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We have been outside working in the gardens almost every afternoon (for 2-3 hours). This is such a huge part of our life right now, I just had to write a bit about that again. I thought the girls looked particularly cute yesterday. Yes, I let my girls garden in velvet dresses!! They are looking intently for grubs because I mentioned that that they aren’t good for the garden. When...
I was telling my friend today how much LD loves this series of books. We first got a couple of these in a lot/group of science books that we got off of ebay. But LD loved them so much that I wound up getting them all. There’s not a week that goes by that LD doesn’t pick up one or two of these to read through. They tend to reside...
Emperor’s New Clothes Craft: Shopping for the Emperor’s New Clothes This activity was a big hit! I cut out a felt emperor, shirts, pants, shoes, a robe, and a crown. Each had a set price (see the sheet below). Then I gave the kids $5.00 or $8.00 to go shopping for the emperor. A great review of money and DD in particular has learned a lot and done this activity...
The other evening I came home during a thunderstorm. The toads were covering the road leading to our house. Not one or two, but so many that I couldn’t drive the car around them. I went back a little later and there weren’t nearly as many, but still saw at least 50 toads! And saw that even though I was driving about 5mph and swerving wildly from side to side,...
Our first fairy tale today was Jack and the Beanstalk. I set up this felt board the night before and had some coloring pages for ED since she’s usually the first one up and she’s always ready to dive into the day! She was more interested in helping me bake…and sample… and mix… and sample! We made graham crackers and cut them into castle and cottage parts that I hoped...
The kids haven’t seen the homeschool room yet and I’m looking forward to surprising them with something a bit out of the ordinary in the morning! I know teachers transform their classrooms a lot and figured it was about time to try something like that for myself. I’m pleased with how it turned out! 🙂 We made the mushrooms last year out of paper mache (the doors have since been...
As I’ve mentioned before our house is nestled down in the woods. The former owners cut up logs and threw them into a huge pile which is now happily decomposing. We’ve used some of this mulch in our garden areas (well away from the house). Here’s some of what we’ve observed from this decomposing pile! We found lots of these large beetles in our mulch pile. My best guess is...
DD is feeling a little bit better and wanted to do a leprechaun craft too. She wanted to do something different than the other kids. Last evening someone shared a new art website that had lots of elementary art lessons. I took a quick look and the bottle dolls caught my attention. When DD asked to do a craft she agreed that the bottle doll might be fun. She and...
DD made a sunflower lapbook. I finally have a few minutes to share her work here. She colored the front page and decided she didn’t want a title on the front cover so I added it into the photo digitally. I purchased this Sunflower Unit Study/Lapbook on currclick. It was $1.00 (USdol) — and was totally worth it since both DD and I learned a lot of new information. You...
Confession Time: One thing that I have not done well these past couple of years is to include activities that show word family patterns. Both LD and DD learned to read easily and early. Once they were off and reading, I guess I never saw much “point” in going over these kinds of things. But then… then I saw LD struggle as a writer. He has worked hard on the...
Today we did some shamrock fishing. I made three different activities to be age appropriate for my 7, 5 and 3 year olds. LD is working on his multiplication tables from 2s through 6s. His shamrocks had various problems whose answers fell between 20 and 29 (such as 4×5, 5×5 and 3×7) and other problems whose answers fell between 30 and 39 (3×11, 6×6, etc.) DD’s shamrock fishing was addition-related....
Today we made this leprechaun craft. For the hat, I had some round rubber gripping pads from the dollar store and cut them into a hat shape. The kids then used a large embroidery needle and yarn to make the buckle shape in the hat. This is ED’s finished leprechaun to the left. LD had me on the floor laughing with his crazy leprechaun hat!!! Kids come up with some...
There are such wonderful resources out there for those of you planning to do some St. Patrick’s Day activities with your kids. Here are some of the free St. Patrick’s Day units and printables I’ve come across this past week: Irish-themed letters (lower and upper case), numbers (0-20) and phonics cards; Powerpoint Explanation about St. Patrick and how he brought Christianity to Ireland Musings of Me — St. Patrick’s Day Teacher’s...
We have been having so much fun lately that I haven’t felt like blogging. The kids have thrown themselves head-first into a gardening/plant/sunflower unit. We’ve been working on our outdoor garden, planting seeds (indoors), lapbooking, reading lots of books about plants and gardens… and so much of this is directed by the kids that I’m just along for the ride! Anyway, all is well here — just busy (in a...
