This week was all about the number six.
We were talking about shapes that had to do with the number six, such as a cube (six sides), a tetrahedron (has six edges), and an octahedron (has six points). The boys made a cube, tetrahedron and octahedron out of their crazy fort pieces.
I took this picture of the Octohedron to show the star shape on the inside and the hexagon (six sided) on the inside of that. From there we started talking a bit about mandalas but we will work on that this week.
We also made some six-sided stars. This is a great link for making your own stars. We then flattened the stars under a phone book and forgot about them. We will be hanging them soon!
L decided to take one of his stars and instead of making the final folds and cut made a dog instead!
From here the boys made their own 3d shapes. I found a site which gives the printouts making it easy for me (paper folding into 3d is not my forte!). The website is so wonderful for showing the shapes in a rotating video to fully understand them in 3d.
This site is great for getting to know a bunch of shapes – very cool! We will be making more!!!
Of course, one could not make these shapes without including this one…
Oh! How we are loving The Weather Watcher’s Handbook! It is taking us forever to get through because it is so interesting!
This time we read about longitude and latitude. We then went to our world map and I called out co-ordinates and the boys took turns finding the country which matched. It was great fun and really helped them to understand the use of these lines that they always see on globes and maps.
We went online and found this fun song on youtube for longitude and latitude:
We also watched some great videos on this youtube site which I have bookmarked for future viewing. These videos are great and so fun – I think they may have been made by students as part of their program…
We learned about the layers of the earth, longitude and latitude, why there are seasons (also in the handbook!) and more.
Then we somehow got onto fractals and the boys were amazed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwWyTts06tU Fractals
Looks like a great week!
I came by to let you know about a book we just read for our poetry teatime. Not really a poetry book, but we always include a nice picture book at the end. This book is about the moon and I LOVED it. Maybe you already know about it, or you can find it at your local library…that’s where I found it 🙂
“Buried Moon” retold by Margaret Hodges and illustrated by Jamichael Henterly.
Hi Alex, Thanks for the tip on the book! I will have to do a search of our library catalogue. Sounds wonderful! The boys even have a moon on the wall that lights up for the different phases. It’s a nice bedtime companion. 🙂
So happy you are enjoying the Weather Watcher’s Handbook! That makes me happy!
Fun to see all of the making and learning going on up there!
It may take us a looong time to get through it but that’s because it’s so interesting!
Love those building pieces–so much room to be creative!
We have had the Crazy Fort building pieces for years and I love that they always find new ways to use them – I never thought of making tetrahedrons and such!:)