Christmas List 2014

It is Christmas List time again in the blogworld.  Honestly, I love peeking into what other early learning families are getting for their little ones.  I always collect so many great ideas, which is wonderful considering there was nothing I wanted for Xander in any of the major store toy books (I hate wasting money and space on toys that will be played with for all of two days).

Here are some of the things on Xander's list this year.

Shape-o-Metry
Snap Circuits Jr
Qubits
Suzie's Piano Primer DVD
Educational Insights My First Microscope
Science Match-Ups
Kid K'NEX
Little Passports - World Edition
And of course, books, books and more books!


Toys We Own and Recommend
  

Magna-Tiles (you can read my blog post about these here)
Wedgits

Marble Run

Zoobs

 Kinetic Sand

Hexie-Snaps

 Toob Animals

What is on your early learning Christmas list?  Leave me a comment and I'd love the extra ideas!  You could also leave a link to your posted list.

Spanish Vocabulary: Parts of the Head

Since we have been working on a Human Body Unit, I decided to make some vocab cards in Spanish to go along with it. We started out with parts of the head. You can print the cards here.

Our Presentation

I usually introduce a new set of cards on Little Reader (I explain how we set up Little Reader here).  After viewing the lesson a few times, he usually does a great job matching up the cards!

Please excuse the crazy hair!  He had just taken a shower. :)

Pointing to his nariz!

Sharing the Love

Do you use any of my Spanish printables?  I'd love to hear how you use them, or even link to a blog post you have!  Just leave me a comment to let me know!

T is for Tendon

Although we made it from A-Z in our Alphabet in Simple Science, I decided that I'd add some here and there.  I added this one to go with our Muscles and Bones unit.

Science Notebook Page (Click the picture to print).

Background

Since we were studying muscles and bones, tendons kind of fit in perfectly.  We talked about how a tendon connects muscles and bones, letting you move.  We read some books and built a model of a joint out of paper towel tubes.  (check out the full week of muscle and bones activities here)

   

Chicken Wing Dissection

Materials:

1 raw chicken wing

A knife or kitchen scissors

Procedure:

A little gross, but very fun for any three year old!  We started with a raw chicken wing.  I left the skin on initially so we could talk about how chickens have skin to protect their bodies just like we do.  Underneath is muscle and bone.  I used kitchen scissors to trim the skin away and let Xander look at the muscles and bones underneath.  I had him make observations about the color, feel, etc.  

Then Xander moved the chicken around, so we could talk about the joint and how that worked.  I had him try to bend it the opposite direction, so that he could feel that hinge joints only move in certain directions.

Then the cool part.  If you carefully take a knife and slice into the thicker part of the chicken wing (the muscles furthest from the tip, similar to our biceps), you can expose a thick tendon.  Shimmy the knife around it a little so that you free the end of it from the muscle.  Then holding the bone in one hand, pull on the tendon, and the wing will pop up, like it is waving.  Xander thought this was hilarious!  We ended up doing it until the tendon broke apart completely and we couldn't make it wave anymore.  Wish I could have gotten a better picture for you, but this is what we got.  Good luck! :)

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