The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 7: Insects

Family Activities

Exploring Ants
With the help of some pieces of bread and pretzels, the kids got set to lure some ants.

Once we had a few ants in hand, we transferred them to some temporary ant housing. We used the two sizes of upright containers from the IKEA PRUTA kit, nesting the smaller in the larger. We put a lid on the smaller one and then filled the space between the two containers with soil. We topped that off with our ant friends and let them get to work as only ants can.

While we all know how strong and industrious ants are, it was quite fascinating to see how much they had accomplished in just one day. The kids enjoyed playing with them on the driveway and watching them work in their temporary housing. After a day, we returned everything to the garden.

Nature Walk(s)
We did a lot of bug hunting on walks around the neighbourhood this week, but also managed to get out for a walk near the river.

We were fortunate to spot some water beetles.

And, unfortunately, also signs of the emerald ash borer.

The azaleas at home were abuzz with many kinds of bees.

I had seen a little demo for mimicking the way pollen gets stuck on a bee’s legs, but we were lucky enough to get nice and close to this little dude to see it firsthand.

Our littlest explorer has become very enamoured with insects and enjoys picking them up. She is particularly fond of beetles. “Look what I’ve found, it is beautiful!“. Here are a few of her finds from this week:

Water Beetle Rockets
After seeing a demo for soap powered boats, we printed out some pictures of beetles and made water beetle rockets. This was a very fun activity and led to learning for everyone. This demo can only be done once per batch of water, so don’t put too much in each time.

Up close with a wasp
An unexpected activity for the week came upon discovery of a deceased wasp in our bedroom. It was scurried onto white paper & magnifying glasses were out in a flash for closer investigation. A very cool distraction from the fact that we may have a wasp’s nest to deal with.

Bookmarks
We used this little bookmark template to spend some quiet moments colouring together. We read a lot of books in this house, so bookmarks are always in short supply.

Quiet Activities

To complement some of the learning about the phases of insects, we drew up this matching sheet.

Some other resources we utilized:
Colour by number
Bee maze
Metamorphosis maze
Addition
More Addition
Which is more? – This ended up leading to some good number talks in our house with the kindergartener

Books & Videos

Still making use of the gazillion library books we’ve had for this time the library’s been closed.

• Our preschooler loves reading First Words with a Ladybug
• We were gifted I See a Kookaburra! by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page and it has many interesting insects inside.
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a beloved classic
• Scholastic has four weeks of learn at home resources. Week 3 includes some books and videos about Ladybugs and Butterflies.

Some related videos we watched:

• Magic School Bus Gets Ants in its Pants (S01E12) – Netflix
• Magic School Bus – Butterfly & the Bog Beast (S05E02) – Netflix
• Bill Nye the Science Guy – Insects (S02 E11)
  Pro-tip: don’t watch this while you eat lunch

Next week: The (Ant)Arctic

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 6: Aeronautics

Family Activities

Paper Airplanes
I mean what can be more fun than making and flying paper airplanes? Apparently having a book that’s been sitting for over a decade with fancy paper airplane templates, that’s what! The kids picked their favourite designs and went about following the intricate folds to create some pretty neat planes. The weather cooperated for successful flights.

Once we had some fun outside, I cut out three shapes from a large piece of craft paper and we hung it up for some additional target practice.

The World Record Paper Airplane
After trying some of the different designs, we decided to follow instructions for building the World Record Holder paper airplane, using this video as a resource. First we spent some time learning 3 key flying terms: pitch, yaw, and roll. There’s a nice diagram here.

Then the kids worked at altering aspects of the record breaking airplane to affect the pitch, yaw, or roll. It was fun to hear their reasoning about what impacts various changes to folds would have.

Whirly Birds
As a throwback to teaching Grade 9 science, we made some paper whirly birds / helicopters using this template. The kids coloured them in and then tossed them down the stairs. There is way more fun to be had with these helicopters in testing out what can affect their flight time, but there was too much sunshine for us to stick inside for long!

Quiet Activities

Here are some of the quiet activities the kids worked on this week, aside from throwing planes through the paper targets:

Airplane Parts with word tracing + colouring

Spot the differences

Addition & matching

90 (eep!) Page worksheet Package – We just picked a few from here.

The Fun with Mama package above inspired our kinder kid to start creating his own activities for us adults to do during quiet time. One was this cute colour by number

Books & Videos

We were lucky to own a few of these and others were borrowed from the library. (Extra lucky that one we got just days before things shut down!)

The World Record Revised Paper Airplane Book by Ken Blackburn

Airplanes and Other Flying Machines Ultimate Sticker Book

How Airports Work by Clive Gifford

LEGO Amazing Vehicles

Some of the videos & shows that suited the week:

Magic School Bus Taking Flight (S02E09) – Netflix

Bill Nye The Science Guy – Flight (S01E01 — how cool is that?)

