martinzoo

Today we deviated from the curriculum by doing a little mini-unit about St. Patrick. I found it at Learning Through History.

We watched a couple of videos, including this one:

We read about St. Patrick here and the History of St. Patrick’s Day here.

A quick little timeline for the History of St. Patrick’s Day can be read here.

We worked on this jigsaw puzzle. I got it in 6 minutes and GB took about 20 minutes. Just click the shamrock.

We also listened to a bit of Irish music featuring one of the most popular Irish groups, The Chieftains. This video has one of my all-time favorites, Alison Krausse, singing ‘Molly Ban.’

We also made some Irish Soda Bread for our dinner (without the raisins).

Ok, you’ll laugh at this video. But I swear that I could really see my own dog doing something like this. I think it’s hilarious that they were able to capture it on video.

GB and I decided that his New Year’s Resolution for this year should be to be a better tooth brusher. He has pretty bad habits in that area that we are determined to kick.

The first thing we did was watch this cute video together: Dr. Rabbit and The Legend of Tooth Kingdom.

Here are some great animations from the ADA site.

We learned about brushing, flossing and rinsing by using this downloadable teacher’s guide from Proctor and Gamble.

There were lots of fun ‘tooth brushing’ games here.

We did this science experiment:

Two apples to represent your child’s precious teeth.

Take a pencil and poke a hole in one apple. This will represent an untreated cavity.

After 24 hours we cut open each apple. The one with the cavity had obviously started to rot.

And the control apple showed no signs of rot, because it had NO cavity.

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We started this next experiment four days ago. It’s a very easy experiment, but it just takes some time to accomplish anything.

Take one egg from the fridge. Mark one side with a permanent marker.

You will need the egg, a small dish, and some toothpaste with fluoride cavity protection.

Squeeze the toothpaste into the small dish.

Then immerse the egg, marked side down, into the toothpaste so that it is halfway submerged. Leave it for four days. This will allow the fluoride to penetrate the egg shell and help protect it for the next phase of the experiment.

Plaque is an acid. So in this experiment the vinegar will represent the plaque. After gently washing the toothpaste off of the egg, we gently submerged the egg in a cup of vinegar.

Immediately we could see bubbles forming on the unmarked side of the egg. The plaque (acid) was obviously attacking the tooth (egg).

Leave the egg in the vinegar for 7-12 hours. Start checking after about seven hours. As you can see from the above photo, the ‘plaque’ really weakened the ‘tooth.’ The shell on the egg was extremely soft and you could easily push your finger in on the unmarked side. The marked side was much harder. And you could really see the benefits of the toothpaste. We left our egg in the vinegar for 10 hours.

I’m hoping that this experiment will reinforce the reasons behind brushing, and the fact that you must be diligent in the care of your teeth. It was a great visual for GB… and me, too! I was shocked at the difference.

THIS is why I love to blog and read blogs! When I was visiting Jamin’s blog, I found this post for a cootie catcher. So funny! I played with these as an early teenager. Our cootie catcher would foresee the future and tell you about your future life; what kind of house you’d live in, how many children you’d have, and who your husband would be. Jamin decided to make her cootie catchers educational in various ways.

This is my version. I adapted it to our Latin study. This is an extremely informal study of Latin words. I think that someday, when GB is ready for a real Language course, such as Spanish or even a traditional Latin course, that our Latin games will be remembered and be helpful.

To fold a cootie catcher you can follow the instructions here.

I used stickers that we have in our sticker box because they were quick to decorate with. But you can color or decorate any way you like.

GB would choose a character and then we’d spell it’s name. “D*O*N*A*L*D” Work the cootie catcher in back and forth with each letter spelled revealing a set of numbers underneath.

Upon finishing the spelling, choose from one of the numbers revealed and open that flap.

The flap reveals a Latin word and it’s English translation. He would ask me the English translation, and I would, on my turn, ask him to translate the Latin word. This was highly entertaining for quite a while. And I’m positive he knows these eight words now.