal was to build a robot that would go over various terrain and then turn, and finally go forward enough after turning to get into this box that says “finish!” 

 

 

I came home with so many ideas on how to do a unit study on Star Wars that I decided right then and there we were going to spend our whole school week (with Don’s schedule that is Fri – Mon) studying all things Star Wars!

The only thing I couldn’t figure out is how my kids were going to keep up on the things they were working on in for writing… then I had a brainstorm idea!  Story Starters!!!  I wrote some up and now my unit study is complete.  The story starters are as follows… stay tuned for more over the next four days.  It should be a BLAST!

 

Star Wars Story starters (language arts)

1. You wake up and you realize you have a robotic hand. How does it feel to have a robotic hand? As you lay in your hospital bed being looked over by your medical droids, things start to come back to you slowly. Who are you and how did you lose your human hand?

2. Your mom and you are moving to the planet of Hoth. You don’t want to go but are trying to make the best of it. Your mom says you can bring one pet. What would it be? What supplies would you need to move it to Hoth? What would happen if I changed Hoth to Endor? How would it be different? This one includes a bit of Science as well, feel free to study the different habitats that are similar on our planet to the conditions of these Star Wars places:

a. Hoth = Antarctica

b. Endor = Northern CA Forest

3. It is your first class at the Jedi League. Your professor is Master Yoda. You walk in and there are two questions floating on the holo-board… The first one is “Your deepest fear, your worst enemy, it will be. What be yours?” What is the second question? How do you answer them?

Look how much you’ve grown!

That last trip we had to the Seattle Science Center was almost 4 years ago. 

Logan at 4 months old:

Look how much he’s grown:

4 yrs and 3 months

Butterflies…

This year I decided not to hatch butterflies.  Instead we are going to study frogs and ladybugs.  But I was THRILLED with the little butterfly lesson reminder my kids got at the Seattle Center this last weekend with our trip to the butterfly house.

We got to watch a Blue Morpho Butterfly come out of it’s chrysalis!  It was incredible!  We watched it come out, and as it started to pump up it’s wings with fluid to make them bigger (from it’s distended abdomen) I got to give my kids a refresher course.  How amazing is this??:

What a beautiful little bug!

We also got a great refresher in how to tell an aging butterfly.

This is a young butterfly.  See the smooth edges on the wings?

And this is an older butterfly… can you see the torn and tattered wing edges?

It was a beautiful refresher and a really great day!

Lucas’ first 6 weeks

Logan Draws!

We have two magna doodles.  One in the car and one in the house.  Logan LOVES to draw on them.  He will draw for hours and tell me little stories about the pictures he draws.  I find it quite adorable as you can imagine.  Here are a few of my personal favorites:

“Dis an Easter egg.  The dots are de jelly beans in the middle”

“Dis a scared monster!”

“Slug Monster.  See dos big teeth?  Dey gonna bite you!”

“Dis a ‘Bri-Nation’.  It eats hot lava, humans, and hair!”

My new favorite book

This book is adorable!  I am tempted to tell you all about it but it is almost better if I tell you nothing and let you get it for yourself (I hope your library has it!).  Very simple and very subtle.  Pro homebirth.  Love it!

Back to the fun stuff…

Adding the fun back in a day at a time.  Today it was our bento lunches.  How the kids have missed them!  Cheese and crackers on the bottom, carrots, dip and a few graham cracker goldfish on top.  They so enjoyed going to the spring party today and bringing their little lunch boxes and water bottles.  Even Alex said he liked it, although I had to pack a fruit bar on top of a double portion of lunch for his ever growing appetite.  (He is now 5’10” and wears a 13 shoe!)

I lead a butterfly craft at the spring party today.  I got to learn a few things about being a mama of a newborn and a teacher.  The baby woke up just before I started and so I had him on my lap the entire time.  It made teaching really difficult and I was flustered and hard to follow most of the time.  When I got done and we were all sitting down to lunch I had the grand idea of putting Luke in the sling (which he prefers to being on my lap anyhow, the cuddler that he is) and then thought how helpful that would have been had I thought of that while I was trying to teach the craft!!!  I will know for next time. 

My babymoon being nearly over (7 weeks old today!), I am excited that I am starting to get my grove enough to want to do things like lead a craft table or pack a bento lunch. I have loved taking the time off to love on my sweet new babe, but I am guessing I will love living my life with him along with us even more.

Live Eagle Cam

For the last three days we have been keeping up on the live eagle cam that is showing the hatching eggs from a nest in Iowa. (Link) It has been SUCH a cool experience!  The last time we were watching a cam of baby birds none of the eggs hatched.  So I was thrilled to see that ALL THREE of these eggs are now hatched and healthy! 

We have captured these bald eagle parents feeding their new eaglets, bringing in fish and dead critters for the attending parent to eat, sleeping, flying off… we even have seen both mama and papa eagle there at the same time and were able (for a brief time) to figure out which was which.  It is so neat!

However, there have been many times we have checked and seen nothing but black feathers… so my 4 yr old has nicknamed the channel “Eagle Butt TV”.

All morning long all three kids  have been making ‘eagle nests’ and taking care of ‘eagle eggs’ (although Alex would NOT pose for a picture). 

Later we are making ‘eagle nest’ cupcakes (with jelly beans on top) and perhaps even some ‘eagle food’ (fish, although it means a trip to the market)… 

Fun day in Unschooling land!

A beautiful homeschooling moment

History class

SOTW class went on for Cyan while I was on maternity leave.  My wonderful friends found a new place to have class and did the first 6 chapters of SOTW Level 3 with Cyan still able to attend.

This last two weeks we have been back to doing history class here and I am completely impressed with what the class has been doing without me.

Chapter 7: They learned about the spread of slavery in the American collonies, and made patterned stamp art like Adinkra stamped cloth.

 

Chapter 8: (Happily back in my homeschool room!)  We learned all about how many groups of people took over the land that is now modern day Iraq.  For craft we built the bridge of 33 arches.

Chapter 9: We learned about the Thirty Years War in Germany and made paper lanterns to share in the festival of lights.

More fun with Dry Ice!

Ok, so after my dramatic disclaimer yesterday I feel the need to say that doing experiments with dry ice is fun.  Just not while breathing it!  It gave both my big kids a stomach ache that night that they were playing with it. 

Yesterday we tried a safer dry ice experiment… Singing spoons!

This is one I will have to get video of for the full effect, but basically it makes the spoon ‘sing’ with the below zero temperature.  We were very careful and used chop sticks to pick up the dry ice and put it on the spoon… then of course, after we were done, we dropped it into hot water in a bowl:

That is always a crowd pleaser, as long as no one is sticking their face in it.