R week: Rainbows, rain-forests, ancient Rome, and rivers

For ancient Rome, we read a couple books and learned about life in ancient Rome. Then we made these oak leaf crowns. They were a reward for soldiers when they saved someone's life in battle. I cut out Isaac's, but the girls cut out their own.

For rain-forests, we read a really interesting book that gave us a closer look at the sloth and other animals that live in the rain-forest. The assignment here was to develop their own creature who resides in a rain-forest and decide if it needed bright colors or camouflage to protect itself since we saw examples of both in the book. This project failed since they both drew a creature exactly like one they saw in the book.

Genna drew a bright bird in a rain-forest.

Hannah drew a sloth on a tree. I told her it needed to be in a rain-forest with lots of green and trees everywhere, but the most I could get her to add was the second tree. She claimed it would ruin her picture to have too much going on in the background. She has very definite ideas about what is good art and what is not.

For rainbows, we learned the formula for seeing a rainbow and the order of the colors in a rainbow.

Hannah's

Genna's

Notice in all of these pictures they always put a band of sky at the top and a band of grass at the bottom. I have tried and tried to explain the horizon, but they continue to insist that this is how pictures should be. Stubborn children.

For rivers, we read several books about rivers and Hannah made a waterscope (out of a milk carton and Saran wrap) for when the weather allows her dad to take her down to the local river and look at the under water life.

All of these projects came from the books we read. We also read about recycling too, but we did not do any activity with it. Hannah was quite surprised to find out what happens to her drawings that get thrown in the trash or recycling bin. I think it may be even harder now to get her to part with some of her work. There is just so much! We can't keep it all!