Sept 5 - 9

Sweet Boy
Pat-a-cake
Painting with paint brush
Kumon Tracing with our finger
Brushing our teeth (Montessori Practical Life)
Clapping to music
Read Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boyton and named the animals in the pictures.

Angel Girl
Our Before Five in a Row book was Goodnight Moon.  We did art, animal classification game, memory practice using the pictures, learned Hey Diddle Diddle, and read Goldielocks and the Three Bears by Jan Brett.
Montessori work this week was opening and closing doors, especially the front door because Angel Girl told me she didn't know how to close it the other day.
We did free play with our C-rods.
We made popsicles and talked about liquids and solids.
We also made some shape cutouts that we traced to practice our shapes with.

Plans for 2011

First hopefully I can keep up with this blog but I need to spend time with my kids so if my choice is blogging or my darling children...well my children win.  So I have high hopes but we shall see lol.

So on to the school year starting in Sept 2011.
Angel Girl (age 4) will be attending a SpEd. pre-k program in the mornings so I will be afterschooling her.
So we will be using:
Before Five In a Row and Homeschoolshare for reading aloud, basically we will read a book for 5 days and do 1 activity a day.
Montessori at Home I will be introducing 1 activity a week from Montessori at Home which she can then have on her shelf to work on when she wants.
Cuisainare Workbook we will be alternating free play with activities from this little workbook.
The Complete Daily Curriculum for Preschool we will do 1 theme a week from this book as we did last year.
More Mudpies to Magnets I will be introducing these fun science activities 1 a week.
Slow and Steady Get Me Ready we will do the activity that is planned for her age at that time.

Sweet Boy (age 2)
Hands on Homeschool I got this for Angel Girl when she was 2 and am going to adapt some of the activities for Sweet Boy this year doing 2 a week instead of the whole program.
Slow and Steady Get Me Ready we will do an activity each week for his age.
Montessori at Home I want to start getting Sweet Boy ready for doing Montessori officially at 3 so I will be working on some Practical Life activities adding ideas from Montessori Mom.
Story Stretchers for Infants and Toddlers we will be doing 1 activity a week so  most books will take about 3 weeks to get through.

As a family we are working through the Read Alouds listed in the Great Books Academy, right now we are doing the Nursery books.

May Week 3

Angel Girl (Toddler)

(So I kinda skipped week 2...daddy was away on a business trip and it was enough just to be together).

Monday

Thumprint Ants (activity from week 1 left over) (theme, art)

Letter A trace and letter book (theme, prereading)

Tuesday

Isty Bitsy Spider (music, movement)

Sort out blue items from a basket (color)

Wednesday

Sing the Ants Go Marching with different movements like jumping, skipping, hopping (theme, movement)

Talk about ants. Write down one of the sentences that Angel Girl says, add this to a nature journal. (theme, prewriting, science)

Thursday

Counting raisins for ants on a log up to 5 (theme, math)

Use body to make different types of circles (shape, movement)

Friday

Moving like and ant to music (theme, movement, music)

Make magnetic maze for "ant" to get to a cookie. (theme, just 4 fun)

Sweet Boy (Baby)

Reading I Love You Forever by Robert Musch

Playing Pop Goes the Weasel.

Hearing I Had a Little Nut.

Thursday: Sniff Test

So I got this idea from Chasing Cheerios...basically I get really smelling things and put them on cotton balls and into jars...then we do sniff testing to decide what we like and also did a matching game where we match the smell to the original.

Thursday: Playdough

I made some scented playdough for Angel Girl on Thursday. Here is the recipe or you could try this recipe made with kool aid. Angel Girl enjoyed being able to smell the playdough and then we played with it cutting out different shapes with cookie cutters including the star shape. As long as it is in a air tight container it can last for a couple of weeks which Angel Girl enjoys (and at writing she has already chosen to play with it again from her choice shelf).

Wednesday: Cooking Circles

The idea of this activity is to make something that is circular. My first thought was sugar cookies but Angel Girl is dairy allergic so butter and milk are not options for us in anything. Then I realized we could make dairy free biscuits as long as I use the dairy free vegan butter we have. So I found this recipe. We made it together and used a cup to cut out the circles. Angel Girl loved rolling out the dough and then cutting out the circles. Then we ate them for lunch which made it more fun I think.

Thursday: Taste Likes and Dislikes

So for this day I got a variety of different fruits and veggies. Some I knew Angel Girl likes and some that she had never tried before including Kolrabi (I am sure I spelled that wrong :)). I had Angel Girl try the new food and I had a piece too. Mostly she just licked it and said yuck to all the new stuff BUT I did find out she likes mangos! I think I may do this more often because eventually maybe she will take a bit and not just lick it, considering she use to not even try it and just say yuck.

Thursday: Taste Test

So this idea is based on the many bloggers that do Muffin Tin Monday. Basically there are a variety of food placed in a muffin tin for the child to try. It is a fun way to try different food. This is what we will be doing every Thursday for Taste. I plan to introduce some new foods along with some of Angel Girl's favorites.

Our Activity

Our activity today was based on the concept of sorting. All of the toys were in one big pile in the corner of the room. Typically I would be fighting with the boy trying to keep them from dumping out the toys I just put away. Today I decided to have them help me. I got out two of the toy baskets and put a few cars in one and a few animals in the other. I then handed them either a car or an animal and asked them if it was a car or animal and had them put it in the right basket. They got it right most of the time but they were still having trouble. I thought maybe it was because there were too many concepts. So, after we finished putting the cars and animals away (Thing 2 even put the car basket back on the shelf!) I decided to try using only one concept. So, I put a few pieces from the boys Train into a basket and started picking up a toy saying "Is this a choo choo train?" and then saying "Yes!" if it was and "no" if it wasn't. Thing 1 really picked up on this. He would pick up a toy and say in a high pitched voice mimicking mine "Id dis a choo choo tain?" then say 'no ' and shake his head if it wasn't and if it was he would get excited and say "DES!". It was so cute and really got us working together to clean up while making it a learning activity for all of us :)

Cause and Effect

So for science today we went to the local museum. Where we threw pennies on the gravity hole to see how the fall and spin. We rode in a dinosaur car to discover that when we turned the wheel the movie changed. We also learned about sharing and turn taking. It was a great science day activity :)