Belated Prepping for the Week of May 11, 2015 – Catching Up!

Life is a moving target!  We finished up a session of our homeschool co-op last week and Mic unexpected got a few vacation days off work, so we got distracted and have been a little ‘lazy’ the last few days.  (If keeping two small children fed, clothed, and entertained could ever be called ‘being lazy!’  😉 ) Anyways…  we’ve been having a lot of fun, but haven’t done many of our planned projects.  We did get a lot of “Mother’s Day” crafts done.  Yay for a flexible homeschooling schedule!   The plan for the next few days is to have some fun with the projects we want to do, but haven’t gotten to yet.  And Daddy will be home to join in the fun!  We also want to get out and about for some hiking and other outdoor fun.  So, what’s on our agenda?

Letter(s) of the Week: S & T (Somehow I got confused and listed last week’s letter as Q…  because Q comes after R, right? Agh…! Anyways, we will do S & T this week to ‘catch up.’
I plan to finish out the alphabet using the printables from Crayola’s Free Coloring Pages website.

Number of the Week: 14
I still want to get out our Melissa & Doug Shape Sorting Clock and talk about the number 12 and telling time….  14 is actually a ‘great’ number at our house…  because I fill my vitamin organizers for two weeks at a time…  Lala has known how to count to 14 for a while…  though the numbers that come after are sometimes random…  LOL!  We may skip a printable this week…  *gasp!*  😉

Activities
Watch for a post on our “Mother’s Day” Crafts…

We did get a Rain Stick made…  Will be trying out (and posting about) the Rain in a Jar activity.
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Storytime – I hope to make it to our local library’s story time this week.  It’s at the same time as co-op, so we haven’t been in a few months…

Spanish – Wow!  I just searched “preschool Spanish” on YouTube and so many things popped up!  The Internet has changed our life so dramatically….

Gardening – We need to get our beans planted and make some labels for the seeds that are popping up!

Safety – We are still working on fire safety…

Kites!  – It has been really windy and there is a local kite festival coming up, so we will be checking out the kites we have and perhaps making some simple ones.

Whew…  I’m jazzed about these activities!  I hope we can get them done…  🙂  I’m sure we will have a fun week regardless and hope you do too!

First Week of the Reading Circle!

Wow!  The first week of the Reading Circle has flown by in a flash!  I am reminded that life with small children is crazy and busy!  (As if I could forget!)  🙂  I managed to make it through the first two chapters of the book, but haven’t had a chance to even pick it up in several days.  Have you made any progress in Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling?  What do you think of it so far?

I have found it to be great ‘food for thought.’  It is validating many of my thoughts and feelings about how people interact with children, including their own, and the skills that teaching requires.  Having two voices – John Holt and Patrick Farenga – is a bit unusual in my experience, but doesn’t seem to undermine the flow of the text. canadian cialis no prescription About one-fourth male with obesity go through some scholarly articles on the web. This is how important the diagnosis and the chiropractic viagra ordination unica-web.com program. I applaud cialis cheap no prescription our doctors and our hospitals. Many people who considered this very funny, levitra pills online when I first met the doctor.  I really enjoyed reading Holt’s thoughts on the common objections to homeschooling.  I am eager to continue reading.  I am learning a lot about learning!  I hope you are too!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day…  Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms and grandmas out there!  I’ve heard so many opinions about Mother’s Day…  It’s too commercial…  It excludes single dads who act as mothers…  It’s uplifting for moms…  It’s a difficult day for those who have lost their mother, whether through death or another separation, and those who long to be a mother, but have struggled to create the family they dream of…  Why do we need a day to be reminded to show appreciation for moms…  It’s such a wonderful observance…

I believe all of these statements are true for someone somewhere…  There is always joy and always sorrow…  I have come to the point in my life where I am not able to reconcile all the conflicts, the opinions, the emotions, the cacophony of voices…  So…  let me say this…
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I hope you can find joy in the children and mothers you have been or encountered in your life…  take the good from the wishes you will see and hear this Mother’s Day…  release the bad…  May your joy be increased and your sorrow reduced.  I wish you a peaceful day, tomorrow and every day!

Paint and Glue… Cardboard and Cotton Swabs… Art Class Adventure!

Yesterday, Lala wanted to go to school like her friends in the neighborhood…  She actually did a ‘happy dance’ when I told her we were going to art school!

We joined our homeschool group for an art class and had an amazing time!

The project was to paint branches with leaves and blossoms, adding half-circle ‘birds’ using glue…  The painting materials were cardboard and cotton swabs.  I love these ideas for using household items for creative projects!

Tbear’s painting…  He did a ‘happy dance’ himself when he saw the paint!

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Lala’s creation…

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Birds!

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Our hour-long art adventure included story and music time.  Tbear lasted for about 45-minutes and then he was ready to move on…  🙂

Thanks to the class organizer and our local art program for a wonderful time!

We followed up our art class with a walk by the river and Lala’s dance class.  It was an amazing day!

