Week 6 with the 4's

It seems the kids are mostly back to healthy this week, with the exception of a few runny noses. What a relief! I decided to change up the order of activities this week. Normally we jump right in to calendar and Bible time, but I decided to see how the kids would do making their own snack from start to finish...oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! I had all the ingredients ready to go, and I moved our "kid table" into the kitchen so everyone could gather around and participate in all the steps. Here is a peek at the little bakers at work...

The recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar, so each child filled 1/4 cup...they concentrated SO hard!

And we took turns creaming the butter and sugar...

And we used our muscles to mix in the chocolate chips by hand.

The kids did great using my Pampered Chef cookie scoop! Way to work those hand muscles!

 

 

While the cookies baked, we told the story of young king Josiah with the felt board. The Bibles I have don't include this story, so I just told it as best I could with the felt board. They actually seemed to get it pretty well.

And then we traced V's and W's using our tactile letters. And we discussed what sound each letter makes and listed a bunch of words that start with each letter. They are getting SO good at this.

We made V's and W's out of popcicle sticks. They had a hard time with the W...

Then it was time to try out the cookies! They snacked while I read Tales of Oliver Pig...and of course, they thought it was SO cool that Oliver and his mom made cookies just like we did...

Then it was time to practice writing last names...this needs some work to say the least! Ha ha! The kids had a rough time with this activity, but at least we know we have stuff to work on.

This girlie wrote each letter in  different color... :)

 

I also thought it was interesting that they can form many of the letters quite well, but placing them on the lines is a huge challenge.

Then we colored some pictures of King Josiah. I had to talk to the boys about why coloring is important and good practice for learning to write. They both used their crayons to scribble all over the paper without ANY effort at all to stay in the lines...I think they weren't very happy with me after this conversation, but I wanted them to know that it has a purpose, and that even if they don't LOVE to color, they should at least put forth a little effort.

The last thing we did on Tuesday was a visual perception activity using wood blocks. I set up a row of blocks that were all different shapes. I asked them to study the row, and then they had to close their eyes. I took one block away and they had to decide what was missing. They all did GREAT at this activity.

 

On Thursday, we had the special treat of having a friend join us for school. Evelyn was babysitting two kiddos for the day who happened to be the same ages as our kids, so we just added them right into the mix. It was fabulous!

 

 

 After calendar, Bible, and memory verse work, we gathered at the table to practice writing X's, V's, and W's. This was HARD for the kids! I gave them the angled letter worksheet from the curriculum, and they found staying in the lines very tricky...but they all did an excellent job concentrating.

 

Next we made a Bible scroll craft in honor of young king Josiah. They loved crunching up their paper bags!

 

They painted the scrolls using water colors. All the kids loved this part...

Sorry no pictures...

 

 

And then we practiced making letters out of play dough. Most of the kids found this really hard...making snakes is still pretty challenging for this crowd.

 

 

To wrap up the day, the kids practiced making patterns out of pop-beads. This was tricky for a couple reasons...they had to choose the two colors they wanted to make repeat, and the beads require some fine motor skills to snap together. It took most of the group a few minutes to figure out what to do, but they eventually all got the hang of it.

 

 

 

 

Lovin' the Flexibility of Homeschool! (Week 5 with the 2's)

This week was a bit wonky...everyone has been a bit under the weather with snotty noses and tummy bugs, so school kind of took a back burner for our little group this week. Tuesday went on as planned but Noah and Juliette were not able to attend school, so our groups were a little smaller than normal. At first I was going to ditch "school" all together since it was just going to be Doc and Gus, and since I wasn't going to have Evelyn there to help wrangle kids, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I'm so glad I did. Doc and Gus did great.

We started out with free play just to let Gus get adjusted. We still need to keep him busy while Kelda slips out the front door. Doc chose play-dough and Gus chose our Usborne book blocks.

 

 

 

 

Then it was time to start our Bible story. The boys did a great job adding all the animals to the felt board for the story of creation.

 

Gus thought the elephant looked best in the sky :)

 

 

At this point, Gus was content listening to the toddler tunes turned on, so Doc did this next activity solo. His job was to sort the red and blue pasta into the appropriate bowls. He was interested for maybe 5 minutes. After that, he just grabbed handfuls of pasta and threw them into whatever bowl he wanted. Boys :)

 

 

For snack, we practiced eating with a spoon while we enjoyed some applesauce. The mess was surprisingly small!

 

 

Then we drove cars on the "line" road I made with painter's tape...

 

 

And we tore some red and blue papers...good exercise for those hand muscles!

 

 

And then it was time for some digger-fun in the garden. What gorgeous weather we've had here in Vegas! Fall is here!

 

By Thursday, the snotty noses were really flowing, so we decided to ditch formal "school" and take ourselves to the park for some much needed fresh air. We brought a few organized activities with us, but for the most part it was all about playing.

 

We practiced scooping beans with a spoon from one bowl to another...

 

And once that got boring, we planted our beans in the sandbox...

 

After the 4's were done with their activities, Evelyn brought out her parachute! What FUN this was! We even invited the other kids at the park to join in. These things are the best!

 

I felt so thankful that we were able to still do some educational stuff while enjoying the flexibility of being able to head outside to enjoy a gorgeous fall day. Homeschool is awesome.

 

 

Review Week with 4's

Review weeks will be fun this year, an eclectic group of activities, but great to see how far the kids have come.   We began with the calendar and the pledge of allegiance with the kids are really doing well with. Moving on to letter writing, the kids worked on straight letters this week, lots of E's, T's and L's. They especially like using the white boards and the new markers I got that go with them .

Snack time! Before they could eat the Smore's Goldfish.....which Lindsay calls "crack" because it so good, I had the kids place them in patterns. Patterns with 2 colors was easy, but they struggled when they added the marshmellow to make a pattern of 3. It is good to see them struggle and to see how they adapt to it. Yes of course I let them eat it, and I had to have some too. 

The next activity took a while but turned out pretty cute. They each had to create a cross and follow directions about glueing the pieces on. I was really proud of them, because I would show them what it looked like and then they had to follow me. 

The final project turned out great, especially the silly picture of them! Gosh, I love these kids and I love my job! 

Science Experiment: flop but fun! We tried to create clouds with shaving cream and food coloring, but my attempt failed, miserably. But Addison, the astute girl that she is noticed that when I added red and blue coloring that the clouds turned purple! So then we talked about colors, and they had more fun playing with the shaving cream, and they all smelled like it too! 

This was another great activity. I had two kids work on number writing of 14 and 41 on the boards, while the other two kids worked on patterns and matching. Addison and Jack did a great job understanding that 41 is way bigger than 14. We also counted beans so they could see the difference, but I didn't get any pictures of that, sorry. 

Noah began on the Melissa and Doug pattern sorter. Where they had to match the pattern. This was great because they could each work on their own pattern at the same time.

Jack and Addison did really well with patterns, can't you tell with these cheesy grins! I had them switch and do another pattern that was a bit more challenging, but they nailed it!

Outside time! I have noticed that the kids have the numbers memorized, but they have no idea how to recognize them, so we played this Find the Number game which was challenging, but great! I placed the numbers all over the backyard, and the kids went and found them. Then, we had to place them in order. It was so fun, when I told them we were missing a number, they all ran around to look for it! 

As we counted to 30, the kids had to figure out which numbers they had and place it in the pile. This took some time, and a lot of help, but they were so focused and excited to find the number. They will get it eventually.