Author: Liesl - Homeschool Den
LD and DD were especially intrigued by the dream catcher.They decided they wanted to make one of their own. Theyeach wrapped yarn around a clothes hanger wire that Ihad shaped into a circle. LD worked very hard (and lateinto the night I might add!) and did his without any parentalhelp. He was very proud of his work. He also tied all theknots on the spider’s web (we haven’t worked much...
The kids have really enjoyed this game this week. I gotthe turkey print outs from mathwire.com . I used somecraft cubes and wrote numbers on the dice 0-5 on twoand 6-11 on the others. It was good practice countingfor my preschooler. I made the spinner using a templateonline which I printed on cardstock and glued on cardboard.I put a brad through (it’s sticking up a bit) and used one ofthe...
The other game we played this week was an odd-evengame called Dino Math Blast also from mathwire.com.The dice were craft cubes. I used blue, green and yellowcubes and wrote the numbers 0-5, 6-11 and 12-17. Thefirst player rolled the die of the color space they werecurrently on. If the number was odd the odd dinosaurmoved ahead one space, if the number was even theeven dinosaur moved ahead. Then it was...
This is a little Thanksgiving pattern activity that DD worked on last week. It’s from mathwire.com.
I put a recipe for DD in her workbox thisweek. It was an easy recipe to make “acorncookies.” DD had other ideas, though, andwanted to make gingerbread men. We didthat instead (though I have no picture ofthe actual gingerbread men because theywere the first to get eaten!). Then I had alate night call from my sister and made theacorn cookies myself. It was lovely kickingback and having a tea and...
This week our reading related to Thanksgiving (manyof my read alouds were Thanksgiving books) and LDread a number of Thanksgiving stories and readers. We’ve been busy with all the kids’ outside activities: Kindergym, Tues mornings — mostly for ED but LD’sfriend stays home from school, so he gets to hang outwith his friend all morning. We go early because I helpset up each week, hauling all the mats and equipmentout...
Peggy Kaye’s books have been a WONDERFUL additionto our homeschooling curriculum. LD is not thrilled aboutwriting, but using ideas like this one from Peggy Kaye’sbooks have made a HUGE difference to the enjoymentand pleasure he gets out of writing. I got this ideafrom Games for Writing and LD is tickled by the sillysentences that he’s had to write like this one: A robot sang a song in the White House...
I just posted this in one of my yahoo groups. Just thought it might be of use to someone else (though I’ve mentioned many of these websites already!) She was asking for skip counting websites and games. This is what I wrote: Last week I came across a wonderful resource. It’s long list of interactive websites for playing math games online. It’s at http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skills_1st_math_new.htm I haven’t used the Internet very...
LD has decided he loves the last piece inhis piano book. He’s been working very hard tolearn it — it’s amazing what self-motivationdoes. He’s really improving a lot sincehe first started a couple months ago. Today we did crayon melts. The kids werevery excited both in shaving the crayons in thesharpeners (the one on the box worked well,but LD used a hand pencil sharpener he had).They just loved the results.
We pulled out the continent pin-map and the countingbeads this week. DD remembered the Continent songwith no trouble.
Last Thursday we went to the Desert Park.That’s our equivalent of a zoo except that ithas lizards, snakes, kangaroo, emu and anassortment of other desert-dwelling marsupials(mala, Western quoll, bilbies, wallabies, andso forth). It’s always enjoyable for the kids(and for me!)
The kids always like the Thorny Devil (top picture).
I don’t usually focus on the flowers, but they were in bloomand quite pretty last week. Here are a few pictures — Ialways think they look lovely against the red sands.
I put out a piece of contact paper (sticky side up) withsome crinkled pieces of tissue paper. I thought ED wouldhave fun making some art. There happened to be a coupleof craft match sticks and cut up straws in the bowl. WhenI turned around, ED was placing them vertically on thepaper! I was impressed at her three-dimensional picture. A little while later she had just as much fun destroyingher masterpiece.