Week in review letter H – Repost with Pics!

We were having problems with our computer, so I wasn’t able to post pics for our letter H week and since everyone has been sick with colds and things have been on hold a bit I decided to repost this one and add in the pics! I don’t really consider this cheating for We Play because we actually did the Joshua and the wall again last week when we were building with bricks!

We started out just reading the Bible story, then we also read Humpty Dumpty, as suggested in the Hubbard’s Cupboard 3’s curriculum. Cutie Pie remembered we had seen Veggie Tales Josh and the Big Wall, so it was pretty easy for him to understand the Bible story, so we talked mostly about the nursery rhyme and words that start with H: Hats, Hot cocoa, Heart, Hand, Heat, Hot, Hamburger, Hadrosaur, High, Horses, Help…and we did several experiments!

Throughout the week we built walls out of cardboard bricks and wood blocks and marched around them before blowing homemade Horns and knocking them down, and we let Hard boiled eggs fall from a (cardboard) brick wall that we built and talked about why they broke, followed by rolling a few down an incline. Cutie Pie’s hypothesis was that the egg would break, however, the experiment revealed the eggs stayed intact when they rolled! (science, gross motor) This lead to a discussion about what would have happened to Humpty Dumpty if he had a slide next to him to help him get down from the wall. 

We made our Handprints and looked at them closely with a magnifying glass (science), baked Heart cookies and talked about how Heat changes things (more science, senses, math) as well as enjoying our daily Hot cocoa dates! I also found this neat little pattern for paper Helicopters, which we made, followed by watching a few kid-friendly videos of helicopters, since the boys were really interested in how the paper helicopter ‘flew’. (science, fine motor)

We ended the week with two hot/cold science experiments, which I found in the book 365 More Simple Science Experiments with everyday materials, published by Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. The first, called The Warm and Cold of It, uses Hot and cold water in 2 separate cups and two balloons filled with cold water, only big enough to hold water but still fit into the cups. “The balloon filled with cold water sinks to the bottom of the warm water, but floats to the top of the cold water!” It shows that cold water is heavier than warm water.

The second hot/cold water experiment was called Color Me Warm, in which you have 2 glasses, one each of hot and cold water. You add the same amount of food coloring to both glasses. The food coloring in the hot water swirls and colors the water fairly quickly as opposed to that in the cold water. The hot water is in motion. As the water cools at the surface, it sinks to the bottom of the cup allowing more hot water to rise, which causes the food coloring to swirl! With each experiment the boys ‘tested’ the water to see which cup held which temperature and Cutie Pie came up with a hypothesis before we tested his theory (science, sense of touch). He loved this!

Cutie Pie was pretty entertained by the inclined plane, so we found ourselves experimenting with that off and on all week assisted by some experiments. Cutie Pie told me the other day that he likes doing experiments with me and wishes he could do them every day. Since his interest is so strong I think I’m going to try hard to do this with him!

We didn’t concentrate much on the actual letter H, trying to write it or color it or anything since Cutie Pie announced to me several days ago now that he doesn’t want to learn his letters anymore. I figured I’d take it easy in that regard and follow his lead rather than push it and have him rebel, however, he has been picking up his Leap Frog Scribble and Write more often and asking for help with it less often, and he’s expressed several times that he wants to read! I think it’s just a matter of time.

Now go Play!