March Book- The Wizard of Oz

It’s been a while since my last post, and that’s mostly because our Nest got hit with a couple of illnesses back to back, and we had to put some lesser priority things on the back burner. Nevertheless, we’re back, we’re happy, we’re healthy and we have a new literary adventure to discuss!

This month’s adventure took us over the rainbow, where we traveled down the yellow brick road, and met the great and terrible Wizard of Oz!

Since our adventure for March varied greatly from our December and January adventures, I’m going to present it a little differently. The thing I love about these literary journey’s are the rabbit trails they allow us to explore, and also how we can hit every core subject with one book. Let’s explore how we did so with the Wizard of Oz!

The Science of Oz

Several Science topics presented themselves as we read this book. Here are a few things we touched on.

Weather Science:

Of course the first topic we went down was weather science, and learned about Tornadoes, why the term cyclone was used by Frank L. Baum, and the difference between the two. We also made a cloud view finder to identify basic clouds formations in the sky. The template for this view finder can be found here.

Our second weather science experiment was a tornado in a jar. Directions for this experiment can be found here.

Youtube videos:

What is a Tornado?
Hurricane, Tornado, Cyclone. What’s the Difference?
Types of Clouds
What are Clouds Made of?

Elemental Science:

We took the opportunity with the Tin Woodman to learn about the element of tin. We didn’t dive too far into this, but we explored some fast facts, and where in our home we can find tin! You can find these info sheets here.

I didn’t have enough time to create fact sheets on emeralds, but we also had a deep dive on the element Beryllium which Emeralds are a naturally occurring compound of.

Youtube videos:

Tin – Periodic Table of Videos
Beryllium – Periodic Table of Videos
How Emeralds Form

There’s no place like Social studies

This year we are studying the US states, and the Wizard of Oz provided us with a perfect opportunity to focus on Kansas. We drew elements from the state, with my preschooler jumping in to grace us with her beautiful rainbow. Audrey drew a fantastic representation of the state bird, and I accompanied them with a sunflower to represent the sunflower state!

Youttube videos:

Kansas for Kids- Homeschool Pop
Kansas Geography and Counties
A Brief History of Kansas

wicked crafts

Is it really homeschooling if you don’t do a craft of some sort? Here are some of the crafts we did over the past month:

Paper chain rainbow- pretty self explanatory. Make chains of different colored paper and create a rainbow out of them. We hung ours up in the archway between our entry and our living room!

Emerald City Glasses- For this one you’ll need a template from here, paper (cardstock, or even cardboard for sturdier glasses), green coloring tools, green cellophane, and tape. Print out the template and cut out the pieces. Color in the glasses with your preferred coloring tools. Fold the tabs on the frames inward. Tape or glue the ear pieces to the tabs. Cut out the size cellophane you need for the lens. Tape the cellophane to the inside of the frames. Put on glasses, and enjoy the green hues around you!

Tin Woodman- You’ll need two sizes of tin cans, a funnel, gray/silver spray paint, googly eyes, red felt, tin foil, and pipe cleaners. I used hot glue to secure everything in place. Using clean, dry tin cans I secured the two together with hot glue by gluing the bottoms to each other with a single pipecleaner (the arms) in the middle having the access hang over either side of the larger can. The funnel, I spray painted a silver color to match the rest of the Tin Man, and secured that into place on top of the smaller can. Glued the eyes to the front of the smaller can and glued two pipe cleaners (the legs) to the inside of the larger can. Using tin foil to make hands and feet. Cut out a piece of red fabric into a heart and glue to the chest.

Sleepy Food

I couldn’t go on a literary adventure and not make a food! When trying to come up with an idea for this story, I decided I wanted to pay homage to the iconic poppy field, so I found this Poppy Seed Crumble Cake, and decided to give it a go. When the three year old eats it with no problems, you know you got a winner!

And of course a playlist of songs we enjoyed throughout the month.