Block Builders and the Outside Classroom

Here is the post on Block Builders that I promised.  This is another toy manipulative from the ordered curriculum.  I keep posting links in case you might be interested in getting some of these things.  According to the site I could be earning Doodle Dollar Points, except I'm probably too lazy to fill out things properly.  This means that I am not receiving things for talking about the products blah blah blah. 

 

One thing I must say is that I love nerdy toys.  A whole lot.  I like using my brain.  When I play video games it is always things like Mah Jong.  Does that even count as a video game?  Mr. Father is always talking about getting some new game and "it's so great and it's an MMO!"  I have zero spatial skills in those kinds of games.  This is why I Beauty loves playing with these blocks.  The set of 6 blocks come in a nice sturdy box which makes storage easy.  The six blocks all form a cube shape and then open up to form other shapes.  There are 50 challenge cards.  The cards are numbered, have a picture of the shape you are to create and the number of blocks to use.  The answer is on the back of the card.  The challenges get progressively harder.  Beauty works with these whenever she wants to, which is just about every day.  

Yesterday we did our weekly History lesson.  We are using The Story of the World.  The book reads well and keeps Beauty's attention.  We touched on the Nile River, pharaohs, and mummies.  Early into the evening I looked around on Netflix and found IMAX Mummies:  Secrets of the Pharaohs.  We watched it and found where the largest amount of royal mummies had been located, a little info about Ramses the Great, and how to make our own mummy, sort of.  Beauty colored a map of the Nile Delta and the Nile River.

Today we ventured out to a local river.  It was time to give Beauty some real world classroom experience.

Beauty takes it literally when I say, "immerse yourself in knowledge."  She had a blast.  We saw a crawfish and pointed out different things and poked a stick at him to see the little claws work.  The crawfish soon tired of our ignorance and swam away.

A pretty bridge across the water.

All the wonderful river grass things.  If I had thought of it sooner I could have had us pretend it was the Nile River.  We could have reenacted the story of Osiris and Let and sent a "coffin" down the river.  Beauty would have liked doing that.  

Tomorrow is homeschoolers park day.  I'm hoping the weather will hold out.  We had such a great time last week.