Co-Op Field Trip!

We are really enjoying being part of a co-op with other kids and moms this year.  We just recently finished our first unit on fitness.  The first week the kids learned about various kinds of fitness and some new vocabulary related to fitness and health. For homework, the kids kept a fitness log for a week and then shared it with the class the following meeting.  Then they were led in some aerobics, and yoga and then they ran around the track and learned how to keep track of their basal heart rate and accelerated heart rate.  The third week, each child gave a presentation on their favorite activity/sport and mentioned something they would like to try and then they did relay races and an obstacle course.  Much thanks to Mrs. Christa Hughes for all her hard work and planning this month! All the presentations were great! Finally, we took a field trip to the science center Body Works.  

We literally had the place all to ourselves.  Many of the kids were able to try new things they had never tried before.

Ryan for example, tried his hand at hockey. 

 Dylan tried rock climbing (why am I not surprised?)

 Most of the kids tried Rock climbing.

The staff were really helpful and informative.  They taught the kids how to do flips on the giant trampoline (in the harness).   Some of the kids tried the roller coaster simulation.  They also enjoyed racing each other and seeing their timed score on the timing board on the racing track.

Although this is not related to fitness, the kids also enjoyed the exhibit Blue featuring building and architecture.   I am always amazed at the creativity of kids.  Can you believe they built this archway  and fort using teamwork? 

Vikings and Visitors

A few weeks ago, we had some pretty special Grandparents visit.  

We enjoyed a great weekend of lounging and visiting and then Monday rolled around.  A school day.  Grandma and Grandpa had some errands to run (and they were kindly picking up some things to fix one of my cabinet drawers!) and Dylan wanted to go.....this was great! I could spend undivided time schooling Ryan while Dylan enjoyed spending time with his grandparents! Except....Ryan was in tears because he wanted so badly to go too.  Well....what is the point of homeschooling if you can not take advantage of the flexibility it provides?  So around 10:00 am, two boys bundled into Grandpa and Grandma's car and headed out to run errands.   They returned several hours later, treated to Chick-Fil-A and sporting new hats and gloves.  Ryan still refers to this day as his "best day ever!" and Dylan has taken to wearing his bright orange gloves anytime we go out to run errands.

Another school day, the craft called for making viking shields and swords out of cardboard.  I had a webinar to attend that afternoon, but Grandpa was a huge help in making really awesome cardboard weapons.

 First, he and Ryan researched what type of viking design they wanted on the shield over the internet.

 Then the cutting and assembling began.   They used tin foil and brads and really strong glue.  Grandpa made the shields very strong using the same glue he used to fix my cabinet and doubling the cardboard (one on each side glued together).

 Obviously, Ryan loved this project and the time spent with Grandpa!

 When I came out of my webinar, these things were spray painted (black, silver, gold) and they were using duct tape to give it a cool edge.

 The final product was pretty awesome!  

and the swords turned out really sturdy and neat too!

Rome and Greek Unit

Shortly after studying Egypt, it was time to learn about Greeks and Romans.  I lumped them together in one unit because....well...one week was all the time that was alotted in our curriculum before moving on to Vikings and Norsemen.  Ryan particularly enjoyed the "You wouldn't wanna be a slave in..." books. 

                                                      

As a result of reading these books, he now has an inkling of what "slavery" means.  Before this he really had no concept of what it meant to be considered property of another person and how terrible it was. 

He also enjoyed the "you wouldn't wanna" Roman books too. 

                                                                     

We read a lot of mythology books as well including books on Hades, Hercules, Medusa, Midas and the Golden Touch...etc.  For fun, we watched Disney's Hercules after taking a trip to the museum to look at their Greek and Roman statues and architecture. 

 Ryan next to Athena. 

And the replica of the Parthenon.  To end the unit, we held a "Greek and Roman" feast.  We discovered we don't really have any spare white sheets, so random blankets had to suffice for togas.  We ate dinner lounging on the couch, laying down and bare-foot.  They had to wash their hands in a bowl of water before dinner and eat with their hands.   

We had greek salad with olives and red onions, gyros in a pita, and apple cider in wine glasses and a bowl of grapes.   

Ryan really got into character, burping appreciatively after dinner (a sign of a polite Roman) and ordering the slave (me) to bring him more wine frequently.  I took too long making a facebook post about his tyranical ways as a Roman aristocrate and he came looking for me in the kitchen.  He told me tempestuously that I had taken too long and he would be sending me to the mines.  How do you like that? Cheeky little thing.

