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.

It's a New Year!

Ok so a new school year for many school aged children. So I took this opportunity to start a new year with my Angel Girl (also this is my first full time mama time so we are developing our rhythm). So this week we are:

Learning Humpty Dumpty
Refreshing our known letter knowledge (working on A this week).
Reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears (and many of its renditions)
Retelling the story with puppets (and just "reading" the story).

We have also pulled out some of our Kumon books to practice tracing and coloring (just for fun).
Looked for and made circles.
Counting out 1 object.

I look forward to teaching her how to make her bed every morning and add this to her chore chart.

How have you learned this week for the new year?

Week of May 31 - June 4

Angel Girl (toddler)

Monday

Read "Spring is Here" (theme, pre-reading)

Have Angel Girl glue green leaves onto a brown tree (theme, art)

Tuesday

Read a yellow book. Sort out yellow items from a bag of toys. (color)

Sing "Spring is Here" (theme, music)

Wednesday

Kumon tracing book (pre-writing)

Talk about Spring, baby animals, flowers, bugs, trees (theme)

Thursday

Glue alumninum foil over star outline to make a shiny star (shape)

Use tissue paper to make a tulip (theme, art)

Friday

Matching game using bird outline, variation 1 with dots, variation 2 with shapes, variation 3 with colors, variation 4 with letters (theme, math, color, pre-reading, shapes)

Shaving Cream Art (J4F)

Sweet Boy (baby)

Book: Good night moon (read before naps and bed)

Game: Different Textures - touch and feel different textures of material

Nursery Rhyme: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

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.

May Week 1

Monday

Read book about ants (I read The Life and Times of an Ant, but there are many many good fiction and nonfiction books). (reading, theme)

Sing song about Ant/insect parts. Here are some cute ones. (music, theme)

Tuesday

We went to a local museum that has a collection of leaf cutter ants and just observed and talked about it. If you don't have a local museum like this you can always just go outside and find an ant hill and sit and watch it for a while. (science, theme)

Read a blue book, then hand over some different types of blue paper and tissue squares and let Angel Girl cut and glue them on a paper to make a blue collage. (color of the month, art, reading)

Wednesday

Crawl like an ant around the room, so extentensions of this are to have a piece of food (real or play) that they can pick up and move like an ant. (movement, theme)

Kumon tracing book. (pre-writing)

Thursday

Thumbprint Ants. (theme, art)

Read a circle book. Tape a circle on the floor and do different movements around it like running, tip toeing, marching, jumping, hopping. (shape of the month, movement, reading)

Friday

Counting to 5 on finger. (math)

Mothers Day - we read a book about moms (What Mom's Can't Do), and then she got to color a card for me. (Just 4 Fun, holiday)

Square Lacing

I used an old diaper box (we have way too many of these hanging around) and cut off one of the top flaps. Cut that in half, then used a hole punch to punch circle holes all around the perimeter of the square. Then I took some yarn taped one end to the cardboard and with the other end I wrapped tape around it. The boys loved lacing their square cards and was amazingly the longest activity of the day!!

Shape game

I put three shapes on the floor using colored duct tape - blue square, yellow circle, and purple triangle. Right away Thing 1 ran to the kitchen, where we just finished playing with our shape cookie cutters, ran out, and put all the cutter shapes in the right shape :) At least I know he can match the shapes!

I had the boy sit on special spots (couch pillows) next to me. Then I said "Run and touch the purple...."(and waited to see if maybe they knew the color, only Thing 2 knew the color blue because that is the color he has been assigned since birth). Then I picked up a shape outline and said the shape name. "Touch the purple.....triangle". The boys would jump up and run to the triangle and touch the shape. They played this for about two rounds of each shape. Then I just said the shape without any helping pictures or colors. This was a bit harder but they got through a round.

I think it was a successful way to get them to better identify one shape out of the three.

