Mike Mulligan and His Steam Stovel

This week's book is Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. The book is about Mike and his steam shovel, Anne, who is becoming out-dated by the oncoming diesel shovels. So, Mike is determined to show that Anne can dig faster than any machine and he is willing to dig a town hall basement for no payment to back up his promise! While in America, I found a Mike Mulligan pack at a discount store which included a CD for listening, some postcards, and a game book. I also found the story on a Scholastic DVD, I Stink. So, we were able to both listen and watch the story! I love Scholastic DVD's!

We are still working with writing our numbers and I found some number/alphabet activity cards from Making Learning Fun. I printed them and we played a game where she would choose a card to create the number or letter on the geoboard.

Our work with rhyming words continues. Here J is looking for the capital B for bug.

We read about the Constitution this week and made a poster of our names. J really got into this by adding flowers and a rainbow.

 

We practiced our handwriting by reviewing all of the letters we have worked on so far. She made them with her wood pieces and then she wrote them on her mini chalkboard.

And we had an interesting week, I think we have decided to call Kaleb - Evel Knievel (you know the stunt guy?). He was crawling this weekend and his head was faster than his arms. I spent some time in the hospital with Kaleb getting 2 stitches. (Of course, DH was gone) Here is a pic of one of his stitches, the other one somehow fell out. He gets this one taken out on Saturday.

He didn't cry much when it happened but it definitely was upsetting when they put the stitches in. It seems everyday, he bumps his head, smacks his chin, cracks his lip. No childproofing can help when he is the one who does this on the floor or a toy. He is my stunt man!



Lentil (part 2)

Sorry this post is late - DH took the camera with my pics for this post and I had to wait for him to return. We were still wondering why the Statue of Liberty turned green and we found out it was due to pollution (the vinegar). We checked on our pennies and this is how they looked.

I think we will do another experiment to see if we can clean them up! The story of Lentil takes place in Ohio and J colored a sheet with the state bird and flower on it.

The musicians in the book couldn't play their instruments because Old Man Sneep was sucking on lemons. So we tried sucking on lemons as well. These are the faces we made.

This pic is alittle blurry but you get the idea! We also made lemon sorbet. I found a new mix in the baking section here and thought we should try it. It was actually good but it didn't make much.

We learned about the ear and our taste buds by reading about them in our body book and then creating mini books. Our book about the ear....

and the taste buds...

with J demonstrating where her tastebuds were. We discussed different tastes - sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. And Kaleb is demonstrating his use of taste buds... (don't worry I didn't let him eat it although he has eaten worse things) (he made this mess by the way, haha)

And we made our own homemade harmonica!

I made a simple craft this week. I have been seeing these pompom magnets used across the blogsphere and I wanted to make some as well. I brought the items back from America to do this and I finally took the time to glue them together. I bought some magnet disks from Michael's and a package of pompoms. I used Aleene's glue and we ended up with an open-ended manipulative.

J is creating a flower with them. We will use them to practice patterns, create pictures, letters, etc...

Cute and easy. I also finished a quilt this weekend.

Well, we are off to another book adventure! Smile.

Here are some Lentil book links:

Home School Share favorite place, I always try to go there first. They have great printables and lapbooks for free!

Exploratorium found the directions for our homemade harmonica.

Infantbibliophile she rowed about her adventures.

Outside the sandbox the colored water experiment in the wine glasses looked fun but I didn't have any wine glasses!

Youtube Lentil Video.

And if you want to make your own puff-ball magnets or print activities to do with them, Mama Jenn has some great links.

Monday's Discovery

This week's discovery was due to J. I have been wanting to break out the bubbles but just hadn't done it. J did it for me and I was able to take some pictures (some are blurry because Kaleb was moving). Kaleb loved the bubbles, he tried so hard to get them and then wondered what happen to them when he did.

You can kinda see the bubbles in the background.

trying to touch them...

going after them...

Bubbles - a great toy. J had fun blowing the bubbles and watching Kaleb scramble after them. Make time to enjoy the small things in life!

Lentil (part 1)

This week, our book is Lentil by Robert McCloskey. It is about a boy who just couldn't sing but used his talent for playing the harmonica to save the day! We started our week by working on our easel. I had J separate the magnetic letters into two sections - those that were in her name and those that were not in her name.

Then, I had her create her name with the letters that we found.

These letters are great. I found them at a "yard sale" here for about 5TL. They are large, large enough for the baby to chew on them and have them not fit in his mouth. The set actually came with two "bought" sets from an education store which makes it nice to create words with them since they have extra letters. The only thing is that they are all lower case, so she is creating her name without an uppercase J.

We are working with rhyming words and today's word was dog. J and I would discuss the word cards and she would determine which ones rhymed with dog. She found the letters to make the word dog and then wrote it.

