Lentil- Week 3!

 This week we read the book Lentil about a boy in small town Ohio who can't sing and can't whistle, so he learns the harmonica. The town hero, Col. Carter is arriving back home, but Old Sneep has plans to thwart the celebration. Lentil ends up saving the day with his harmonica skills.

 Since this and next week focus on America as location, we started the Pledge of Allegiance. Colin was the first helper to get to hold the flag. We're also singing a couple of folk tunes from the book and The Star Spangled Banner.

 For Social Studies, the kids found Ohio on the U.S.A. puzzle and made a construction paper project of their address all the way from our house number to which planet we live on. The next day we talked about how good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. After knowing that in the middle, there must be a problem, and in the end, the character with the problem has to solve it. We all drew from a hat to see which part of the story we would write. Here is the end result- haha

 Hannah later got motivated and wrote her own entire book about a girl who struggled with gymnastics. She believe it or not followed the general rules of storytelling, illustrated each page beautifully and took 2 days to complete it. I was very surprised. Good for her!!

 We also tried a fun activity I saw online. In Lentil the author is very descriptive about town of Alto- where the barber shop is, the library Col. Carter built, the monument in the park, etc. etc. So we drew the streets of the book as described and got out all forms of blocks to place the buildings and train station.

 Col. Carter's house was the most magnificent in town. Hannah called that one. (I like the modern cars added to the mix).

 They decorated Main Street with flags for his return- my amazing handiwork.

 Colin constructed the train station.

 We had a lot of fun with this and it occupied the kids after school time was over, too. An added bonus.

 Hannah' handwriting is improving...in an interesting way. She started adding curly cues to her letters, which reminded me of myself copying Burt from 1st grade and his interesting style of writing until I got a note sent home. Anyway, decorating her letters actually makes her go slower and form them more correctly, so I just let her keep going.

 We reviewed the months of the year for an activity in the math workbook, clearing away the chairs so we could walk around and stand behind different months according to directions I gave. Chloe only wanted to stand by her beloved October- the only wonderful month that exists in her mind. Hint: her birthday is in October.

 The kids have been enjoying the Saint of the Day of Bible Story of the Day and are just getting familiar with many of the Old Testament stories. But we've also been reading "Stories for the Children's Hour." I read this over and over again as a young child and even as a teenager, so these are all implanted in my mind and such fun to read to the kids now. They are Christian based and all show children in tough moral situations and how they decide to act- some make wise decisions and some don't but all end up looking to Christ to learn from everything that happens. One of my old favorites was Mr. Bert, the Cat, who was stuck in an abandoned house until a boy spent his savings to purchase a new window after deciding to break this one to save the cat. It's an old book, so I love how the window cost $1.

 For art day, we looked at all the interesting facial expressions drawn in Lentil. I set up a drawing station in the bathroom so the girls could make their own in the mirrors and try to draw them on face templates. Hannah worked on several faces and now has a whole collection.

 I'm guessing-  "skeptical" and "confused?"

 All of the drawings in Lentil are charcoal. So we tried a little ourselves. We mainly talked about how you could shade things dark, medium, or light and just sampled them in circles.

 Lentil played a harmonica and immediately Chloe had her heart set on one, especially after we watched a few YouTube videos. Luckily, Dax was making a trip to a music pawn shop the next day and she got to pick on out of her very own.

 On Friday we spent the whole day out. We headed to the town square for our field trip. We looked at all the shops and compared them to the type of stores in the books and talked about what a town square really is.

 There's an awesome new candy store and after browsing the whole place, the kids picked 10 small items to put in a sack, mostly gummy and no melty chocolate on that scorching day. They were in heaven. Dax and I have been there before and decided we would try a different root beer every time since they have coolers full.

 Hannah picked out this funny one shaped like an egg, but tasting like a peach. We also visited the antique store and used book store.

 In our town, there is 1 street full of maintained historical homes. Most of them are Victorian, but we found one that looked a lot like Col. Carter's in the book. Dax thinks he heard that a retired Colonel might actually live there. Any large house the saw, they called out Col. Carter! Colin's version was, "TURNER TARTER!"

