What we did in LIFT

My camera is still broken =( and we haven't gotten the new one yet- so no pictures today=(

This week we studied the famous impressionist artist 'Monet'

After learning about his life, we all looked at some of his famous art pieces and discussed them.

Also everyone learned how to find Monet's birthplace- France on the globe

The kids were even able to point out which paintings were by Monet and which weren't.
I was really impressed when they would say 'thats not impressionism' or 'that's not a Monet painting'
wow. I wonder how many adults can do that!

Then we all became impressionist and created our own works of art a la Monet!!!

Things to do:
Take your kids to the Oklahoma Art Museum!
Take the time to look at art work (even just out of a book) and let them discuss it!


We are trying to nurture love and appreciation for art!

What we did in LIFT

My camera broke this week, so unfortunately there are not any pictures to show you all we did and the fun we had.
Hopefully, by next week our new camera will be here =)

This week we started out with a fun science experiment and made "gluep".

We learned about how our lungs work and played some fun games to learn the different parts of the incredible "breathing machine" we have in our bodies.





Using some different props, we did a little skit/drama performing what actually happens in your body when you breathe - the diaphragm muscle pulls the oxygen through our trachea and into the lungs, and then pushes the bad air- CO2 (Carbon dioxide) out.

We made our own model of lungs- with a balloon and a pop bottle to show how it looks.

We also played some fun games to learn lung anatomy vocabulary and made some paper cut out pictures of the lungs.


With each of these areas, we are learning specific information but it is the process - the thinking, the evaluating, and the making conclusions - that is the most important part of what we are doing.

Tackling the subjects this way does so much more than simply feeding them information and giving them the answer to questions. They have to use all different parts of their minds. Not just the memory section :-)

Things to do:
have them show you wheare the trachea, lungs, and diaphragm are and what they do. (you probably need to give them some hints, since we just learned this)

What we did in LIFT

February 5th 2009

This Week we did a UNIT STUDY on Potatoes!

Everyone had a lot of fun this week in the variety of activities we did- from digging potatoes out of a 'garden' to using potato stamps and talking about geometric shapes to learning about the growth cycle of potatoes.

This week I was even more impressed by how the kids are growing, learning to work together, gaining longer attention spans and getting more interested.

They are also learning to articulate and narrate to me.

It is neat to see how they are getting better at formulating thoughts into words!

It is really going well and I can tell a BIG improvement in all of them just in one month.



What you can do at home this week:

1. Have your kids point out where the "eyes" are on a potato!
2. See how much they can tell you about potatoes (where they grow, what they taste/smell like etc)
3. Make potato stamps with your kids (they should be able to tell you how to)
4. Make some potato food dishes for dinner this week just for fun (here is a site with some recipes)

HERE ARE SOME MORE PICS THAT PROVE LEARNING IS FUN TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!!!!