This month we have been learning about Brazil.  We made a couple Brazilian meals and read books about the country.  We also learned about the rain forest so we decided to make a diorama of a rainforest by layers.  We used three shoe boxes.  The bottom shoe box was the forest floor, the second the understory, the third the canopy and out of the top box came the emergent layer.  Then we added animals from a rain forest Toob in the layer in which we might find them in the actual rain forest.  It turned out pretty good and the kids love making dioramas.  Gavin was excited because he was able to use the hot glue gun.

 

The animals are hidden (because that's how animals would be in the rain forest) but they are in there.  Here is the understory.  The paper towel rolls are supposed to represent trees of course.  It has an explorer, tapir, cheetah and anteater.  I think there might be a snake too.  The yarn around the trees is supposed to be vines growing up the trees.

The understory with tree frogs and anaconda.

The canopy with monkey and toucan.

And a parrot in the emergent layer.

We started studying the paintings of Degas this week.  The kids tried their hands at painting a ballerina.  We used watercolors to paint a coffee filter folded in half for a skirt, then regular tempera paints to paint the person.  It was supposed to be 3D with the skirt but ours didn't really pop out too much after it was painted.  Here is Gavin's painting.  I love the legs!

And here is Austin's painting.

And here is Adelaide's painting.  She actually drew a decent ballerina but then she just painted all over the place.

 

 

In science this week we studied the circulatory system.  Next week we will focus on the heart; this week we focused on blood.  We made a model of the blood stream using water (plasma), Cheerios dyed with red food coloring (red blood cells), marshmallows (white blood cells) and purple pom poms (platelets).  In hindsight I think kidney beans would have made more realistic platelets.  When we put our red blood cells in the plasma it turned the plasma red which was strangely realistic.

We even had time for a little nature study this week.  Adelaide brought along her doll and took her for a walk.  Then we talked about how plants are making seeds like crazy before winter and then we looked for seeds. 

 

We filled an egg carton with different types of seeds and then picked six to draw in our nature journals.  The boys filled their old nature journals so they got to use nice new journals this week.  It's always fun to start a new journal.

I'm not sure what this look was for...

Thanks to a nice older gentleman who came by, we also found an Osage Orange tree with fruit on it.  He was gracious enough to point it out to us when he noticed what we were doing.  We had walked right by it and not even noticed!

 

And, Saturday morning Gavin was in a parade with his soccer team.  Here's the little ones waiting for the parade to start.