Some Fun Things We've Done Recently - Feb. 21, 2011

I haven't posted anything along these lines for awhile because my creativity with hands-on projects has been put on hold for a bit now that the baby has learned to crawl.  Our fun stuff has turned into reading lots of books and coloring or drawing pictures to put in our portfolios and playing lots of games.

We've read so many fun books recently, it would be impossible to list them all here, so I've tried to pick our top 10:

1. Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out About the Human Body: Easy Experiments for Young Children - this one has a lot of fun things to do, mostly with stuff you'll find around the house, that demonstrate how different parts of the body function.  It's perfect for the human-body unit I'm doing with my four year old and six year old for science.
2. Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out about Math: Easy Activities for Young Children - Another Janice VanCleave favorite that gives me a simple, hands-on way for teaching early math to my four year old.
3. Human Body (Ripley Twists)-Ripley's Believe It or Not about the human body.  Great, fun go-along for our current science unit.  We got to looking at it during dinner last night and even my husband and I were fascinated.
4. Domino Addition-Did this in place of an addition worksheet.  So much more fun!
5. Math-terpieces-Ditto number 4.  My son, an aspiring artist, really enjoyed this one.
6. The M&M's Brand Counting Book-What's more fun than eating m and m's during math?
7. The Fantastic Journey of Pieter Bruegel-Pieter Bruegel has some paintings that my kids find interesting, so we checked out this book from the library.  In it, the author imagines what events may have inspired Bruegel's art work.  It is perfect for a geography study on Europe.
8. Let's Go Rock Collecting (Let'S-Read-And-Find-Out Science. Stage 2)-Logan, my six year old, has taken up an interest in rocks, crystals, and gems so we pulled this book off the bookshelf.  I followed it up with a surprise gift:  a rock and crystal excavation kit.  He spent several hours this afternoon chipping away at the plaster discovering "jewels". 
9. History for Little Pilgrims continues to be a favorite at our house.  We're going through it very slowly and enjoying learning about history by following the spread of christianity.  This was a subject where I had planned to do lots of hands-on stuff and extra read alouds, but we've pretty much gone to reading a section, doing some map work, and coloring or drawing a picture to put in their portfolios.  Fortunately my kids love crayons on paper, so this has worked out well.
10. In the Picture: Get Looking! Get Thinking!-Lucy Micklethwait is a favorite at our house and this book has not disappointed us.  We've used it for our picture studies over the past couple of weeks.  Not only are there fun details to look for in the pictures, but Micklethwait wrote some open-ended questions that allow for interesting dialogue and imagination. 

Anything look good?  If anyone happens across this top-ten post of mine and loves teaching through books like I do, I would love to hear some of your suggestions.