Snowflake Bentley

We just completed Five in A Row's Snowflake Bentley. It's a sweet biography about William Bentley and his quest to photograph snowflakes.

We learned about a lot about Vermont, old-time photography, Caldecott Medal winners, negative space, and hexagons. We learned about crystals, weather, perseverance, and sacrifice. We learned about the miracle of snowflakes and were overwhelmed at how incredibly creative our God is. We learned about sun dogs. Do you know about sun dogs? I had never heard of this phenomenon. It's very cool!

We used these directions to make our own crystal snowflakes.

We even got enough snow to go out with our mini microscopes and examine some close up.

And of course, we had hot chocolate when we came in.
What a great book and great memories. Two things that make learning fun and meaningful!

Little Nino's Pizzeria and The Salamander Room

Riley and Cole just finished the Five in a Row book Little Nino's Pizzeria. We spent the week learning about everything from relationships, to communication, to family businesses, to the homeless, to homonyms, to symbolism, and a lot of stuff in between! At the end, Riley and Cole made their own pizzeria. They combined their names and called it RiCo's. Their pizza was delicious!

They also recently finished The Salamander Room. This was a wonderful study that really brought out our love of nature!

This week was all about science. We learned all about the classifications in the animal kingdom and the life cycles of salamanders and frogs. Riley and Cole each researched salamanders and wrote a report on them.

We enjoyed a really fun nature scavenger hunt, and we found a great environment in nature to sit and read the book. We wrapped up the week by making salamander dioramas!

I love the richness the Five in Row activities give to books!

The Bee Tree and Septemberfest

Last week Riley and Cole did Five in A Row's The Bee Tree. We learned about everything from the life cycle of bees, to the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan, to onomatopoeia, to analogies, and lots in between!

To finish off our book, I wanted to make some honey treats and go to a bee farm. I called a bee farm and found out they would be at Septemberfest. Septemberfest opened up a whole new experience for us! If you haven't been, it's free and amazing. They have all kinds of exhibits, living history actors, inflatables, and lots of other activities on the Governor's lawn. It was a great time!

Making Peanut butter honey balls


The bee exhibit at Septemberfest. They told us all about harvesting honey.

A chuck wagon!



Waiting in line to tour the Governor's mansion...

Their dining room

Their Oklahoma shaped swimming poolThe panhandle is a hot tub.

Tyler and George Washington Carver

Sawing logs
Everyone got to milk a cow!

Petting Kim Henry's dog
It was a great day!

Finishing up Italy

We finished our study on Italy. We wrapped it up with a trip to the museum to see an exhibit that had Italian landscapes. I would show you pictures of that, but we learned that pictures were not permitted (me). Neither were cell phones (David). Or leaning against the wall (Riley). Or breathing. But I did get some pictures in the rest of the Art Museum of Oklahoma City! The glass art was definitely my favorite!

Pop art was a close second.

Riley looking at a painting of the Grand Canal in Venice. Just like in Papa Piccolo! Even the reflections were similar.

Glass art in the ceiling.

Garrett pretending to be introspective.
I love love LOVE big canvases.

One of the things we learned about when studying Italy and the Renaissance was how masks were very important. It was a time of a rebirth of art and masks were used as art and in drama. We each made our own "life masks." These are masks covered with pictures and words that represent the person.

We started by putting paper mache over half of a gallon jug turned upside down.

They took forever to dry...

After the newspaper dried we put one more layer of white paper over the top. When that was dry, we painted the background, then mod podged all of the words and pictures we had found in magazines to represent our personalities.

Tyler's...

Riley's...

Garrett's...

Cole's...

Mine...

Like my sushi nose? Thank you.

This was a really fun project! On to France!