"Watching Our Baby Grow" School Activity

I had been waiting to post this until I got a picture of the completed project, but things started falling off the wall before that happened. Then my intentions were to put everything that fell down back up so I could take the picture, but, well it just never happened. So here we are going for 90%. Good 'nuff. Right?

The beginning of last school year was also the beginning of our sweet fourth child's life in my womb. The first trimester (plus some) was pretty difficult with trying to establish our school routine and simulaneously experiencing some pretty wicked morning sickness. So to help the children connect more with what was happening and why Mommy was so sick all the time we started a "Watch Our Baby Grow" wall.

Every Monday morning we would look up information about how the baby was growing and developing that week. The website we used also gave some fun comparisons to illustrate how big the baby was growing each week. (Disclaimer: I'm not giving a blanket recommendation of everything on this website. Some content is inappropriate, especially for small children. I have two readers so I would read the information to them and not allow them to read along.) We didn't always have the item indicated by the website so sometimes we made up our own. Our items were:

5 weeks - a mustard seed
6 weeks - a grain of rice
7 weeks - a rice krispie
8 weeks - a kidney bean
9 weeks - a penne noodle
10 weeks - a mini ice cream cone ("kid size")
11 weeks - a splenda packet
12 weeks - Mama's pinky (traced on the poster)
13 weeks - a peach (I drew a circle of the right size & had one of the kids color it orange)
14 weeks - a wrapped piece of Laffy Taffy
15 weeks - Mama's cell phone (traced on the poster)
16 weeks - Mama's mascara (traced on the poster; you could tape/glue an empty bottle if you had one)
17 weeks - a potato (traced on the poster)
18 weeks - a big deli pickle (freehanded a pickle of the correct length)
19 weeks - a 6" sub sandwich (I printed a clipart of a sub sandwich, enlarging it to make it 6" long)
20 weeks - a banana (traced on the poster)
21 weeks - a salad fork (traced on the poster)

Note: I explained to the kids that up to this point we had been measuring from the baby's head to her bottom. From this point on we would be measuring from the baby's head to her heels.

22 weeks - the length of a piece of paper (drew a line along the long side of the paper and wrote "as long as this piece of paper" above it)
23 weeks - a Harry Potter book (freehanded a book shape of the appropriate size and the cover artwork)
24 weeks - a ruler (freehanded a ruler)
25 weeks - a recorder (as in the musical instrument you learn to play in elementary school - traced on the poster)
26 weeks - a burpcloth
27 & 28 weeks - a bread bag (to represent a loaf of bread).... Yep, running out of ideas. :)
29 weeks - a churro (freehanded)
30 weeks - a mini Yorkie Terrier (remember, we're only comparing length here, not overall size :) - I printed a huge clip art which covered several pieces of paper and pieced it together on the poster)
31 weeks - a 16" costume necklace from the girls' dress up accessories
32 & 33 weeks - a knee boot (traced my calf and foot and freehanded a boot shape)
34 weeks - a build-a-bear (traced on the poster)
35 & 36 weeks - a Sam's sheet cake (I just drew the edge of a cake on our poster since I didn't have the room for a replica of a whole sheet cake on my wall.)
37 weeks - a largemouth bass (freehanded a fish of the appropriate length)
38 weeks - a handbag of appropriate length
39 weeks - Channah was born. I hung up one of her premie sized onesies that she only fit in for a couple of weeks. :)