There wasn't much going on in the way of formal schooling this week. My sister and her family were in town so we did a lot of hanging with them.
We went to The Mariner's Museum on one of the rainy days. My nephew, 15, is very into that sort of thing so it was a good fit for him. My sister enjoyed wrecking havoc and taking goofy pictures with us. Goofy pictures at Mariners is a tradition for us and our friends. It was good to see that my sister could hang with the "big dogs" like us. It's very important to me that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get the shot. lol
And I saw some scrimshaw (art on a whales tooth) that I hadn't noticed on any of my other trips here. We're starting a lesson on whales so I took a picture of it. lol
We even let them drag us to the beach. On the main strip. With all the annoying tourists. It was a bit of a rainy type of day so the crowds weren't bad. I bought the girls boogie boards and Mackenzie is quite good at it. So we're going to to the beach again tomorrow with some friends. We have to get our $6.99 worth out of those boards.
We also took them to Water Country because that's just a good time. I didn't take any pictures except for some crappy ones with my phone. But fun was had by all. Our friends met us up there so Kayleigh had her bff there and she loved that. And I had someone to sit in the kiddie area with me while everyone else rode the rides.
When they left we did some school lite. Mackenzie didn't do much more then finish up what we didn't get to on Friday and continued on with math and science. Kayleigh finished her Friday work and did a little more LA.
I had her do a cut and paste craft with her memory verse from last week. Just cause Colossians 3:20 is a favorite of mine. ;o) And she worked on her All About Reading lessons went on to 'd'. We made Dd shaped cookies out of cookie Dough just for fun. And cuz we like cookies. We also did a sink/float activity to go along with something we were reading with Sonlight. Kayleigh insisted that everything was going to float. She was correct 2 out of 8 times. lol
I'd like to say that we'll get in a full week next week but that would be a big 'ole lie. We start music classes up again and we have our annual "Not-Back-to-School" outing to celebrating the PS kids going back to school and clearing out of our favorite hang outs.
It was an exciting week at our house. It was show week for Kayleigh at The Little Gym. She danced her little heart out. (I might have had to bribe her with ice cream afterward to make this happen.) All of her adoring fans came out to support her. Thankfully she danced anyway. The promise of ice cream outweighed her dislike at being the center of attention. If you're good readers, I'll share her mad dancing skills at the end of my post.
Now on to the schooling...
Mackenzie's Happenings
Mackenzie is still living large in the land of "not much to do." Yet still she gripes. I'm seriously over the "tween angst." In fact, I might write a blog post of all the random things that set hormonal tweens off. I've actually been compiling photos of these items (or people as the case may be.) So if you see a picture of a dinner plate on my blog one day, that's why.
As punishment for the drama, I took a photo of her doing math. When she saw the camera she said, "Don't take a picture of me doing math. I'd like to forget about math." So of course, I took the picture. Now had she had said, "Please don't take a photo of me doing math..." I'd have still taken the picture. =o) I can't help it. It's what I do.
So there she is doing math. Dreaded fractions and word problems at that. She should be grateful that she is able sip on a refreshing glass of ice water while doing math. Some children are forced to do their math while feeling parched because they are only allowed liquid refreshment at certain times of the day.
In the world of science, we're finishing up our unit on the senses. She didn't gripe terribly about this and we're basically done except for two experiments. One required a sunny day and we've had nothing but rain. The other requires me to gather lots of items for tasting. That will wait until Kayleigh, who's also "studying" the senses, gets to taste. I'd rather only have to gather and prepare once. ThankYouVeryMuch!
We were mostly working on sight this week and did a couple of activities. We tested her vision. About what we expected. So was mine. Perfect 20/20 baby! Our favorite activity was testing our night and color vision. If you've got some colored pencils, a piece of paper, and a poorly lit room you are ready to go. Take your supplies into that poorly lit room, grab a pencil, look at it, and then write down the color that you think you're holding on that piece of paper. When you're done, turn on the lights and have a good laugh at the results.
If she thinks her load is heavy this week, wait til next week. Check out my sidebar. Lots of reviews coming up. Ha! Actually it won't be too bad. Just things like typing and some map work. I know she'll LOVE the mapping. Maybe not so much the typing drill.
In the land of the broken ankle, she's still hobbling around in her walking cast. We're hoping that it comes off on Tuesday so that we can start our summer fun. Like maybe a trip to Water Country on Wednesday. Fingers crossed!
Kayleigh's Happenings
Kayleigh's been busy finishing up some crafty stuff from last weeks letter P activities and pressing on to Q. And dancing of course.