How Does an Owl Fly so Silently? Super Powered Owls – BBC

SuperWings – Netflix

Next Week: Insects

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Also, fun (mind-blowing) fact:

Weeks 4 & 5: Prehistoric Creatures

Family Activities

Walking Dinosaurs
I saw this cool demo and we figured with a few alterations, we could make them look like dinosaurs. We cut out the basic shapes and the kids coloured & folded them and soon we had (kind of) walking dinosaurs! This activity is a bit finicky but really neat once it gets going.

Melting Dinosaurs
Using this Dinosaur Excavation activity description, we froze two little dinosaurs in baking soda eggs and used vinegar to excavate them. To make this (and other activities) happen, we borrowed half a dozen dinosaurs from a neighbour – thanks, Emily!

Dinosaur Footprints
We used this reference for the size of dinosaur footprints to draw out some T-rex footprints along the driveway. Simple + fun!

Digging for Bones
We ran out of filament before printing the whole body, but managed to get this T-Rex skull from thingiverse printed. We buried it in some sand and the kids used brushes and small shovels to dig it out.

Lava Simulation
This took a couple of tries but with some household ingredients we made a cool demo of lava growth. The idea and recipe came from a youtube video about creating a fire snake. This was a nice follow up to Bill Nye’s episode on volcanoes and some reading we had done.

Bird Sightings
We have been trying to run Beavers each week as a family, to preserve a bit of kinder kid’s regular routine. This week we talked about how birds are the closest living creatures to dinosaurs. The kids created their own cardboard tube binoculars and we went for a walk to look for birds. We found a few, but then found a giant heap of ants which was more exciting.

Drawing Dino Shadows
We set up some dinosaurs on white paper and tried to trace the shadows. We chose this as an indoor activity for a gloomy day, but then realized the gloom made shadows rather difficult. This didn’t quite turn out as planned, but hey the kids were happy to spend some time drawing in their pjs.

Hatching Breakfast
We inherited this box of instant oatmeal from family members after they left town. It served up some fun at the breakfast table for the preschooler.

Other things we didn’t get to:
I love these Cardboard dinosaurs and have seen other people make them with quite a bit of success. We just didn’t make the time to cut them out.

Quiet Activities

Puzzle
We have had this hand-me-down puzzle from a neighbour for a year or so. Kinder kid is old enough to do it by himself now so we brought it out for him to try during quiet time.

Some simple colouring sheets we already had inspired kinder kid to start his own book.

There are so many resources out there. Here are a few we printed out:
Triceratops Worksheet

Dinosaur Division

Dinosaur Find & Count

Counting dinos

Dinosaur Graphing

Dino numbers – up to 10

Practicing Left & Right

Tracing words that begin with d

Books & Videos

We have this collection of magazines from when I was a child. They were a subscription and I remember it being one of the coolest things ever to receive – anyone remember these? I have four binders full of mint condition dinosaur-packed magazines from the 90s, though I’m wishing I still had the glow in the dark t-rex bones. While some of the information has since been updated, the kids loved reading through them.

The kinder kid also practiced reading with Raptors! by Lisa McCourt

Videos:

Magic School Bus S02E03 – Busasaurus & S02E01 – Blows its Top (Netflix)

Magic School Bus Returns S02E01 – The Land Before Tim (Netflix)

Bill Nye – S04E19 – Fossils and S04E14 – Volcanoes (Borrowed from the library)

Cassowaries mini documentary from BBC Earth

Lego Jurassic World: The Secret Exhibit (We borrowed from the library)

Next week: Aeronautics

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 3: Gravity and Spacetime

Family Activities

Tensegrity Structure

There’s no mystery where our children got their love for LEGO. Their dad built a cool tensegrity structure out of LEGO to kick off our learning about gravity. Very cool. Not cool? The only photo we have is on a super dusty surface where it was built in hiding.

Gravity Water Cup Drop

Next we did the Gravity Water Cup From from the Science Guys. We did it over the bath tub and the kids loved it.

Gravity Visualized

While the content of this one was way over the kids’ heads, it was fun and they liked taking part. We built this visualization of gravity based on this video, using a hula hoop, ikea drinking glasses, some stretchy fabric, and clothes pegs.

Given our rather crude setup, the visualizations worked pretty well and gave way to cool discussions around gravitational slingshots.

Pendulum Gravity Experiment

Using the free app Phyphox, we created a pendulum with a phone inside a toilet paper roll under our kitchen table and determined the acceleration due to gravity. A little sophisticated for the littles, but they love recording numbers, making hypotheses, and seeing what happens. The video explanation for the experiment can be found here.

Quiet Activities

I am becoming less picky about these with time. I don’t love the worksheets but the kids like having something to work on at the start of quiet time.

Space Matching

A collection of space mazes

Solar System Word Search

Space Colouring Pages

A collection of fun space-related worksheets

Space subtraction

Books & Videos

We rewatched Bill Nye’s Gravity Episode (S1E6) – the kids love this one

Pete the Cat: Out of This World by James Dean (read aloud because we can’t go to the library)

The Magic School Bus Gains Weight (S4E8) – available on Netflix

Inspiration found from The Cosmic Perspective (Third Edition)

Next week: Prehistoric Creatures!