 Colin is still in a toddler bed and could stay in it for awhile, but I've really liked the idea of the Ikea loft bed for several years now, and it was on sale, so we headed out to Ikea for the rest of the day. Swedish meatball lunch for them.

 It took me several hours last night to put it together, and still only finishing this morning, but it's a lot of fun. We hung a little lantern underneath and now he has much more playspace in his room. The girls hardly have any floor space at all in theirs due to the trundle bed, so this is really for them all.

 Math with beans is always fun until you remember that beans get everywhere.

 Our Science for this week was tasting and taste buds. Old Sneep sucked on a lemon in the book, so that was our jumping off point. I showed the girls a basic chart of tastes on the tongue then set up a bunch of samples. They loved that they had to close their eyes and see what I would put in their mouths. I had no idea it was so difficult to describe and distinguish sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. I just assumed they would know right away, but their guesses were all over the place! Last I checked a tortilla chip was no bitter. haha  Anyway, we lined up the "supposedly" correct tastes and they drew lines on a little tongue diagram to the foods they ate.

Next week we head out of town and will attempt to homeschool a bit on the road and in Tennessee It's 4th of July after all, and there are several fun things we can do to learn about the holiday. And many hours in the care to take up with books and activities...  Happy 4th of July!

Flexibility: School Week 2

 Well, week one of school ran smoothly, and week two tested my ability to be flexible- and maintain sanity. The first one I feel was accomplished, not so much the second. You can see my original lesson plan above and how many changes needed to be made as the week went along. We still had a great week of learning and it's good to know early on that we can handle many things that may come our way.

 On Monday the kids had a chance to visit a playplace we haven't been to in years- and with friends they can rarely see. So we decided to hold school in the afternoon and embrace the opportunity.

 After an hour drive in the rain through construction, and several calls to Dax for altered directions, we finally made it. And didn't realize the kids needed socks so had to borrow some from the bin. The place itself is very cool. There are so many areas to play- a grocery, a tool room, dollhouse corner, cars corner, bounce house, and as you see, a dinosaur land- and much more!  When we arrived home, we found we had accidentally taken a play purse and left Colin's raincoat. sigh :)

 After lunch we started school and of course concentration wasn't at it's height so I left more of the wordier explanations out and got to the activities. We're studying Summer this week! We read Touch the Sky Summer about a boy whose family visits grandparents at their lake cabin. We focused on lakes and mountains that day for Geography. The kids learned to recognize a lake on a map of our area and were interested to see which ones we've visited.

 I love this poster and the kids have gone to it throughout the week.  Hannah asked if the black writing meant those were "bad places." haha! I explained the print was in different colors so we could see the words more clearly. You never know when a little lesson will pop up.

 Next w created the mountain and lake landforms with play-dough. We didn't have the exact colors, so it's a chance for an even more creative mind, right? : )

 They referred to pictures in the lake and mountain books and included what they liked. Here's Hannah's with an orange beach, lake with lilipads, miniature forest, massive wildflowers, and because she always like things to be a bit scary for excitement- volcanoes.

                              Chloe followed suit but added a yellow beach and a beachcomber.

                                                         Beachcomber blob person.

 On Tuesday we happy to have a playdate with our good friends the Bentons. We finished their reading and math in the morning and did an art project with all the kids together. What's more summery than sunflowers? The kids talked about the colors Van Gogh used, the shape of his vase and flowers, and tried their own versions. (Hannah wrote "sunflowers" several times because I'm 'strongly encouraging' her to avoid writing so quickly that she makes mistakes or mixes capital and lower case letters)

                                                                     Chloe's art.

 I sadly didn't get a picture of everyone at work, but us moms produced nice versions as well : )

 One morning I woke up to this. I used to dump out all their baby puzzles like this when they were toddlers and it would give me time to complete a task on my own. The kids decided do it again, but didn't realize some of these puzzles actually take quite awhile! By the end of the day, we eventually got them all together again. In the meantime, we just stepped over the progress.