Preschool ABC's and Dylan

It took me a while to decide on the method I wanted to use to teach Dylan his ABC's this year.  Since he's three, he is ready for simple preschool activities.  

I felt that learning one letter a week would be a good pace for him. I finally decided to use the book/song Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom to help teach ABC's and phonemic awareness.  It's a cute story/chant/song about all the letters climbing up a coconut tree and then falling out of the tree and their mothers and fathers hug them. 

We read through this book/sing the song, every day. I made a "tree" in our school room.  I decided not to make a coconut tree, but a decidious tree since we can also decorate it according to the seasons. The tree I made from packing material that came in our curriculum box at the beginning of the year (twist and tape).  The leaves were 50 for a dollar at the dollar store. I found some giant felt and sticky back letters at Michael's Craft Store for $5.00 (three entire sets of the Alphabet included in one bag).  So once a week, on Monday, we make a new letter climb up our tree. 

 The rest of the week, we do phoemic awareness (Tuesday), early writing strokes (Wednesday), Letter Recognition (Thursday) and game day (Friday).

Some of our activities:

Phonemic Awareness:  I have *most* of the set of My Alphabet Books.  The ones I don't have, can easily be found at the public library.  We read through the book that corresponds to our letter of the week. These books are GREAT for auditory bombardment and increasing sound awareness.
 

                                                         

Then we do an activity like sound bingo, sound hunt in a box of beans (Dylan absolutely loves this activity).  I take a bunch of his small toys and bury them in the bean box.  He has to sift through and find the ones that start with his letter of the week.  Then we sort the objects we find by initial sound.  Similar things can be done with play-doh, corn kernals, easter basket grass, etc.

Writing: We trace the letter.  Sometimes we trace the letter in the air, on paper, or using the iPad.  A great learning app is Elmo Loves ABC's.  Another great letter and number writing app is iWrite.  Letter writing can also be done using playdoh over laminated printouts of a letter.  This is also usually the day we do our craft.

I got these cute letter personifications from : http://missmarensmonkeys.blogspot.com/.  She has a bunch of cute and easy templates.  The kids love these. 

Letter Recognition/Games: I have a bunch of letter themed puzzles we work through.  Sometimes I hide the letters in the bean box and we name them (expressive task) or I ask "Is this an A?" and he tells me yes or no (receptive task). The ipad app Elmo Loves ABC's also has a letter recognition task in a field of four letters.  Some days we also take magnifying glasses or binoculars (they got them in a kids meal at Chick-Fil-A) and look for the letters hiding around the room.  When we see a letter, we yell, "I-Spy an _"  (letter name).

Each lesson per day takes between 15-30 minutes depending on the level of interest.  At any rate, I try to vary it and keep it interesting and fun.  As my mom always said, "If you have fun teaching the lesson, the kids will have fun learning the lesson." 

Apple Picking

Ever since Ryan was about two years old, we've been visiting the same pick-your-own farm.   Traditionally, we pick apples, feed the goats, play in the play area and finish up by getting an "old fashioned" soda  the first or second weekend in September. 

 This year, the apples were *amazing.* They were juicy and red.  This year they had fuji and gala apples available (last year we got to pick honey crisp).  

 The kids kept planning on what sort of treats we should make with our apples and this is what we came up with: Apple cake, apple pie, apple crisp, apple donuts, apple muffins, apple pancakes and apple dumplings. 

 This year though, we invited some friends to go with us and we had a really great time visiting and picking and playing.  The kids especially enjoyed playing with their friends after picking apples.  Dylan and his little friend Jane could be twins.  They both have white blond hair and enjoy getting into trouble together....also translated as "doing all those impulsive things three year olds like to do" together.   For example, once I caught the two of them filling their shoes with gravel and pouring gravel on each others heads.   Today when it was time for Jane to leave and I told Dylan to say "goodbye," he looked at me and said, "But I'll be too sad!" I'm very glad to see these little friendships blossoming!

Ryan enjoyed playing with his friends too, but they moved around to much to get too many good shots of them.

 Ryan picked a green apple soda, which he decidedly did not like but Dylan was kind enough to share his blue one. 

And now, I need to go prepare our first of many apple desserts......apple crisp. 

