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One of my favorite things about fall are the pumpkins. I like to look at them and eat all sorts of delicious pumpkin foods and drinks. Seriously, I love pumpkin food. I make my own pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin smoothie (still looking for a perfect one) and the list goes on. I told Nadia we were going to paint our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch this year and she thought that would be awesome. It was Amelie’s first chance to paint and she was really excited. The little ones in the photo are from Boo at the Zoo.

One of the crafts we did for our Autumn unit was heart bird treat. We left them out for the birds and they ate the seeds, but then the ants went for the bread. I think next time we will let them dry inside the house before we take them out to the feeder tree. Here were our supplies:

Bread, cookie cutter, egg whites, bird seed and ribbon.

Use the heart cookie cutter.

Paint the bread with egg whites.

Press the birdseed into the bread.

Loop a ribbon through and then hang from a tree.

I am going to start this post by saying that I learned a lot doing this unit study!! It was really interesting and with our schedule it took us about 2 weeks to do it all instead of the 5 days. Here is what we started with:

We downloaded this unit study from the Amanda Bennett site. This is the same place that we bought the “Sunny Seashells” unit. To see that post, go here. This unit had so many awesome videos that Nadia loved. She would crack up laughing at some of the stuff the robots could do. The cow milking robot grossed her out becuase “those udders look messy.” She was fascinated by the underwater robot Jason who has a 6 mile tether. It suggested that you drive 6 miles to give the kids an idea of how long that was. So the next morning when we drove to the gym I told her to pay attention because that is how long Jason’s tether is. She has talked about Jason a lot since then. There were quite a few areas we didn’t delve into because she can’t read yet and I think older kids would get more out of it. That is the great thing about these unit studies, you can do a lot or a little based on your child.

Here is the breakdown of the days:

Day 1: What Is a Robot?
Day 2: The History of Robots
Day 3: People and Places of Robots
Day 4: Science Secrets of Robots
Day 5: Goodies and Gadgets of Robots

Silly Nadia and her robot dot-to-dot.

How is a robot like a person? (notice Sparks from Toy Story 3 is watching her do school)

We learned about CiD – an ice cream serving robot. Can I get one for our house?

Nadia with her completed lapbook and her robot craft. If you look in the bottom left of the lapbook you will see her “water clock.” This was the first robot ever invented and it was revolutionary because you didn’t need the sun to tell the time. She has brought up the water clock a lot since we talked about how thousands of years ago people didn’t have electricity or batteries and all the technology we enjoy now.

Nadia and Wall-E. After taking this photo we celebrated the end of Robot School by watching Wall-E.

Click the photo above to see the whole album.

My friend Michelle told us about the Marvel Comics event at Williams Sonoma last month so we packed up and headed over there. For a $5 donation your child could decorate 2 marvel comic themed sugar cookies and they would get a special edition comic book. Nadia chose Spider Man and Iron Man.

We also picked up the Star Wars pancake molds that we used for Star Wars school. Later in the day we headed out to pick up some clothes and diapers during the Texas tax free weekend. PS. The cookies were yummy!