I had to have her do this peacock craft that we didn't do last week. It was too cute not to do. All you need are some washable markers, a coffee filter, blue or green construction paper, fancy-smancy cocktail toothpicks, googly eyes, paint, and a spray bottle. Preferably one that sprays a light mist. She was hooked when she saw the spray bottle. The spray bottle that comes with the Baby Alive Beautiful Now baby works great! lol
You just color the filter in peacock-like colors, mist it with water, and wash them run together and turn beautiful. While that's drying, cut out the body, glue on some eyes and a beak. Or you could draw them. Add legs too if you'd like. Tape your fancy-smancy tooth picks behind the head to make those feathery looking things. The technical term is a crest or crown but I prefer feathery looking things because I feel that is more accurate. =o) When the tail feathers are dry, glue that body onto it. Then dip that little munchkins thumb and make thumbprints to represent those eyespot looking things. The technical name for those is ocelli. But again, I'm going to go for the more accurate description cuz that is how I roll. None of those highfalutin, nonsensical words for me.
Isn't it just the cutest thing? The peacock I mean. I know it's hard to focus on it, what with that precious little face behind it, but I'm talking about the peacock people.
It was all about Q this week. Q, q, Q, q. I'm going to call out AAR on their choice for representing Q. It was a picture of a Duck. Now I know that they're going for the word quack but you just can't use an animal to represent the letters 16 times and then jump to a sound. It's not right. Kayleigh knows that duck starts with D. She knows it deep in her core. I vote for quail. If quail is good enough for Fisher-Price to use in their ABC Zoo, then it should be good enough for AAR. I'm just saying. (Disclaimer: Despite the use of Nanny goat and Quack, we are still totally in love with All About Reading. For realz. We love it. I can't wait to be able to buy the next level because it looks like even more fun. Woot!)
Our skill in AAR was, once again, syllables. We broke down people's names into "parts" and clapped them out. She loved this. Absolutely loved this. She still does it at random moments. She doesn't always do it correctly but she sure tries. lol Our craft involved a duck quacking of course. And paint. She always loves the paint. And to point out that duck DOES NOT start with Q. Or q.
Our Raising Rock Stars verse was 1 Thessalonians 5:19, "Quench not the spirit." Easy to remember. Hard to explain. She sort of gets it. LOL
We finished up our Q activities and our P craft from last week. As you can imagine, the verse was not long enough to suit her fancy. She debated about allowing to hang on the closet door with her other verses because "it's going to be embarrassed that it's not long." I managed to convince her that while it might be small, it's still good advice to have. LOL
We also read a long list of books about queens from the library. I tried to get her to dress like a queen for school but she was having none of that. Normally she loves to dress up but apparently not when it is my idea. The little stinker. LOL
Sonlight
We are still reading about our 5 Senses in the Flip Flap Body Book . Kayleigh just adores this book and we are having fun with it. Lots of stuff to add in.
For sound we played a sound matching game. I put different items into plastic eggs and she had to shake them and match the sounds. She loved, loved, loved doing that.
For smell we had a cut and paste page that required her to color the objects that you could smell. We went around and "tested" each object first and then colored the ones we could smell with Mr. Sketch Scented Markers. Naturally we had to smell all of the markers first.
We had the most fun with the sense of touch. We used our sense of touch to play our 3D Feel and Find game from GuideCraft. We tested hot (warm) and cold items and then sorted them on a printable. And finally we used our sense of touch by playing with Water Beads
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First we touched them when they were dry. Kayleigh described how they felt to her. Hard, small, round, and rough. Then we added the water and waited. Or attempted to wait. Truth be told, she was checking them every 10 minutes. Or sooner.
To say that she loves this thing is the understatement of the century. She is gaga for them. She can't keep away from them. Once they were hydrated she said that they feel "slippery, soft, round, and plump." She has taken to carrying them around in a ziplock container incase she has an emergency need to run her fingers through her "balls." She's holding them on her lap next to me as I type. If you haven't tried them with your child yet, you should. We added some spoons and little plastic cups for more play. I'm going to be looking for some small, plastic tubes to use with them too cuz that will be lots of fun.
In other news
She started her fourth You Can Read unit. It contains the word mom so you know she loves it. LOL We've also been introducing our Math-U-See blocks for some math activities, worked in Explode the Code, played a lot of UNO MOO, and had a few tea parties. Or 100.
I'm just going to confess it right up front. We did not get much done this week. I don't have a good reason. I think it was partially because it was rainy and gloomy a lot so it was hard to get motivated in the morning. And by the time we did get motivated, it was late and I HAD to get fifth grade finished. So poor Tot School got pushed aside. So sad...
Here's what we did do. We started our Gg unit in Raising Rock Stars and All About Reading pre-1. Since we were doing G, we decided to make Goodnight Moon a book focus this week. We ate a "bowl full of mush" almost everyday. We were having a slight obsession with homemade apple and cinnamon oatmeal so it worked out well. Yum!
I wrote her a little message on the mini-white board just for fun and asked her to circle her name. Which she did. Then I noticed that the sight word for our RRSP unit was "go." Now I normally don't do anything with this words other than mention it to her in the beginning of the week. But since "go" was in my little message, I decided to see if she could find it. She LOVES matching things, so I gave her our RRSP "go" prop and she matched it and circled it. Then she said that she could write that word. So she did, much to my surprise. Yes, the g was backwards but it was a good backwards g. lol She proceeded to write a billion more times. With the g's all backwards because I didn't have the heart to correct her while she was so joyful.