Shape exercise:

After they were tired of playing (which was sadly only about 4 rounds total). We each stood in a square and did different things like spin, touch toes, jump, donkey kicks (hands down and kick legs up) etc. They thought this was fun, but then kept fighting over who got to stand on what shape so we moved on to another activity.

Shape tracing with cars:

I got out some toy cars of the boys and let them race them around the shapes. This only lasted a minute or so until they were up and finding something else to play with (sadly, when one boy decides he is done both stop playing...).

I think it was a very fun, successful time playing with shapes :)

playdough cookie cutter shapes

Using this tutorial on wiki I made some shape cookie cutters. Originally the plan was to make sugar cookies using shapes cutters but I didn't know who we were going to make cookies for and next week we have to make a lot for Little Princess' birthday. So, we improvised with playdough. Thing 1 and 2 had fun with this but it didn't last as long as I had hoped.

Tuesday: Squares

We started this activity by reading about squares in one of our shape books. Then we had an exemplar and sang a square song
This is a square, this is a square.
How can you tell? How can you tell?
It has four sides, All the same size.
It’s a square, It’s a square.
(found HERE).
Then we went on a square hunt using the exemplar.

Week with Shapes/Setting up Potty Training

Monday:
- Read Shapes Book
- File Folder Games
- Ant Shape Matching (found through Confessions of a Homeschooler)
- Shape Matching (found through Home Grown Hearts)

Tuesday:
- Shape Viewers shape search (found through Home Grown Hearts)
- Highway Cars driving cars around the shapes (found through Making Learning Fun)

Wednesday:
- Play dough shapes (possibly using highways as our template)
- Potty Movie ("GO POTTY GO!")

Thursday:
- Library Story Time

Friday:
- Shape Cookies (using cookie cutters to make different shape sugar cookies)
- Potty Movie ("I can go Potty")

EDIT: We didn't do any activities on Wednesday because we had friends over for the day so I was in charge of 6 kids, instead of just my 3. It was quite the adventure. Here is my revised plan for the end of the week.
Wed: Play Date

Thurs: Shape Play dough, square lacing, shapes games

Fri: Library Story Time (read shapes books at the library)

circles

Last week we did a few things with circles. First we read a book about circles that showed us circles in every day things. Then we used our circle shape viewer (found at Home Grown Hearts) and went on a circle hunt around the house. The boys LOVE having this shape viewer to look through and to check and make sure it is actually a circle. Then we colored and cut three circles from paper and made them into a circle snowman! The boys weren't too excited about coloring the circles, but love cutting since we don't do it very often.

(I helped them with the circle eyes, and buttons down the snowman. Thing 2 was adamant that I be the one to decorate his snowman. Not sure if he is not wanting to do it, or doesn't think he does a good job...)

More Changes

So I want to start a monthly topic share. This will be outside of what I "normally" do but rather an opportunity to explore an idea more in depth and hopefully get lots of ideas to use in our mommy schooling endeavors. This topic can be used as a jumping off point for activities this month or just a way to gather a lot of ideas on the topic to use through out the year. Comments are a great place to add your ideas.

This month's topic SQUARE!

What are some ideas to learn about squares?


Here are some of our posts already written about squares.

Easter Crafts

DLTK's Site is a favorite resource for fun crafty activities to do with my kids. They have a ton of great ideas. This weekend we are having an early Easter Celebration with the grandparents and some of the cousins (wish you were here....). I decided to find some fun easterish activities to do with the boys to get them introduced to the idea of Easter Bunnies and egg hunting. I found templates on the DLTK site for an Easter Egg Mosaic and a bunny hat. So, I got out the craft supplies and we made some Easter crafts!!

We first did the Easter Hats. I printed out the ears template and let the boys color them. Then they helped me cut them out and I let the one waiting continue to color their ears. They did a much better job with coloring when they were cut. Then I taped two halves of a piece of white card stock together and let them color that. Then I taped the ears onto the hat, and taped the hat around their head. They love their bunny ears.

