Venezuela Days 1 & 2

Day 1: Field Trip Day! We went to our small local zoo. I made a little booklet where we kept track of of any animals we saw that were from countries we are learning about.

The first animal we saw from a country we are learning about

Aria enjoyed "taking pictures" (the camera doesn't work)

Melodie was thrilled when she recognized something she had learned the previous week

Day 2 we started Venezuela. What we are learning is coming from the currency. Each Bolivar has an image of an important person, wildlife in danger of extinction, and landscapes. We started with animals.  The 50 has a spectacled bear, and I found an article titled "Meet the Real Life Bear Who Inspired the Amazing 'Paddington' Story". I made an author's perspective worksheet

and planned on having Mel read the book and do the worksheet (even though he's from Peru, he's still a spectacled bear). But then, a few days ago, I found out that a movie theater was showing Paddington as part of their summer movie series ($1 tickets). Perfect! So, off the movies we went! That didn't leave much time for the rest of the animals, so we'll learn about them tomorrow.

Argentina Day 5

Field Trip day!!

We ate more Argentine food. This time we went to a nicer place and we went for lunch. 

For a special treat, Rocky joined us. 

I've never dipped bread in chimichurri before. It was so good!!

For a new food, we ordered sweet bread. We simply weren't thinking, but sweet bread is NOT a bread that is sweet. Surprisingly, it tasted pretty good (to Rocky and me), but the rest of the meal was so filling, we didn't eat much of it. 

Then I took the girls to MOLAA - The Museum of Latin American Art. 

I had prepared a booklet for Melodie of Argentine and Venezuelan (Venezuela is our country for next week) artists/art work that was in the permanent collection. NONE of it was on display. I was rather disappointed. There were two exhibits (Mexico: Fantastic Identity 20th Centrury Masterpieces from teh FEMSA Collection and Transformations), the Mexico one taking up most of the museum. I did like the Mexico exhibit (especially the work of Frida Kahlo) but I really wanted to talk about our country. Then, in the photography section of the Mexico exhibit was the famous picture of Che Guevara (apparently it is entitled Guerrillero Heroico, which I did not know) by Alberto Korda. Now, what a photograph of an Argentine by a Cuban was doing in a Mexico exhibit, I don't know. But finally! Something Argentine to talk about. 

The Transormations exhibit had a couple of Argentine and Venezuelan artists, so we talked about them, wrote down the names of artists we wanted to learn more about and picked our favorites. As we were leaving, I noticed a booklet entitled Transformations at the front desk. I grabbed one, not thinking much about it and didn't look through it until a little while later. It was perfect! It explained the exhibit and had little activities to go along with it. 

This explained the exhibit to Mel better than I could. I'm not much of a museum person.

One of the pages in the booklet. This was one of the pieces of art that we wanted to look up more about, so it was great that it was in the booklet.

A perfect activity for our theme!

This was Melodie's favorite art piece by an Argentine or Venezuelan artist.

I'm really not a huge fan of art museums, but I still want to introduce Mel to things even if I don't like them. This was a small museum, so we spent just the right amount of time there before they got too bored (Aria just spent time being cute and saying hi to everyone). 

Melodie finished her passport (she still needs her exit stamp) and we are done with Argentina (kind of...more about that next week).

Argentina Day 4

Melodie learned about the animals of Argentina by looking around the FactZoo website. Then we looked at Seabirds.org to see where penguins live in Argentina. Then we made a penguin craft from the Crafts For Kids Blog.

Aria loved putting the cottonballs in the water bottle

Melodie loves crafts and feathers

The finished project. I'm not sure why the beak is so low.

Aria hugs her finished penguin

While we were at the market the day before we picked up goodies from Argentina. We tried a bunch of them while Rocky talked to the girls about when he lived in Argentina.

All the goodies. Rocky went a little crazy with excitement at the market

This is how Aria thinks a bombilla is used

Rocky talking with Melodie

Sugar!!!

Where is Rosario?

Argentina Day 3

Day 3 was spent learning about the Andes Mounatins.

Melodie did a cute mountain math worksheet from commoncore4kids.
Then she watched a video called "What is a Mountain?"
We learned the Andes are the longest continental mountain range in the world and that Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the western and southern hemispheres and the 2nd largest in the world. Melodie immediately mentioned "Pedro", one of the shorts in Saludos Amigos. Pedro is a plane that is flying from Santiago, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina. On the way he has an encounter with Aconcagua (anthropomorphized, of course, because it's Disney). I was happy that she remembered the name of the mountain!
At PrimaryHomeworkHelp we learned that the Andes are fold mountains. To demonstrate how fold mountains are created, we used an idea from We-Made-That.com. Graham Crackers are the plates that we pushed together to form mountains.

Another fun activity! Of course, the best part was eating it all. 

For dinner we went to El Gaucho Meat Market. It's a Argentine market with a few tables and chairs where they serve sandwiches and empanadas. We shared two empanadas, a milanasa sandwich and a lomito sandwich. Rocky loved everything, Melodie liked the chicken empanada only, Aria didn't like anything, and I thought everything was okay.

We went when there was a game on (luckily not an Argentina game, or I have a feeling it would have been very crowded), so it was all men. When we were ordering the food I thought Mel sitting there looked kind of funny.

