An American Flag

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."

~ John Adams

Last week, Hunter had his first American history lesson. We talked about the colonists and why they wanted their own country. We started talking about freedom, and what that means. Hunter has been familiar with the American flag for a long time, but we went a little deeper this time and talked about the symbolism, Betsy Ross, and George Washington's request. For an art/social studies project, Hunter constructed his own flag that now hangs in his playroom.

We started off with a piece of white foam board. I drew out the lines, and then taped them off with painters tape.








Hunter's first step was to paint the exposed stripes red.






He then painted the small square blue.








We let it dry for a little while, and then removed the painters tape - this step was really fun for Hunter, as he really enjoyed seeing his flag come to life!









The next day, Hunter applied thirteen stars (cut from craft foam) to the blue square. (I decided that Hunter can make a modern flag when he is old enough to cut out 50 stars :o)

Here is a video of Hunter talking about his project:

Five Green and Speckled Frogs

This week Hunter learned all about the life cycle of frogs. He was fascinated and soaked up quite a lot of information! For a fun froggy themed project we made an interactive display to use during the "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" song....

Hunter started out by painting his hand green and making five hand prints:

I rigged a drying rack and let the sun do the work while we did some other tasks:

Hunter is all the way up to "L,l" in his printing. Here he is saying each letter and getting ready to place his completed "L" strip in the pocket chart. As he was doing this he said "hey mom, take my picture":

Hunter also spent some time reviewing the printing of the numbers 1-5 (take a close look at the printing!!):

After the hand prints had dried, I cut them out (I also cut the thumbs off, leaving four froggy legs) and Hunter drew smiles and speckles on each one: (oh, and Hunter chose to give this frog glasses as well :o)





Next came google eyes and popsicle sticks glued to the back:

After the glue had dried, it was finally time to place the five speckled frogs at home on their speckled log:





Ready to sing!

"Five green and speckled frogs, sat on a speckled log,

eating the most delicious bugs; YUM! YUM!
One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool,

now there are four green speckled frogs" etc...