wrap up: Owl Moon

We just finished a delightful Five in a Row unit on Owl Moon! This story is simply gorgeous! The text is pretty simple, but the pictures are amazing, which is unsurprising, since it is a Caldecott medal winner.  We enjoyed some animal science, did some fun art projects, and even had a "snow" day (mostly sleet and some flurries), which is very rare in New Orleans, and was perfect for this snowy book choice!  I couldn't have planned it better.

For our first reading of the book, I turned out all the lights and closed all the blinds in the house to make it as dark as we could in the middle of the morning and had all the kids get a flashlight.  I hid our owl puppet up high in the mud room, and after we read the book, I told the kids to go owling and see if they could spot the owl we had hidden in our house.  So fun! They took turns after that and hid the owl for each other to find.

The other just-for-fun thing I did one day was make an Owl Moon themed lunch.  I am not normally the sort of mom who makes cutesy food.  My daughter was very impressed and appreciative, and all of the kids thought it was fun. Maybe I'll do something like that again?  But probably not soon.

Here's what else we did, by subject:

Social Studies
We located New Jersey on the map for our story disc, and colored a map page for our notebooks.  We discussed how it must be colder in New Jersey than it is here, since the story is set in a snowy winter wonderland, the likes of which New Orleans has never seen.  This gave us a chance to talk a little bit about how different parts of the country have different weather.

We did a second social studies day on kid/dad relationships.  This was SO fun.  In the story, the child has been looking forward to going out at night to look for owls with her father for a long time, has heard stories about it from her older siblings, etc.  I asked each of the kids to tell me one thing they like doing with their dad, and I wrote down their answers and had them illustrate them.  We gave them to David when he came home from work that day.  They were so sweet!  Here's Jono's:

I participated in this assignment too, and mailed my memory to my dad.  I'm sure he got a good laugh at my very juvenile art work.  

Art
We did two different art projects, neither of which were in the FIAR manual for this story.  They were just ideas I saw on Pinterest or other FIAR blogs about this book and thought looked fun.  Jonathan declined to participate in both of these (art is not a hill I'm going to die on for a 6yo boy), but I made one of each along with the twins.

Snowy evening scene with owl eyes:

Hazel's top left, mine bottom left, Charlie's right

We also used this tutorial to draw some owls!

Hazel's left, mine right, before coloring

Charlie was much more into the scene he was drawing with exploding stars than his owl.

Hazel's with some color

mine, finished

Science
We love animal science days!  After we read All About Owls, the kids did this Owls Can/Have/Are page.  That was a great notebook page to record what they picked up about an animal. I'm going to have to use that Can/Have/Are idea again when we do lions in a few weeks! Here's Hazel's:

Our big science activity this week though, was dissecting owl pellets!  This was a BLAST!! I ordered this kit from a homeschool science supplier and was very happy with the size of the pellets, how detailed the instructions and bone identification key were, etc.  The kids did one pellet together and we determined that it held the remains of 3 mice and one rat.  Later, I did a second pellet that included 3 mice.  So fascinating!

intact owl pellet, with visible mouse shoulder blade (I think?) 

see that little mousie skull?

I love Hazel's face here!

aftermath

one full-ish skeleton (rat) and the three mouse skulls and jawbones above

After a couple of days cooped up in the house due to sleet, we went to the zoo in search of owls.  We found two different owl species at our zoo! I didn't take pictures of them, but they have an Asian Bay Owl  and a whole family of Spectacled Owls.  The kids were thrilled to see the two white fuzzy baby owls.  Adorable!

The big surprise at the zoo, though, was the table set up in the kids' discovery area about owls! They had several owl pellets, some feathers, some talons, and some skull bones from rodents that local owls might eat (mice, rats, nutria).  It was meant to be! The volunteer working the table said that we were the first visitors to stop by that morning, and that she was pretty sure my kids knew more about owls than she did. ;) My kids loved to see the talons and feathers.  We had talked about both of those when we read owl books earlier in the week, but to see the two talons facing front and two curving back for grabbing prey and to see the serrated edges of feathers to aid in silent flight was really meaningful!

checking out feathers at the owl display table at the zoo

We enjoyed the go-along books Owl Babies and Wait Till the Moon is Full, as well as All About Owls that I mentioned earlier.  Such a fantastic unit!

A couple more random pictures this week, not related to FIAR:

Jono has been doing a word search puzzle almost daily. His occupational therapist did one with him and he loved it, so we got him a book of them to do at home.  

Charlie's written phonogram practice.  The phonograms had to be part of a "sound train" going to the factory to make words.  This is what doing spelling with a 5yo boy is like. LOL

sleet on the trampoline!

icicles on the bird feeder!

remains of ice at the zoo!

Next week, we're taking a break from FIAR to spend a week on the winter olympics, and then we tackle Andy and Lion after that!  I hope you'll follow along!