A Random Monday Afternoon…

After lunch today, we colored and put stickers on our #13 printable.  My kids are just nuts for stickers…  It wasn’t a particularly compelling activity, but was a nice few minutes at the table…  Oh, except for the moments of upset over sharing the stickers…

Can you guess who colored which one?  😉

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While Tbear napped this afternoon, Lala and I worked on a couple of projects…  and she wandered around a little bored, looking for other projects to do…  It was amazing to see what the afternoon produced…

First, she wanted colored paper and markers…  Once she got settled in, this is what she produced…

Work in progress…

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Final creation…

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And she pointed out that the ink passed through to the other side…  And asked why…

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She gave the picture to me when she finished.  After nosing around for a little while,  she got out some beads and was talking about making a bracelet…  After working on that for a bit, she joined me to make a Rain Stick…  She enjoyed putting all the toothpicks and rice in the bottle.  I’m not sure the project turned out quite right…  (More on that later…)

After wandering out back, ‘cleaning’ and playing with the chickens, she came in looking for another project…  I had asked her if she wanted to come in and help me make a grocery list, but was done by the time she came inside…  So, she started asking me to write stuff on the paper I had set out for her….  A couple of days last week, she had me write letters and words on a piece of paper (I was taking notes myself, while reading) and was tracing them.  She agreed to my suggestion that I could set her up with some letter tracing pages…  though she indicated she didn’t know how to write the letters in the blank spaces provided after the dotted letters…  I told her she could try and see how it went…

She had a ball point pen, but somehow finagled a highlighter out of my desk…  She was over at the table, looking at the book, when suddenly I heard her exclaim, “I did it!”  She had traced the capital letter A’s and then written another one free-hand!  She then proceeded to make a row of them, saying “Up, down, and side” as she worked, interspersed with exclamations of joy.  (And I found myself getting teary-eyed again…  what is going on this week?!?  haha)

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She made a bunch of big A’s and little a’s and then moved on to trace a few more letters before losing interest…

A little while later, she wanted some of the ‘fall’ stickers we got on clearance…  I gave her a handful and a piece of paper…  I am always fascinated to see how she sorts the stickers out…  Looks like a bar chart to me…  The math and stat brain must be genetic…

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It was a very interesting afternoon…  I love seeing how things ‘evolve’ as the day progresses…  Excuse me now, I need to wipe my eyes…  😉

Prepping for the Week of May 4, 2015 – Mother’s Day!

Wow!  The last few days have just flown by…  Lots of things going on…  Co-op, dance performance, museum visits, yard and house work…  Life gets so busy for us all!  We’ve done a lot of fun activities and learned a lot!  We completed some of our planned activities , but not all of them…  The beauty is that…  we can adapt and change our plans!  Since I have a tendency to be kind of ‘uptight,’ being flexible is often a challenge for me, but with kids I am improving…  hehe…  😉

One activity we ended up doing that wasn’t on the ‘original plan’ were Mini Alphabet and Number Books…

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I am tickled with how they turned out…

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We used some old scrap book paper, book rings, stickers, and crayons….

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Look for a post about this activity soon!

Anyways, this coming Sunday is…  Mother’s Day!  I know we will be doing some fun Mother’s Day crafts in co-op this week…

Letter of the Week: Q
I plan to finish out the alphabet using the printables from Crayola’s Free Coloring Pages website.   Q is for… Queen…  Moms get to be Queen for a Day this weekend, right?  😉

Number of the Week: 13
I still want to get out our Melissa & Doug Shape Sorting Clock and talk about the number 12 and telling time….  For the number 13, I plan to let the kids cover the number with stickers…  I think this simple #13 Printable from SheKnows will work.

Books:
We are still working on the pile of books we got during our last trip to the library…

  • From Seed to Sunflower by Dr. Gerald Legg
  • Let’s Recycle – by Anne L. Mackenzie
  • The Friendship Tree by Kathy Caple
  • Trees by Nicola Edwards
  • Who Will Plant a Tree by Jerry Pallotta

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Activities
Mother’s Day Crafts
I have a bunch of ideas for this that are still gelling…  I feel a separate post coming on for these ideas….

  • ‘Lanterns’ – Using toilet paper rolls and LED tea lights, along with tissue paper and stickers, we are going to create ‘lanterns’ for Mother’s Day…  Mic found an old train conductor punch in the garage that will make “stars” for the light to escape from the cardboard roll…  I’m thinking I will need to get small paper plates to set the ‘lanterns’ on…
  • Upcycled vases using tissue paper and stickers
  • Tissue paper and/or coffee filter flowers… and maybe butterflies…  (Since we never got around to making the butterflies for Arbor Day…)
  • Air dry clay hand prints

I still want to do these activities we planned for last week…

Rain Sticks – I want to try these cool sensory bottles I found over at In Lieu of Preschool.  Check out their DIY Sensory Bottles: Rain Stick instructions.

Rain in a Jar – I also want to try this colorful activity from Teach Preschool.  Check out their post: Clouds in jars and on the table top too!  

So many exciting things to do!  Let the living and learning continue!

