Activities Galore

 

Hi all. It's been 3 weeks since I last posted? Well, our last book of the 6 Weeks was a lovely one, but only offered a pretty light week of school. We read Miss Rumphius about a lady who grows up to travel the world and finally settles in a house by the see where she spends the rest of her life fulfilling a promise to her grandfather- to make the world more beautiful. She plants lupines all over town. 

The kids painted pictures of lupines using their thumbprints. We painted on cloth since the illustrations use that as a canvas. We also examined seeds in some of the fruits we had at home. They made little seed packets and stored their seeds. Apologies for my computer being stubborn and refusing to rotate this picture. 

 

At the end of the book, Miss Rumphius' niece makes the same promise to her- leaving that part of the story open. Hannah and Chloe wrote their own continuations. Hannah named the niece Zidya- she always prefers made up names to real ones.

 

She followed the plot of the original story and had Zidya travel the world. She had to choose 2 countries we've studied so far. She picked India and had Zidya dance with belly dancers. : )  Then she traveled to Japan and wore a kimono. Eventually Zidya settled by the sea and made the world more beautiful by raking everyone's leaves.

We read several books about plants and a few fiction books that involved children doing something good in their lives.

Our homeschool co-op has decided to focus more on outings, service projects, and general play rather than the planned group lessons. Already I'm sensing this is a great change. Our first field trip was to the local roller skating rink. This was the first time for our kids. Hannah was super determined to do it, but had the roughest time since she has the longest limbs! Chloe figured it out soon and liked her independence. Colin used a trainer the whole time even though I caught him successfully scooting along without it several times.

                       The next week we gathered to sing for a Retirement Home. Each family had practiced selections from The Sound of Music on their. We met for a quick rehearsal and headed over. I was quite impressed with the kids. They really projected and sang the songs quite well. One boy even brought his tin whistle and played Do a Dear. We chatted with the seniors for quite awhile, and I met one particular man named Lenny who kept making me laugh with his dry sense of humor.
The next week we simply had play time after Thursday Liturgy. We'll head to the Planetarium in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to that!  In other news, Hannah has begun lessons with a new piano teacher. We love her and Hannah is advancing well, but it's quite a day of driving long distances between that and Chloe's school. When Chloe is out for the summer, she'll begin piano too, but I went ahead and got her started on Hannah's old books. She's pleased to have mastered quarter and half notes. She's a great little student and very eager.

 

 The next week we had completely off. My dad came into town to attend Lone Star Wind Orchestra's rehearsals and meet the visiting composer. We had a great time that weekend, and I was also thrilled to spend time with one of my best friends who came into town to join the horn section. It was a wonderful concert! I wish I had a picture of Hannah and myself at the concert- it was her first time to see me on stage and she was excited to be there! It was difficult to plan much school for the next week since I was so busy. So we kept things extremely light. By Wednesday, I felt the kids were driving me a bit crazy and I put them in charge of themselves (if you read Facebook, you'll know). So I basically took care of what I wanted and they fended for themselves with a list of things they needed to take care of. Hannah was so sweet and decided to work with Colin in a workbook he loves. I heard her helping him in the most patient and enthusiastic way!

Taking baths and bathing Colin was on their list for the evening, but they get it done at about 9am. He was pretty pleased with all that attention.

They made themselves lunch at 10:30 and included vegetables! Way to go! 

Doing all of laundry was a main element to their list, complete with detailed instructions. I heard plenty of discussion amongst them about how to do this or that, but they got it all done! Here's Chloe's opinion on laundry.

Colin being resourceful. : ) Other things they took care of were general cleaning and reading. But they also had a lot of fun playing together. All in all, it was a great day!! It made me realize that perhaps they are a bit micromanaged sometimes and can really do a lot more than we give them credit for. Of course there's a fine line between that and them ruling the roost, which they certainly try regularly. This experiment was to give me a break but to also help them realize they don't need my help and attention for every tiny thing. And that if you're bored, bugging Mommy is less fun than coming up with something new to do.

Today, I went in the opposite direction and filled the day with activities. I was curious about the difference in peacefulness throughout the day. Since we weren't doing a Five in a Row project this week, I also took advantage of the countless Pinterest pins I had under education. While Hannah practiced piano, Chloe went through word tiles and organized which words she could read and which ones were too hard. This gave me a good idea of her progress, which was much improved.

I tried to keep them each busy at all times- a lot of work!  Colin worked on counting and identifying numbers with his favorite snack. Eating it was the bonus.

While Chloe worked on piano, Hannah completed a sticker story. She draws stickers out of a bag and has to write her story based on the images. I almost wanted to try this myself.

The kids are beginning a program I'm really excited about. It's part of the Flower Girl program (much like Girl Scouts) but it's separate for homeschoolers and doesn't include joining any kind of troop. The students just follow certain guidelines to earn patches and awards called Quest Club. I'll order them vests and when they complete requirements, I'll order their badges to be pinned on. At least one other friend will participate in this with us so far. Hannah's chose the Horse Badge as her first. I felt like the Level 1 requirements could be a little tougher for her, so I added a couple of steps. She has to learn about safety around horses. Read a non-fiction book and fiction book. She also wrote horse facts she learned from the book and drew a horse bubble chart. She did a great job remembering facts and really understanding the animal. In a few weeks she'll visit a stable and take a horsemanship class with her friends where she'll learn a lot more. They each picked out notebooks at the store and we're filling them with their work! 

Chloe chose to earn a butterfly badge. She's learned all about its life stages and drew them all.

She'll have to learn to identify 3 different butterflies and she also drew a bubble chart. We also read a fiction and non-fiction book. I'll probably also have her watch a video. Colin hasn't chosen a badge yet, but most likely it will be the Pizza Badge. : )

 

While the girls worked on that, Colin completed a shape puzzle I drew with objects from around the house. It took me longer to draw it than for him to complete it, but he had fun.

 I've been meaning to do this project with them for awhile and originally it was slated to be a co-op lesson. Before we started we read Something Beautiful about an inner city girl surrounded by so much negative she was on the lookout for something beautiful and ended up cleaning the trash and graffiti out of her littered courtyard and learning from friends what they found to be beautiful. This originally went with Miss Rumphius, but also went well with charity and making the world a better place.  IOCC (International Orthodox Christian Charities) has need of school kits. We went through each item for each child's bag and talked about what it represented- Notebooks (God allows us to write our own lives) Pencil Sharpeners (we sharpen our minds and hearts by praying and learning about the Saints and reading the Gospel) Scissors and erasers (We cut sin from our lives and erase the bad and replace it with good choices and ask for forgiveness). Rulers (God' love cannot be measured) Crayons (We color our lives by being kind and helpful selfless and by loving those around us). We completed 5 bags to donate. Now if I can do my part and add the velcro without procrastinating too much, they'll be on their way.

 Along with a few other activities that will be completed another time, I made an obstacle course in the backyard for them today since the temperatures felt like spring! They went through once and then again timed. Chloe won first place with her efficient ball dribbling : )

 Finally we did some marshmallow painting. Hannah had a very hard time dipping hers in paint since she would have much rather eaten them. They each got to eat one and were pleased with that : ) Their goal was to create a rainbow but I only gave them primary colors to work with. They remembered the term secondary colors and did a good job remembering the mixes. I even heard Chloe talk through her decision to use too much red in her orange and how that didn't work so well. Of course that girl talks about everything. I wouldn't change it at all!

Next week we'll get back on track with Another Celebrated Dancing Bear. I'm really interested to see what the kids will do for a certain project I have in mind.