 New vocabulary words. Hannah's reading is progressing really quickly. In her writing we're working on forming the letters consistently with care. It's kind of funny to do this considering once she gets older she'll just write messy like the rest of us. Her math is also going well. She completed her first little workbook test and got 100%! 

 A nice surprise project in our week popped up when we read a random book they checked out from the library. It happened to fit perfectly with the summer theme. The kids thought of doing this themselves, and if they are interested and motivated it's often better to encourage them on rather than having to stick to original plans. That's the lovely freedom of having school at home. In the book, a mouse princess is tired of the royal gardens being so formal and draws plans of her own garden. The caretaker helps her over the course of a year work the grounds so her garden can come to life. I liked the planning/hard work lesson in this!

                                 Chloe's garden includes an airplane runway and a bookshelf.

 Hannah spent a few days thinking on hers. She'd like a variety of beds in her garden- labeled 'boys' and 'girls'. I'm all for beds in the garden.

On Thursday they went to Co-op and came home to a bit of our own school. She's learning to follow number lines in math, so I used a Twister map to make it more interactive. Some ideas come from blogs, but sometimes I'm lucky and things around our house come to mind! They would stand on a color and I would say 3! They jump 3 circles. Plus 2! Jump 2 more. Then they add up the circles they jumped. Excuse the pantsless boy- potty training still in progress. And the new Mickey Mouse shoes are never coming off. 

This was the day I lost a bit of sanity. Dax has been gone until 11pm every night, and while I actually enjoy quiet evenings on my own, to have the kids for every hour of the day for several days on top of life's regular responsibilities gets to be overwhelming. As he's always a patient husband, he calmly listens to my woes and I can begin to see clearly again. And the pile of laundry in the bedroom will get put away eventually.

 Friday we did some more interactive math. She's also learning about tally marks- or rather reviewing since they did them in preschool a bit. I figured our little bowling set would be perfect for low number tallying. I put out five pins and we played a couple of rounds using the chalkboard we have on the fence. At first I tallied while they told me their scores, then Hannah got a chance to mark them.

                     My Jar Jar Binks posture in action. Chloe easily won both rounds and I came in last.

 At one point I gave Hannah what I thought was a question she would really have to think about. "If Chloe has 17 and you have 13, how many more pins do you need to hit to beat her?"  She said "5" without missing a beat. I'm pretty horrible at simple math in my head- so there was an awkward and embarrassing pause while I figured out she was right. : /

 For a science this week, I had planned to mix various smoothie recipes with them, cut up fruit and match the seeds, etc. etc. It just didn't work out. We ate most of the ingredients before the end of the week-oops- and somehow seeds just didn't seem to fit in with the plan anymore. However, I had been reading a sensory poem to them every morning having them close their eyes. So we tested out their hearing. Each kid was blindfolded and the other two of us (Colin was out with Dad) would move around the yard clapping or whispering to see if they could point in the right direction. Pretty easy exercise and very funny.

 Field trip! I'm trying to do a fun field trip each week because back when you were in school, wasn't that the most exciting thing? I always wished there were more field trips than once or twice a year and now we can have them all we want! Since it was the first day of summer, what more appropriate activity than going to the water park for the first time this year. Hannah is very close to swimming (poor thing almost never has access to a pool- or a sidewalk to practice biking) and Chloe and Colin were able to do so much more than last year. Dax even went down the big slide a couple of times and they were so cute cheering him on. I loved seeing him up there, the only adult surrounded by kids, but proudly waving at his own little ones from the top.

And one of those amazing mom moments happened here! At one point Hannah came to sit nearby me on a towel. The lady in the red hat above and another mom had deemed themselves the slide monitors and were watching every kid there like a hawk. She came over and pointed at Hannah. "Is that your daughter?"  my heart beats a little faster and I nod.  "Well, she is a VERY good girl."  I smiled in surprise. "Thanks!"  and that was it. But that's all it takes to feel so proud of your kid and feel like you've done a little something right along the way not without plenty of prayer and help from others. So feel like doing a good deed? Compliment a mother and make her entire day : )

We love these kids and their blue eyes : )

Next week we read the book, Lentil. I can't wait to see how it all goes!