This week our learning theme was about houses. Traditional, igloos, tipis, and tree houses to be exact. We watched videos of their construction, talked about different types of houses, and constructed a few miniatures of our own.

We started with igloos.

Then transitioned to a modified gingerbread construction.

We have yet to construct our mini tipis and tree houses, maybe next week.

This is my lesson plan but in true child-led-learning fashion, we didn’t follow it exactly.

House Lesson Plan

House Theme Lesson Plan PDF & House Theme Materials ListPDF

House Videos

Building a House is Easy

Setting Up a Tipi

How to Make a Perfect Igloo – Ray Mears World of Survival – BBC

How to Build an Igloo – A Boy Among Polar Bears – BBC

Tree House Living for Adults

Tree House Living

Amazing Tree House in India

Home Construction

• Gingerbread houses, attention to features such as roof, chimney, windows, doors, walls, walk way (use a milk carton, or small cardboard figure to help support the walls and roof of the house)
• Construct a traditional home using Lincoln logs, legos, blocks
• Make a paper bag tipi
• Make a fabric tipi with wood, canvas, pins and paint
• Construct a marshmallow or sugar cube igloo – use royal frosting, or white glue
• Make a tree house out of nature finds: twigs, leaves, pine branches outside, decorate with acorns, pine cones, and stones

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It was a very positive week. I am continually amazed at how much children want to be engaged, guided to knowledge, and love getting messy. (Well my daughter at least.) Surprisingly there was very little consumption of gingerbread or igloo making supplies. And for our igloo and gingerbread sessions we had young guests join us. All present had much fun. *Here is to really fun summer learning.*

P/S I am guest posting on Marci’s blog Overcoming Busy today. Visit her at Green Bath if you’d like to learn how to make a couple really simple all-natural bath and beauty products that can help your personal health and the health of our earth!

We celebrated Mini Mister’s fourth birthday this weekend past. It is really difficult to believe he was once like this!

But four years have slipped by, and he has grown into such a wonderful little person. I love his chubby hands. I love his undying obsession for all fast cars. And I love his mis-pronounciations. Porcu-”fine” (porcupine). Croco-”donel” (crocodile). And “stunk” (skunk.)

I love that he takes after his mama and adores all things logical and mathematical. But I hope to continue to encourage his creativity, abstract eye, and desire to imagine novelty. This birthday I contacted Imagine Childhood and asked for some “imaginative” gift ideas. Their personal e-mail back to me suggested so many wonderful ideas that might open those awesome doors to a land of make-believe.

We selected this magnifying glass.

This fabulous castle.

And this adorable life-like stuffed piggy for Little Miss.

We spent the day wandering the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., eating at Ted’s Montana Grill, and eating chocolate, gluten-free birthday cake. It was a simple, wonderful, family filled, 4th birthday celebration for Mini Mister.

(Thank you Imagine Childhood for your attention to quality products, keeping kids connected to nature, and opening the eyes of childhood-wonderment.)

This week we learned about our bodies. Actually it was a lesson to me in how much my children already know about their bodies, how creative they really are, how engaged they can become in “accomplishing interesting projects,” and how much they truly love learning.

I came up with a 4 day lesson plan that included songs, books, activities, and crafts. It took me a bunch of time to set up because this was the first time I had ever done anything like this. I spent about $25 in art supplies, though I had a bunch to begin with…and I’d say I have half of what I purchased left over for another lesson week.

Each day we spent about 1 hour total going over the entire lesson learning together about our bodies. We didn’t do everything back-to-back, we spent 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there between meals, playing, and grocery shopping. The name of the game was be  laid back, and do as much as a pre-schoolers want to do. And have fun learning.

So we can look back and see what we did, I am posting here my lesson plan, materials list, and activity and craft PDF printables.

Body Theme Lesson PlanPDF &  Body Theme Materials ListPDF

Also another note, my kids are 2 1/2 years and almost 4 years old. So these lesson plans are meant to be squarely pre-school level, though a bit tailored to fit the strengths and needs of my kids.

Body Books

Inside Your Outside by Tish Rabe

Nose to Toes by Marilyn Baillie

Eyes, Nose, Fingers, and Toes by Judy Hindley

The Busy Body Book by Lizzy Rockwell

Human Body Caroline Bingham/Eye Wonder series

Songs

Hokey Pokey and Head Shoulders Knees and Toes!

Activities and Crafts About Our Bodies

Make a Face

I drew a face, cut out the features, laminated them and affixed magnets to each piece. I printed out an oval head and put everything on the fridge so the kids could place the features where they felt appropriate.

This is my Facial Features FormPDF printable and Head FormPDF printable.

Name That Body Part

We traced our toddler sized bodies on large sheets of paper masking taped to the floor. Then we colored them, and added facial features, stolen from our refrigerator faces. Finally we labeled our body parts with paper labels (printed file labels would work really well here) sounding out the first letter on each label.

Pin the Body Part

I made a human form out of painted foam core and used adhesive Velcro to create a puzzle of sorts. As we placed each body part we talked about what that part is used for.

Match the Clothing and the Body Part

Somehow on one of the hottest days of the year (it was 102°F outside) I decided to dress up these forms in winter clothing. Nevertheless, the kids had a great time coloring their clothing pieces. I cut them out with a scissors, and they taped them on the bodies with scotch tape. Both Mini Mister and Little Miss were very proud of their creations, all dressed for a snowstorm.

Here is the Body Theme Body FormPDF and Body Theme Body FormPDF we used.

We were going to make gluten-free gingerbread men to round out or week of learning about our bodies, but time got away from us. This was the recipe I had found on-line, though I was going to substitute molasses for the corn syrup. (If you make this one, let me know how it comes out!)

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All in all, it was a very positive week of learning. The kids just loved the drawings, activities, discussions and books we covered. My son has always had difficulty verbalizing. At times he is so “in his own world” when we ask him a question, we got absolutely no response whatsoever, or the response is totally unrelated. But this week, he decided he liked skeletons and wanted one as an imaginary friend. An extra place setting at dinner was set for “skeleton.” Skeleton likes playing with cars and apparently “lives” behind Mini Mister’s back. We are so pleased to see that Mini Mister is using his imagination in play, and we hope he’ll continue to imagine in every day life.

I didn’t expect that these activities would teach me so much about my children. I feel we just scratched the surface of what there is to learn about our bodies and I am looking forward to revisiting this topic. It all inspired me to continue and next week we will be learning more about houses. I’ve selected to start with traditional homes, tipis, igloos, and tree-houses. Tune in to find out what we covered next week! Have a wonderful weekend.