We have continued to study birds the last couple of weeks.  We put up a couple homemade bird feeders outside the school room window to try an attract birds we could watch while working.  We put peanuts in one and it got knocked over and the peanuts dumped out.  We then spent a fun morning watching an extremely happy squirrel going back and forth, picking up a peanut and then burying it somewhere in our yard.  Not exactly the plan but we enjoyed it anyway.  We have since tried to make the feeders a little bit stronger so they wouldn't get knocked over so easily.

 

Last week the boys continued to study the work of John Audubon and then tried their hand at drawing flamingos with reflections.  We read a book about flamingos and watched flamingos dancing on YouTube.  Then we divided our paper in half, drew a flamingo in the top half and then tried to draw it's reflection on the bottom half.  Since the bottom flamingo is backwards, it was trickier then it sounded.

This one is Gavin's.  He rushed ahead instead of listening to the directions so it didn't turn out exactly right.

This is Austin's picture.

Our country of the month is Australia.  Gavin opened his Top Secret Australia and Austin opened his Little Passports.  We read a book about Australia and we watched the songs 'Kookaburra', 'The Kangaroo Song' and 'Waltzing Matilda' on YouTube.  The boys love Waltzing Matilda for some reason and we've listened to it repeatedly.  I am regretting introducing it to them since it has been stuck in my head all week.  We did look it up to find out exactly what waltzing matilda means.  We also had to listen to Men at Work 'I Come from a Land Down Under'.  We looked up vegemite and I still have no idea what exactly it is.  I told the boys it was like peanut butter, they like it, but everyone else thinks it's weird.

We did another art project this week with birds using different textures and patterns.  This one was Gavin's bird.

This is Austin's bird.

And this is Adelaide's bird.

In history we have been reading about the Oregon Trail.  We learned that the pioneers would make quilts to tell the story of their journey so we made a paper quilt that told about some things that might have happened on the trail.

Here's how they turned out.

This is Gavin's quilt.  It tells the story of ferry crossings, Indian attacks, buffalo attacks and friends made along the way.

Austin's quilt.  I can't remember what all his pictures were supposed to be but it included many disasters.  Someone on the bottom left is running from a buffalo.

We also made our own covered wagons.  We used colorful paper rather than just brown since I was out of brown paper.

They turned out nicely anyway and Playmobil people fit in them so that made Austin happy.

Adelaide was at a princess tea party with a friend next door while the boys were working on their wagons so she made her wagon when she got home.

And yesterday, the boys started working on another art project.  This time with self drying clay.  They each made a bird nest and a couple eggs.  I noticed that the 'twigs' are falling off the side of their nests as it dries though so that's a bit disappointing.  This week we will start working on the birds that will go inside the nest.  Then we will paint everything when the clay is dry.