Dancing, Dashing, and Discovering Learning Resources…

I am cooked!  We didn’t end up making it to Home Depot yesterday…  Lala had a dance performance and we didn’t get up and moving early enough to make it to Home Depot beforehand…  Maybe next month…  Instead, we headed out for Lala’s performance.  Lala had never performed publicly before, so we weren’t sure how it would go…  She did fantastic!  Got right up there and did the dance with her class.  We were so proud.  I’m not sure I can explain why I got teary-eyed watching my four year old mimic her teacher’s movements in a scratchy Princess Elsa dress…  But anyways…

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I hadn’t looked into the event the kids were performing at…  It was a family fair to support early childhood education  with all sorts of ‘kid-related’ vendors.  We found information on music classes, child care resources, tutoring, children’s dentistry, a literature-based charter school, and… so much more!  It was fascinating!  At one booth, they had sidewalk chalk…  Lala drew a boat – a white boat for a ‘Frozen’ princess…

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I was so fascinated, I didn’t think about the fact that it was over 80 degrees and we were outside for a couple of hours around noon…  We had the kids in the shade or the stroller most of the time, but I didn’t bring a hat or anything…  Thus, the ‘baste me and turn me over’ condition of my neck and shoulders…  Ugh!  I always seem to burn my shoulders once at the beginning of every summer…  The kids are fine, mom… not so much…

We were getting ready to head home to prep for dinner with Abuela, but that got rescheduled at the last minute…  so…  we made a quick change and dashed over to our local university.  We had seen a flyer about all the museums on campus being open for visitors all day.  We had wanted to go, but hadn’t been able to make it fit in… With the schedule change, we dashed over…  The museums were open later than we first thought, so we managed to visit 3 different locations.

On our way across campus, we walked around the pond and checked on the resident swan couple, currently brooding…

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Our first stop was the College of Engineering’s K-12 Teaching Lab.  They had so many fascinating things to look at and ‘play with!’

Simple machines made with K’Nex…

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The kids loved it!  Tbear kept turning the intensity all the way up and then startling when the machine started trying to rattle itself off the table.

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They had so many cool things on display, including a robot, suspension bridge model, and snap circuits!  They do field trips to schools and summer camps for older kids.  I got the contact information for the coordinator of the program.  I am excited to see if we can set up a tour or lessons for our homeschool group.  I also really need to get some snap circuits!  And…  they had these retractible power outlet set-ups in the ceiling…  I totally need one in my kitchen!

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We then stopped by the university’s press and got to see a hand-operated printing press in action.  How do you explain printing to a child with a wireless Wi-Fi printer at home?  What a contrast!  The presses are works of art themselves, as are the printed pages.

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Our final stop was the Museum of Natural History.  All I can say is… Wow!  Both their public and research collections were open.  We were able to see plants, bugs, and vertebrate specimens.  There were several snakes, many lizards, including a giant red tegu, and a swallowtail caterpillar.

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It was amazing!  We got to take home a milkweed – to attract Monarch Butterflies – and a globe mallow – a drought resistant native plant that will put on beautiful salmon colored flowers.  Yay!  More plants for our garden.

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We would have loved to have seen more of the museums, but we closed the place down…  Many of the other sites are open to the public during regular hours.  We will have to check them out sometime soon!  And will hope that the university hosts this event again in the future!  I am looking forward to setting up some homeschool group field trips too!  We learned so much and had a wonderful time!

We had an amazing day, living and learning.  We hope you did too!

Are You Ready For the First Reading Circle???

As the calendar rolls over to May 1st, 2015, it is time for the First Reading Circle to begin!  Do you have a copy of Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling?  I couldn’t resist cracking mine open and diving in…  🙂  Thus far I have found it to be thought-provoking and engaging.  Holt’s style is very direct.

I wanted to learn more about John Holt, so…  Wikipedia is usually my first place to look for info online…  Check out their article on John Holt (educator).  (All links in this post will open in new tabs.)

Holt started the bi-monthly magazine Growing Without Schooling in 1977.  There is a lot of great information about him and his work on the website: John Holt GWS.  Patrick Farenga worked with Holt for many years and following Holt’s untimely death in 1985, ‘picked up the torch’ as it were, to continue his work.

OK…  So, now that we have a little background on the authors and their work, it’s time to explore the book!

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Tentative Reading Schedule for May 2015

  • Week of May 4 – Preface, Introduction, & Chapters 1 & 2
  • Week of May 11 – Chapters 3-7
  • Week of May 18 – Chapters 8-10
  • Week of May 25 – Chapters 11-13

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Look for posts from me around the middle of every week on the reading selection for that week.  I hope you will add your thoughts to the discussion!

The forum for the May 2015 Reading Circle is ready to go for questions, comments, and discussion.  Click here to register.

My goal is to read one book per month.  Please see my post on the tentative schedule for the remainder of the year.

You can get a copy of the book from Amazon.  (Affiliate link – If you use this link to make any purchases, we will receive a small commission.  For more information, please see our Legal Stuff page.):

If you have any questions, please comment on this post or contact me.   I look forward to reading and learning with you!