The she decided to match her "go" prop with our RRSP. She proceeded to circle all the "go's" on our Bible verse printable and on our application printable. And the captial G's didn't even confuse her. Maybe it's time to work on sight words a little bit.
She was enjoying the white board so much that I wrote her name on the other side and told her to copy it. And she did a great job!
She was not as into coloring this week, as evidenced by her work on her Bible verse page and her AAR alphabet sheet. I knew it was too good to be true last week. lol
Kayleigh was happy enough to work on writing G.
But the length of the Bible verse this week was not to her liking. She didn't even want to hang it up on the closet door. LOL
We read Goodnight Moon a lot. She also "read" it to me a lot. We always enjoy finding the mouse on each page. We also talked a bit about pairs, rhyming, and did some of the Goodnight Moon printables from Homeschool Creations.
And since we were focusing on the letter G and talking about pairs this week. Kayleigh played a lot with her favorite pair of G items. The guinea pigs.
I guess next week, we'll be finishing up with G. Hopefully, it will be sunnier so we can get started earlier. LOL
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It’s a busy time at our house in February. Double birthdays. Both my little monster disobeyed my orders and got a year older. Can you believe it? At any rate. All this birthday fun has gotten in the way of my blogging so this week you get two weeks for the price of one. Well, sort of, it actually took us 2 weeks to complete one week’s worth of lessons. Birthday errands and field trips cutting into our regular schedule.
Raising Rock Stars
We have been working on the letter E with this unit. Our verse was “Even a child is known by his deeds.” Interestingly enough, this verse seemed to speak to Kayleigh. On at least 4 occasions she went out of her way to be extra helpful. Cool! Although, as you can tell by the picture, she found the length of the verse offensive. lol
All About Reading
Along with E, we worked more on rhyming. She is getting better at it with each activity. For our craft we colored the elephant picture and made peanuts for him using her finger prints. So simple yet so cute! For our tactile letter experience, she made E on the geo-board. She liked it so much that she made A-C too.
Sonlight
We’ve finished up with fairy tales for the moment and have moved onto some science with the Flip-flop Body Book. I thought she’d be upset with that, seeing as she’s a princess-loving girly girl, but I was wrong. She is so into that book. She especially enjoys rereading that page that shows where the food travels once it enters your mouth. We have read those pages at least 20 times of the last couple of weeks. lol
Other Stuff
In other news we have continued to use resources from 1+1+1=1’s ABC Animals, activities from our Letter of the Week stash from COAH, and we started a fun Valentine pre-k pack from Over the Big Moon along with a few other sources.
We played Elephant ABC bingo using our LOTW inserts for our Education Cubes and a printable from PreKinders. She did a wonderful job on a color-by-number page. Surprising since she usually balks at coloring.
She worked in several of her Kumon books. She loves them.
Some of our LOTW activities and a number sorting card game that I picked up in the Target dollar spot a while back.
ABC Animals tracing and craft. She was singing her heart out while she was painting the letter sheet. lol
She used the shape builders that came with our Grasshopper Prep Kit. That was a lot of fun. She couldn’t believe that she “built” a scooter. lol
She was supposed to dot paint and elephant but wanted to color it instead. Weird! Then she dot painted E’s (ABC Twiggles) and then we counted shapes on an elephant.(Making Learning Fun.) She stamped the answers with number stamps.
Now for our Valentine fun. I’ll start with her favorite thing. Heart Measuring. I first saw this idea on a pinterest but there was no printables with it. Wahh! So I made my own. And I decided to use something other than cubes for measuring. I went with candy hearts! She lives for “candy heart school.” You can download the printables by clicking on the picture below. It includes the answer sheet and heart shapes for measuring. Although the shapes pictured are just ones that I cut out of colored paper to save on printer in.
Both of my girls loved this activity. Probably because they got to eat the manipulatives. Since Kayleigh doesn’t write very well yet. I just let her stamp the answers using number stamps.
Another pinterest find was this cute little Valentine stamping idea using toilet paper tubes.
From the Valentine pre-k pack
A trip to the symphony
And my shy little birthday girl. She gets very embarrassed by the birthday attention. Her party next week should be interesting.
There wasn't much going on in the way of formal schooling this week. My sister and her family were in town so we did a lot of hanging with them.
When they left we did some school lite. Mackenzie didn't do much more then finish up what we didn't get to on Friday and continued on with math and science. Kayleigh finished her Friday work and did a little more LA.
. Kayleigh just adores this book and we are having fun with it. Lots of stuff to add in.
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Truth be told, she was checking them every 10 minutes. Or sooner.
, and had a few tea parties. Or 100.