Learning about Ancient Egypt

One of our themed studies this week was on Egypt.  We are doing Sonlight curriculum for social studies/history/geography.  I am very thankful that a friend of mine who used this program with her children was able to tell me before I bought the curriculum that the one thing she did not like was that the social studies skimmed over various topics (Rome, Egypt, Greece, etc) fairly quickly. She also told me that it seemed to her that most K-1st grade social studies programs tended to skim over topics quickly, so if you wanted to do something more indepth, modification was in order.  Since I had that heads up, I was able to modify a few things and check out a bunch of books from the library and pin some things on Pinterest so we could go "more in depth" to study ancient Egypt. I mean, seriously, Ancient Egypt is absolutely fascinating.  There is so much to talk about!

We started our week learning about ancient egyptian dwellings, food, life-style, dress

and caste system.  We talked about how Pharaoh ruled Egypt.   We talked about the numerous gods and goddesses ancient Egyptians believed in.  We talked about their belief in the afterlife and why they made mummies.  We found Egypt and the Nile river on our map.  Then we made an Egyptian "collar."  We did not have gold spray paint on hand, so silver had to do.  We had some leftover gems from our pirate treasure making this summer, and the kids used those to decorate along with glitter.

On Tuesday, we made cartouche's from a heiroglyphics key in one of our library books.   Ryan practiced writing his name in heiroglyphics and found it amazing that pictures could form words like our ABC's formed words for us.

On Wednesday we discussed the mummification process and the pyramids that acted as giant tombs. That grossed Ryan out quite a bit. We made hot dog mummies for lunch.

On Thursday, we learned about life in modern Egypt.  We discussed the similarities and differences between life in the past and life today in Egypt.  

On Friday, we took a field trip to the Natural History Museum to see their display on Ancient Egypt.  We saw an Egyptian boat, artifacts including needles made of bone and hooks made of wood and iron.  We also saw plenty of beautiful jewelry.  Of course, we also saw mummies.  We saw mumified birds, cats and a baby crocodile.  We saw human mummies.  Ryan said his favorite part was looking at the golden statues and death masks.  

Some of the books on ancient and modern egypt we found at our library include: 

1. National Geographic Kids Everything Ancient Egypt by Crispin Boyer

2.  Adventures in Ancient Egypt by Linda Bailey

3. Ms. Frizzles Adventures: Ancient Egypt by Joanna Cole

4. King Tut's Tomb by Amanda Doering Tourville

5. Pyramids by Kremena Spengler

6. Beginning History: Egyptian Pyramids by Anne Steel

7, Countries of the World: Egypt by Kathleen W. Deady

8. See-Through Mummies by John Malam

9. Ancient Egypt Tales of Gods and Pharaohs

We did not get to the Sphynx and Ryan is not old enough to read "The Egypt Game," but....there's always 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade and 6th grade to revisit all things Egypt! 

Bad Dreams

The littlest boy has been having bad dreams on and off, which is perfectly normal.  But what he apparently dreams about is...well, sortof humerous.  Or would be if it didn't happen to be while the rest of the world was sleeping.

The "alarm" sounds when he starts wailing like a siren.  It's high pitched and loud, without care for any who may be sleeping.  It can be punctuated with little kicks under the covers (and if he has happened to crawl into our bed before having one of these little nightmares, waking up this way is something SPECIAL).  In fact, it looks a lot like a temper tantrum....except....he is not awake.  He is still sleeping.  

"BUUUUUT I WAAAANT COOOOOKIES!" He will wail. His eyes are still closed.  It's the only part of his body that appears to be still. 

We try shaking him and calling his name, "Dylan, Dylan, wake up!"  He seems to feel this but takes it negatively and the wailing goes up a notch.  "Dylan! It's a dream! You are dreaming!" 

"BuuuUUUT I WAAANt COOOOKIES." 

It is 5 a.m. just before sunrise.  There are no cookies in the house and besides, his eyes are still shut.  Finally, I pick him up and lay him on my chest and rub his back.  "Hush, hush.  Wake up, wake up.  It's a dream." 

"whaaat?" His eyes finally open.  

"It was a dream. You are dreaming.  Look, it's still dark outside, everyone is asleep.  It's OK."  

His little body shudders as the sobs begin to diminish and he starts to relax.  Snuggled up he finally drifts off again.  All is quiet.  Now the first glimmers of light are appearing in the sky and the birds are singing.  I am wide awake.  On mornings like this I am so thankful for coffee.  

When he wakes up, I ask him if he had good dreams or bad dreams.  He tells me, "bad dreams."

I ask him what he dreamed about. 

"Ghosts." He said positively. "Big scary ghosts.  Right in the closet!" 

Uh-huh.