We finished up our study of the canine family with a field trip to our local nature center. I will take any excuse to go there, and this was a perfect one: observe and write down about the animals from the canine family.
We first sat outside the coyote enclosure. This coyote was raised as a pet, so cannot be released back into the wild, it’s too acclimated.
For the two animals we observed they had to write one sentence, and draw a picture that used at least 3 colors.
Superman’s says: Coyote has pointy ears. Tail is pointing down.
Batman wrote both on the same page, so the coyote one says: He has a black nose.
Side note: They need to work on understanding how to write on the page. They do better at home, but for some reason every lesson I’d taught them flew out the window when we were there.
From the coyote we headed over to the Fox enclosure and spent some time observing her. Again she was a pet that can’t be released back to the wild because of acclimation issues. She wasn’t exciting to observe because she was asleep in the back of the cage.
Superman’s says: Red fox has red fur and they like the shade.
Side note: Notice there are still lots of letter reversals, and capital letters. Not what I was working on for this lesson, so no corrections.
Princess: She has pointy red ears.
Batman’s said: He has red fur.
I was going to have them work on writing more, but I could see I was starting to lose them, so I released them to play in the water, which they happily did until I dragged them home again.
Let’s see what others did this week:
Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously. Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.
This particular week, I’m going to play hooky and send you to my land animals pinterest board, because I’m going to sneak away and go cuddle with my hubby………
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Ages and ages ago when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out, a friend gave me Harry Potter Mystery At Hogwarts Game
As you can see, the game board is set up to be the school. You roll two dice and move around the board gathering clues to figure out who cast the spell and in what room (see, just like Clue). That part’s the same. Here’s where it’s different.
You can choose to move the ghost instead of yourself and make people reveal cards to you without making guesses. Also, if you roll a “one” (which is a Hogwarts seal), you draw special cards that can protect you from effects, reveal hidden passages, or complete missing stairs.
If you’re familiar with Clue, than you already know how the game works, but this adds in the extra layer of strategy with the ghost and some more randomness with the Hogwarts cards.
I would say it probably requires at least a mid-second grade reading level to play it well because my boys struggled from time to time to find the right names. It also requires kids who don’t feel the need to tell everyone what they have and can hold their cards without showing them to EVERYONE.
On the random to strategy side, I’d put it closer to random. Movement is based on a die roll and the cards you get at the beginning are completely random. But, it’s a lot of fun.