I found some awesome beads at Wal-Mart while I was in the states. They are letter/number beads that are used to make necklaces and bracelets. I bought two packages in case they didn't have enough of a certain letter (this happened before with my block letter beads). I printed an abc page and gave her some tongs. J had to use the tongs to grab the lettters and put them in the correct place on the abc sheet. While she was doing this, I would ask her to say the sound the letter makes. This is practice for reading.

For math, we are still working on recognizing numbers and one-to-one correspondence. I had J choose a number card and she had to build a tower with some foam blocks that I found in the Target dollar bin-love that place!

For Social Studies, we are still learning about the symbols of America. This week, we are working on the Statue of Liberty. We watched a quick video tour on you tube, read a silly book about Lady Liberty as a child (Little Miss Liberty App), and began painting our own Statue of Liberty.

Here is J with the final product - our Statue of Liberty.

Notice she is putting her arm up just like the statue itself! J also painted two paper plates which we made into the Statue of Liberty headress and a torch made from a paper towel tube.

Isn't she cute? We also finished our tree map of symbols of America by filling in facts about the statue.

We did a simple experiment using pennies from America to understand why the statue is green.

J added vinegar to a paper towel and then placed the two pennies on the paper towel. We will let you know what happens. (As you know, the Statue of Liberty was made from copper like a penny.)

So we are waiting to see.... Our game of the week is Chutes and Ladders. This game actually was bought here. I bought it for J for her birthday. I was lucky to find it in a 2 for 1 package where she also received CandyLand as well. I had not brought this one out before because it can be confusing with which way you should go. But we played and both of us kept getting to the top only to have to slide right down again.

J is sliding - bummer. After school, we spent some time in the kitchen making rainbow cupcakes for Kaleb's birthday.

J wanted to wear her chef hat and apron that I made for her awhile back. We made the cake from a recipe and separated the batter into different bowls. We added food coloring to each of the bowls to make a certain color. We tried to make the color of the rainbow.

Then we added the different color mixes to our cupcake holders and baked. They turn out really good and it is fun to see the different combinations. Of course, we left some pink so J could have a pink cupcake (which she promptly licked the icing off without eating).

Here is Kaleb enjoying his first cupcake ever!

Isn't he a sweetie?

My Baby is One

My baby Kaleb made a whirl wind appearance one year ago today. I can't believe how time flies. Now he is crawling, eating solid food, and just being "stinking cute!" (as per Keke) Happy birthday, sweet pea.

I just love those blue eyes!

Monday's Discovery

Remember the ocean bag that J made for our book, Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha?

Now it is Kaleb's turn.

All right, I was chicken and I placed the bag in a plastic container. I was totally afraid it was going to explode, possibly from him biting it. I am going to try it again, this time in his high chair. It was definitely new to him. Hey, you like the baby knees? I found those in a thrift store (but you could easily make them from an old pair of socks). His poor knees were getting roughed up from the floors. They keep rolling from his fat little legs but they are doing their job. I just don't put them on too much because they are really tight and I don't like the marks they leave on his legs.

Storm in the Night (part3)

This is the last post for Storm in the Night written by Mary Stolz. This post is mainly about the science we learned using the book. I saw an idea about a cloud finder by Nature Watch but it was alittle pricey (for classroom use). Then I found a link for the A-Priori Mommy and she had made one. All I had to do was e-mail her and she sent the awesome file for the cloud finder. It was great!

We read about the different clouds and then went on the balcony to see what we could find. It was a really cloudy/raining day today, so we got to see alot.

Here J is pointing out some clouds. J loves the cloud viewer and she has asked to do this everyday! We made a cloud book complete with pictures of different types of clouds.

We played scientist and conducted an experiment with a large ball of cotton and some water. The experiment can be found 2 Teaching Mommies.

We observed characteristics of the cotton ball cloud before we dipped it into the water and then after. The observation sheet had picture clues so J could make her own observations.

Then using cotton balls, we played a game with straws. We used wind power to race our clouds across the table. She thought this was funny but she kept trying to keep hers from falling off the table.

And everybody knows that rain makes mud. J did alittle "mud" fingerpainting with chocolate pudding.

It looks gross but J had a ball! Finally, I leave you with something I made this week (with the help of a friend from America). I made pickles! This is the first time I have made these and they turned out great. The recipe came from a Finnish friend. I ran out of jars but I still have cukes left so I will be making more. I am soo proud. We (the whole family) already ate one entire jar!

I was having trouble finding a good pickle, now I have one! Yay!

Storm in the Night links

YouTube a storm to listen to and watch

Boat Safe Kids pictures of different types of clouds and their meanings

Kids Activities different activities for rainy weather

Kinder Days ideas on how to Row Storm in the Night

Living and Learning a lapbook on Storm in the Night

No Time For Flashcards puffy paint clouds which look fun (I didn't do them but we might later)

Steve Spangler Science how to blow up Ivory soap in the microwave (this looks so cool, I really want to do this but I am not sure if we have Ivory soap here)

Little Giraffes weather ideas

Weather Wiz Kids cloud in a bottle experiment

Homeschool Share lapbook resources, great website!