We hope to try another place on Friday, but Rocky was thrilled I found this place because it's by his work. Guess what Rocky will be having for lunch frequently?

Argentina Day 2

Melodie continued with her fictional reading today. She started Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa. We read Doggy Slippers together. Doggy slippers was very cute. It's a collection of poems all about pets. Since we have a dog, Melodie liked those poems the most. The book is illustrated by Isol, who is from Buena Aires. We watched a short video about her from when she won an award: Isol video. The mini book report worksheet for this book was slightly different from the others.

We then talked a little about the native tribes of Argentina. Melodie looked into a little bit about the various languages at native-languages.org, which led to our math activity. I got the idea from No Time For Flash Cards. I was looking for different math activities and found a math water balloon game that looked like fun. I modified it to fit with our theme and to personalize it a bit for Melodie (and I didn't use hula hoops...I certainly don't have that many). I picked one of the native languages and used those instead of just numbers on the targets.

I chose to use the Guarani numbers. Then Melodie learned how to pronounce them using Forvo.

I had made the targets days before and I filled up and wrote on water balloons earlier that day.

We are in the middle of a drought, so to make up for using this water we didn't water our lawn for two weeks (that's why our grass is so brown in the pictures. Just wanted to mention that because Melodie is all about water conservation right now. I also had blank water balloons for Aria.

The way we played our math water balloon game was a little different. The object for Melodie was to see how many she could do in one minute. Plus, she had to say the name of the number in the Guarani language when she threw the balloon. She had a blast!

The one thing I didn't do that No Time For Flash Cards said to do was to weight down the numbers. I should have done that because some did turn over. Not a big deal, but there's a reason she says to do that! I also had made math problems with zero as an answer, but didn't make a target with zero. On the fly we made up the rule that zero meant to throw the balloon at daddy's feet (he was timing the minute on his phone, which we didn't want to get wet). This made the game all the more fun. Aria just happily threw her balloons a few inches, happy to be with her family and doing something new.

Argentina Day 1

Mel is going to a sports camp this week. It's only for a few hours every day, but it was the perfect thing to wear this jersey to.

This was such an amazing find. A few weeks ago I found it at a children's second hand store and had to get it! Rocky has one, so now they can match while watching soccer games. Aw....cute!

The first step was to get a stamp in her passport. In our case, it's actually stamps I created, printed out and then we glued on. She'll get an exit stamp at the end of the week. We found Argentina on a map and talked about time zones.

Then we moved on to the geography of Argentina. I found great mapping worksheets at Homeschool Creations. She has them for most of the countries we are "visiting", so I plan on using them if she has them. 

I picked up some books from the library last week where the story either takes place in Argentina or was written by or illustrated by an Argentine. First, we talked about an author's purpose, using an Author's Purpose Pie chart from Classroom Confections. Then, we read the books. Today we read Gauchada by C. Drew Lamm and The Frog with the Big Mouth by Teresa Bateman. Both girls LOVED The Frog with the Big Mouth. After reading, Melodie did mini book report sheets I made. 

It was movie day! Saludos Amigos is the animate movie I chose to go with Argentina. It actually goes through three countries in South America. Only one short, Gaucho Goofy, is all about Argentina. But, I wanted to take the opportunity to expose both kiddos to an older non-princess movie. And Aria loves the fab five. To prepare for the movie, we learned about gauchos. We looked up gaucho clothes and watched this video from National Geographic: Gauchos. We didn't have time to do these today, but I gave her these cute paper dolls to do whenever she wants. 

We watched the movie and Gaucho Goofy does a lot of dances, and we'd been sitting for a while, so we tried the tango using a YouTube Video. So You Think You Can Dance contestants have nothing to worry about. We are not very good ballroom dancers, but having seen them do it on SYTYCD, we have a greater appreciation for how difficult it must be to learn. 

I made Movie Madness worksheets for every animated movie we'll be watching. Here's the one I made for Saludos Amigos.

What she has been loving about some of these worksheets (the mapping one and this movie madness one) is that I let her use our tablet to look up some of the things she didn't know (where are the andes? is the minuet an Argentine dance). I think she has liked looking up these answers more than anything else. 

Passport to Adventure

We're starting our "summer homeschool" (Melodie likes calling it that) this week. I wanted something a little more clever, so it's really called our Passport to Adventure. I made this poster

Each week I'll change the country name, flag, movie pictures and schedule. 

I made the passport. Each country has a two page layout that Melodie will fill out throughout the week. 

The schedule is more of a guideline. It is helpful so I won't forget anything and so Melodie isn't constantly asking, "What are we doing for summer homeschool today?" 

Starting Again

Yep, I am going to blog this summer. I swear.
We've had so many fun adventures that I regret not blogging about. Maybe sometime I'll go back to show our really fabulous one. By far the biggest adventure was having a baby in our mini van. We didn't quite make it to the hospital. I stopped blogging when I became pregnant because I was so sick. And then I just kind of forgot about it and enjoyed our new addition.
But now I'm ready. Mostly because I want to document our "Passport to Adventure" this summer. My oldest is bemoaning the fact that school is out for the summer, so I wanted to come up with something to keep her excited about learning and keep me involved with the kiddos. We only have 7 weeks of summer this year (school schedule change) so Melodie picked a country/Disney movie for each week. We have activities, field trips, etc... planned for our adventure.
You are welcome to join us!