Counting Curls

This week we started our study of North America using Build Your Library (BYL). We also continued our Kinderbach lessons, did some painting, and kept our ourselves pretty busy with summer activities.

To start our study of North America we took out Curly’s atlas and read about land features of North America. We had fun inspecting a few maps. Moving on to the people that live there, we started reading in Children Just Like Meand read about children from all over the Americas. We focused on Omar, a boy who lives in Mexico. From there on out, we focused on Latin America for the week. We then raided the library to find some relevant books. One was this book:

I enjoyed the illustrations and all the references to other Latin American animals.

Speaking of animals, we read in our Animal Atlas  about animals and ecosystems in North America and chose an animal to do extra reading on at the library. We chose the monarch butterfly after we went on a walk and discovered monarch caterpillars all over milkweed near our home. We got some cool pictures!

After reading so much about Latin America, we did an art project to make a Papel Picado, a colorful banner often hanging in Mexican markets.

The instructions to make the Papel Picado are in the book recommended by BYL, Around the World Art & Activities by Judy Press. This is a simple and easy project – I hope the projects continue to be so!

We took advantage of some nice summer weather by heading outside with the watercolors. I showed Curly how to splatter paint, which may just be her favorite art activity yet.

Painting outside! I love not having the mess in the house.

The finished splatter painting project.

We really enjoyed ourselves! Next week we move on to reading about the United States.