Tot Tuesday

Happy Birthday my tot! Riley is turning 3 years old today. Love you Smiley Riley:)

Dinosaur Experience

We are currently experiencing a Year of Adventures in our homeschool. A year jammed packed full of different experiences - surrealism, museums, nature hikes, etc... Why are we doing this? Well, for the last few years, things here have been put on hold. We weren't sure where we were going to live or what we would be doing and we had to be ready to move at a short notice. But all of that changed and we are now positive we are staying in the US. So this is the year for many adventures:)

All of a sudden, my boys are into dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. We were able to see a small exhibit at the zoo  with animatronic dinosaurs, which I thought scared them. But after that, they have been playing dinosaurs. So, it was cool when this experience came available through my homeschool group. It wasn't very pricey. For years, we have passed by Dinosaur World when traveling and we have never had the chance to visit the park. This was our chance:)

The dinosaur statues were life size and the kids loved them. We learned so much about each one and had fun doing it. We even met a real paleontologist!

They even got to do a fossil dig which they were able to keep three of their favorite fossils to take home. I believe this was the highlight for my older kids.

Then, when we came home, I had some dino digs for the kids. They shaved away the stone to find dinosaur bones. I fond a kit on sale at Big Lots. I also found some great dinosaurs for my tot to play with at The Dollar Store.

Then, they built a dinosaur museum with the little dinosaurs and fossils they found. I love homeschooling:) They played dinosaurs the rest of the day. It was a great adventure.

Letter Z Interactive Notebook with free printable

I can't believe I finally did it - I finished the entire set of Interactive Notebooks for the alphabet. Wow. It is easy to finish something when your kids are working on your pages but I found it extremely difficult to finish these because my kids are in between these pages - either too old or too young. But I finished. Now they will be ready when my tot is ready to learn the alphabet.

Sort the Zinnias into the correct jar. My vision for this game is add the zinnias to popsicle sticks and pockets to the back of the jars. Then your child can sort the flowers into the upper or lower case Z's.

I found these cute alphabet fruit and veggie graphics. I made alphabet cards and I would work on alphabet order - choose two cards such as J and L and have your child find the missing letter. Or you could offer 3 cards such as C, A, and B. And have your child put them in the correct order.

The math game is a review of counting by fives - a Zoo strip puzzle. I would laminate and add magnets for easier use. I hope you enjoy using these printables. I would love to hear from you.

Download Letter Z Interactive Notebook Puzzle HERE.

Nature Journaling - Week 6

Nature journaling has been one of our highlights each week. The kids choose something they learned about or seen about in nature and draw/write about it in their journals. I love seeing the improvements in their drawing (as well as in mine:).

J and Kaleb both drew an owl since this was the week we dissected owl pellets. We had a ton of bones from each pellet. I was amazed at how many the owl can pack into one pellet.

My journal also included owls, a couple of drawings of bones we found, and one interesting thing that happened - a squirrel fell out of our tree into the road. We didn't want it to get squished and yucky right around our driveway, so we buried her in our back yard. My true homeschooler wants to unbury her in a few months to check out the skeleton. Haha! I love homeschooling:) See you soon.

Sewing Day

The other day, J came to me and asked if we could have a sewing day. It was rainy and dreary and it just seemed like the thing to do. A sewing day - what could be better? I found a simple project that I thought J would like to do - these cute little owls. It's fall, pumpkin time, and owls just seemed to fit right in:)

 The owls came with two different sizes and they were simple enough to made in a day.

I had her cut out the pattern, pin it, and cut the fabric all herself. I walked her through the process of making it verbally and she did great.

My sweet girl and her first owl - I love it.

She made another for her room and then she also made a mini one. They turned out so cute:)

And this is my sewing project for the day - a mini sunshine quilt. It is nice to stop and take a day to do something you love.

Links

Sew Can She - has the pattern for the easy owls that we used.

Sew Can She - also has the pattern for the mini sunshine quilt.

Tangram Fun

Recently, for a different experience in math, I decided to forgo the textbooks and do a more hands-on approach. I have had this story - Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tomport on my bookshelf for awhile. I just hadn't taken the time to read it to the kids. The book is basically a tale told with tangram. If you don't know what tangrams are - they are several different basic shapes that are used to make pictures. The story is about two foxes that change into different animals to out compete the other. I gave them each a set of plastic tangrams (you can make paper ones too) so they could complete each animal picture.

Each animal that the foxes turned into had a picture diagram so the kids could make their own. It was somewhat difficult at first because they were new to tangrams. But they caught on the further we went in the book.

J made a rabbit.

Kaleb was completing his rabbit with Riley looking on.

J's swan. We played with the tangrams for about an hour, making different pictures with each. It was nice to change our norm when it comes to math. Tomorrow, though, it is back to the textbooks:)

Links

One Mama's Daily Drama - has a free printable  set of tangrams along with some challenge cards to get you started.

Layers of Learning - has a free template along with a few ideas.

