Weekly Wrap Up {the one with the turkey and the mind map}

November is the season of thanksgiving....and turkeys.  Every year that Zippy has been in school she made a feather to go on the big turkey bulletin board at the front of her school.  This year with an infulx of new technology at the church - which is in the same building as the school - they replaced the bulletin board with a flat screen television.  It is really kind of neat actually, on school days the tv plays school announcements and on Sunday it shows church announcements. 

I realized, when the Little Dude brought home feathers from pre-school to color that Zippy would not be doing a feather for the big turkey. 

This made me sad. So much is changing this year.  So I went to the pre-school teacher, who has a turkey on her own bulletin board, and asked if I could come in after school some day and trace her turkey and she says to me, "Oh, do you want to borrow a turkey?" Um, well, yes.  She had two. I brought one home.  He is now on our wall.

For the month of November Zippy's art project is to make a feather every day. She can use all the art materials and papers that we have on hand.  The rest of us are pitching in a feather here and there as well.  This will be the best dressed turkey in the neighborhood.  Before the borrowed turkey goes back to it's home I'm certainly going to make a likeness, so we can make thankful feathers every year.  The tradition continues, just in a different way.

This week Zippy started Blood and Guts.  I have to admit, I am really struggling with the science.  I found this book on my bookshelf and though, well this will get us through another eight weeks.   For chapter 1 on skin I had Zippy do a mind map.  This is a different way of organizing or outlining information.  She used a big piece of paper taped to the wall and organized the information from the chapter around the word skin.  She used markers so she could incorporate different colors, drawings and diagrams if she wished.  This was a great success.  We will definitely be doing this again.

Now, of course, I could not have Zippy drawing on a big paper on the without the Little Dude taking notice and wanting to "help".  So I set him up with his own mind map and markers.

He did really good at not drawing on the wall, just the paper.  He even put the caps back on the markers.