MFW Kindergarten - Ll is for Leaf

Leaf Unit for Kindergarten

*JZ is 5 years old*

This week we studied:

Unit 3 of MFW

Unit 9 of You Can Read

Printables pictured are from MFW or YCR unless otherwise mentioned.

Theme:

Leaves

Words to Remember:

I will live and grow in Jesus

You can read about our curriculum choice and organization HERE.

Oh what a wonderful unit.  We had so much fun.  I'd love to share everything we did, but in the interest of time, I'll mention some highlights.  Every week I store the materials we will use each day in a box.

The box includes:

• books relevant to the unit
• a cup to collect straws  (JZ puts one straw in the cup each day we do school.  We group them in tens with a rubber band to practice counting by tens.)
• a jar with number cards and buttons  (Each week we add a number card and button to the jar.  J-Bug takes charge of this task, since it is more age appropriate for his learning.  He chooses one card from the jar, and then counts out that many buttons.  J-Bug practices writing the selected number.)
• picture card envelopes  (For each unit there is a picture card page that JZ cuts apart.  We keep each set of cards in an envelope with the letter on the front for letter sound review and games.)
• Lauri crepe letter puzzle  (We use these for tactile letter practice and letter sound games.)

JZ's favorite craft involved, of course, messy painting.  I loved the idea to use Q-tips to paint leaves on the tree in fall colors.  Knowing how much my boys love finger painting (and well, body painting), I decided to have them each paint one of their hands brown to use as the trunk.

JZ carefully pressed his brown hand onto the paper.

Then he dotted away to design the colorful leaves.

He was very proud of his finished product.  (Shh, don't tell him that it looks nothing like a tree.)

Then my little artist decided he needed to sponge paint over his creation.

Yes it "ruined" the tree, but that isn't important to me.  I am thrilled to have sons who LOVE to create.  They enjoy painting and designing.  I believe they will continue to enjoy art if I allow projects to be driven by them and their imaginations.

One of the (many) reasons I was drawn to My Father's World was the classical music study that is part of each unit. This week the boys danced around to Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) while balancing a bean bag on their heads. The object was to move to the beat of the music without dropping the bean bag.  They love the CD that came with the curriculum package, and they request to listen to it in the car almost daily.

Since we studied leaves, we spent quite a bit of time outside.  We are very blessed to have a backyard full of beautiful trees.  Most of them are fruit trees.

We collected leaves from each tree for several experiments and observations.

With the leaves we collected JZ made leaf rubbings.

We used butcher paper and crayons for the rubbings.

He traced each leaf, and then we stapled the pages together to make a leaf book.

He ordered them by size, counted them, and measured each leaf.

We experimented with different leaves, dropping them and seeing how some of the wider, larger leaves drifted to the ground slowly, while the thinner, shorter leaves flew straight down.  We made predictions about how each leave would fall.

JZ found two leaves that were similar in size and shape to show me that they would tie.

Look at our raisins!  We left grapes outside to dehydrate back when we studied The Sun, and they are finally raisins!  They took almost two weeks to turn to plump, juicy raisins.

JZ cut apart the picture cards that begin with the letter L.  Then I put together the cards from the past three units, and he sorted the pictures into the correct envelope with the corresponding starting sound.

We read many books throughout the unit to learn about leaves, JZ's favorites being We're Going On A Leaf Hunt, Why Do Leaves Change Color?, and I Am A Leaf.  

We did a cool experiment to demonstrate how leaves get water. 

I tied a dry plastic baggie tightly to a tree branch and left it there for a few days.

On day two the bag had some moisture in it.  By day four quite a bit of water was pooling.