Oh Happy Day - has a neat idea of a floor set of tangrams, wow - these are cool.

Zoo Experience

Well, if you have been following our blog recently, you will remember that I promised my children a Year of Adventures. This is to be a year full of adventures and experiences. We joined a homeschool group to help facilitate that - because of the sheer size of this group, we get substantial discounts and a variety of field trips. This week, we went to the zoo. Now, that might not seem like an adventure to some but it was for us.

I can tell you that it was super hot at the zoo. We all took cold showers when we returned! It reminded us of the 10 days of no electricity after hurricane Irma.

We were able to take a safari ride which took us behind the scenes of the zoo. We saw more of the animals this way.

The experience for the kids was an opportunity to feed the giraffe. She came right up to us.

The kids were super excited to have the interaction. They couldn't believe it! A real live giraffe eating from their hands.

Here's J feeding the giraffe some lettuce. What a great experience for them. They will never forget:) Another adventure to add to our list :) See you soon.

Letter Y Interactive Notebook with free printable

Here's the letter Y Interactive Notebook. I am so close that I can see the finish line. I truly can't wait to use these printables with my tot Riley. Enjoy.

Included in the download is the letter Y puzzle. My favorite way of working with these is adding small magnets to the back and using a cookie sheet to assemble them.

The letter sort - sorting upper and lower case yarn letters into the correct basket. Add some envelopes or pockets to the back so the yarn can slip right in.

A alphabet review game- follow the yoyo path.

My math activity for this letter is counting by 2's. Put the yarn balls in order when counting by 2's. I also added a ruler. You could cut yarn lengths in 2 inch intervals and have your child measure the lengths and add them to the correct yarn ball. Hope you enjoy this download.

Download Letter Y Interactive Notebook HERE.

Riley's Rhymes - Itsy Bitsy Spider Activities

For the past two weeks, Riley has been working with the rhymes of Isty Bitsy Spider. We have had some spider fun using the min pack that I posted here. Riley insists that I do "school" with him first, before the other kids because he feels left out. I always keep his activities in a plastic bin, ready to grab and do:) Here are a few of the activities that we completed for our rhyme.

I included a fine motor activity of using the tweezers to pick up the spiders. This was slightly difficult for him as he had trouble squeezing the tweezers. We will revisit this type of activity.

I made a simple sensory bin of black beans, tp tubes, and spiders. He had fun having the spider slip down the water spout.

This activity is included in my printable pack - counting spiders. He used magnetic pom pom spiders to match the spiders on the cards while we practiced counting. He did exactly what I thought he would - he matched each color with the correct color pom pom magnet.

Another printable from my pack - matching the color spiders. I added magnets to the back and he matched the colors of the spiders together.

I found this activity at a consignment sale - magnetic bugs and spiders. He made a tower of the spiders and bugs to see how tall he could go.

He is practicing his shapes with this button activity. Riley is super-dinosaur crazy right now. That was his favorite puzzle to do.

Another printable from my pack - matching the shapes. My goal for this year is to have him learn his shapes and colors. We have been working on the color black and circles so far.

He is singing the rhyme while playing with the pieces from my pack.

Riley is making a simple foam spider with pipe cleaner legs. He is threading the pipe cleaners through the holes on the spider body.

I made a painter's tape spider web and gave Riley some cotton balls. He had to throw the cotton balls onto the spider web. They all had fun doing this. I kept this activity up for a week. They just kept reusing the cotton balls and by the end of the week, the web was all fuzzy.

I added a spider web to my floor and had Riley walk it. He also played cars with it, running on the roads. We left this for several days as well.

He painted a plate black and added google eyes. Then I painted the color circles and a few clothespins. Together, we made a spider match game - he had to match the colors of the pins to the colors on the spider. The hardest thing for him was pinching the clothespins to get them on the plate. We practiced this all week.

We are onto pumpkins for the rest of October. Stay tuned for my pumpkin mini pack. Enjoy your day.


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Nature Journaling - Week 5

Every week, we try to add to our nature journal. Sometimes, I ask them to draw something that we did or something we saw. Other times, they add drawings of animals that they learned about during Science. It varies but I have loved the results. I also love being able to paint together. We nature journal together and we enjoy it.

After our visit to the corn maze, I had the kids sit down and break out their journals. Kaleb decided to draw a stalk of corn.

J decided to draw some of the animals she encountered at the farm - several horses, chickens, and cows.

Here are their journals - J included a horse that she hand fed and a chicken that she pet. Kaleb is more a simple man - He added a corn stalk and an ear of corn. Both were painted with water colors.

My journal included the corn maze but also our simple experiment to see more wildlife in our yard. We added birdseed and Cheerios (we were desperate) to a clay dish and placed it where we saw some squirrels in our yard. We were hoping to be able to observe them. But, they didn't come. It sat in our yard with no visitors. No one came - not even the birds. We were bummed out:( Oh well, you live and learn:) Have an awesome day.