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 2: Space

Family Activities

Labelling Planets

The kids had been given a set of solar system wall stickers a couple of years ago. They’ve been up on our wall in the basement. Our first task for Space week was for the kids to write out labels (in metallic sharpies, of course!) for each of the planets and paste them on the wall.

Smashing Space Rocks

This activity came from Pre-K Pages and was a hit (ha!). Make a flour/water mixture, coat some cotton balls, and bake them at low heat. We put them outside and the kids went to town smashing them with hammers, wearing proper safety goggles of course. 

Paper Mâché Asteroids

Full disclosure: we started this paper mâché project to make Easter eggs. The kids hadn’t been too interested in painting them, so they sat for a week as newspaper covered blobs. When we started space week, we realized that the bumpy creations would be perfect for asteroids. The kids were much more eager to paint and precision was not a priority. Once they were finished, we hung them from the ceiling between Mars & Jupiter on and added an Asteroid Belt label on the strings.

Chalk Solar System

Using the Exploratorium Calculator, I calculated out a scaled down orbital radius for each planet. I chose a sun diameter of 1.2m, which allowed us to fit the whole solar system on our short street. We measured one adult foot print to be about 1m and then counted our steps to determine the distance between each planet. Starting at Neptune, we drew a tiny chalk dot, wrote a big label, and then carried on towards the sun. The kids took note that we had much fewer steps between planets as we began to approach the sun.

Once it was complete, we let some neighbours know about the drawings and invited them to walk the solar system, too.

Crater Creation

We had been talking about asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. We set up a fun and simple activity to explore how craters are created. We filled a silicone bread pan with flour and then covered it with a thin layer of hot chocolate. We headed outside and the kids dropped marbles into the pan to make craters.

I thought this activity might only last 30 seconds, but the kids loved it and asked for more and more marbles.

LEGO

We were fortunate to have been given a box of vintage LEGO from a neighbour. After researching some of the pieces, we were able to put together a bunch of proper LEGO space sets, as well as some creative space-inspired research stations and robots.

Space play dough

I made play dough and added glitter. Tada! Space play dough. Sometimes it’s the simple things.

Quiet Activities

For visual discrimination

Books + Videos

I had come across some work by Geoff and Mr. Honner and was totally inspired by the awesome math behind the NFL Draft. I had never given a lot of thought to all of the calculations that underpin the trades that take place each year and once I got into the numbers I knew I wanted to bring it to the classroom.

For those (like me) that don’t follow football closely, the basic idea is that every year the NFL holds a player draft, where each team has the chance to on-board new players. There are a number of rounds, and each team is allotted a number of a set of picks throughout the various rounds.  The order of the picks is determined by how teams fared in the previous NFL season. (If you come in last, you get first pick).

The interesting part, from a math perspective, is that teams do quite a lot of trading with their picks. A team might wish to trade up, to get a pick earlier in a round, for instance. In order to do this, they have to trade off a few of their lower pick rounds.

In order to facilitate the trades, the NFL has produced a trade value chart, that identifies a point value for each of the picks. That way, if a team wants to trade for the 12th pick, they can sort out which trades they can provide for an equal value. The cool part? The chart is exponential!

In our class, we went a similar route to Geoff. I had students plot the Trade Value Chart and practice identifying the key features of an exponential function. From there, we looked at all of the trades made in the 2018 Draft. I went through every trade made in the 2018 Draft and compiled it in a Google Sheet. I

Note: I included trades that involved last year’s spots because I thought it made it interesting. For example, one team traded their first pick in 2017 (12th) for the other team’s first pick in 2017 (25th) & their first pick in 2018 – an unknown!  Turned out to be an excellent trade from the value perspective because the other team’s first pick in 2018 was 4th. However, you could remove the multi-year trades if you wanted. I omitted any trades that included a previously drafted player.

Students filled in the total value of each trade for the team that traded up & the team that traded down. They then had to plot the value of the trade ups vs. the trade downs to see whether teams adhered to the value chart – essentially is it a linear function?

I definitely didn’t execute on this idea perfectly, but I liked the concept for a bunch of reasons:

1. Spreadsheets are awesome tools and too few students know how to navigate them.
2. There is SO much math here. Think of the math involved just to figure out what trades you have to offer & what combination of those trades will yield the trade you want to make.
3. Conversations around using math to make real-life decisions!
4. More than one kind of function (linear & exponential) in one task is always a bonus.
5. There are great conversations to be had about the outliers – why would someone trade away a higher pick for a lower one? Why are teams sometimes willing to trade for something with far less value?

You can check out the materials I drafted (ha!) up here, and please send your feedback my way:

NFL Draft Pick – Intro doc & questions

NFL Draft Pick – Student Spreadsheet

NFL Draft Pick – Completed Spreadsheet