Next we did the Easter Egg Mosaics. First I cut the egg template out. Then, I pre cut strips of colored card stock for the boys to cut from. We took turns choosing a color and then cutting 'squares' out of it (reinforcing yesterday's learning). Of course not all were squares but this is only their third time using scissors. I helped them and said open, close, open, close.

(forgive the clothes, hair and makeup less face...., oh and the mostly naked children....)
Thing 1 opened his mouth along with the scissors each time I said open :)

Thing 2 got a very concentrated look on his face.

I let him try to open and close the scissors by himself and was a little afraid of loosing some fingers....thus the look of fear on my face. No worries, no one was harmed while using the scissors ;)

After cutting their 'squares' out I covered the egg with glue stick. Then they could just stick their 'squares' on. It was nice to have one gluing while the other cut, keeping them both happy and occupied. After they were all finished I put three strips of clear packing tape over their egg to keep the pieces on.

Here are the proud boys with their completed projects!!

(Thing 1 was a little concerned that his 'squares' kept falling off, but some packing tape solved the problem and now I don't have to worry about their little sister finding a bunch of 'squares' to put in her mouth....)

I think this was a very fun, successful project. I will be reading them some stories about Easter, and Christ and talking more about the Easter Bunny this next week.

Squares

Today we learned about squares. I checked out a video from the library that taught shapes (along with colors, and some numbers but my focus was for the shapes). I also checked out a book on each of the shapes- triangle, square, circle. We have previously talked about shapes and they know a heart and star, and Thing 2 can sometimes identify triangles, squares and circles. During an hour and a half drive we watched the shapes video twice. The boys seemed to enjoy it (although for an adult it can get a little annoying ;). After we got home we read the square book -'Squares: seeing squares all around us' by Sarah L. Schuette. The boys enjoyed finding the squares in the book and I think it helped them to be able to find the squares in everyday objects. After the story we got out our special finder glasses (found in the dollar bins at Michaels) and we went on a square hunt! We went to every different room in the house to find squares.



I was really impressed by some of the things they found. Thing 1 found the squares on our tile floor, Thing 2 found the squares on the washer and dryer. It was a lot of fun. After our square hunt I printed out a square picture found on this website. I also tried to get them to trace an outline of a square but we aren't there yet. I plan to continue to help the boys identify squares all around. I am not sure if I will introduce circles tomorrow, or if we will just continue with learning about squares until we hit mastery.

Tuesday: Intro star

So it turns out star is one shape that Angel Girl knows well. So we just colored a star and glued it onto some construction paper. The original idea was to count the points and find it in our shape book (a board book I found cheap).

Thursday: Circle Fun

When I was planning the week I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for circles yet. Mostly because I didn't know where we would be in mommy school by then because of all the other things I planned for the week. Well come Thursday I needed an idea and considered going online (my favorite place to get ideas) but Angel Girl had an idea all her own (thus why I love homeschooling I can take her lead). She wanted to run in circles. So we ran in a circle, and walked, tiptoed, hopped, skipped, jumped, elephant walked all in a circle. She loved it and I loved it!

Tuesday: Squares

Tuesday we sponge painted. In particular we used square shaped sponges. I had a large square sponge and a few smaller square sponges. I held up the big one and reintroduced her to the word square. Then asked to make squares on the paper. She seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Tuesday: Squares

Today I introduced squares to Angel Girl. First I showed her a large square that I had cut out. I told her about 4 sides and 4 corners. Then I sang her this song:
This Is a Square - sung to "Frere Jacques"
This is a square, this is a square.
How can you tell? How can you tell?
It has four sides,
All the same size.
It's a square, it's a square.
(she didn't really get the song but I figure we can revisit it often enough)
Then we did a square picture. I got some foam squares that I let her glue on and make a picture with. I used the word square as much as I could so she could hear the word while she was manipulating the shape. She loved this activity and is really proud of the picture that she made.

P.S. This was part of the art process gluing I am introducing this month. We used a glue stick and I showed her how to hold it and to put the glue on the foam square. She got putting the glue on but I had to help her a lot with flipping it over to put on the paper.