Tot Tuesday

Recently, we had the opportunity to visit a corn maze which was super fun. I had to share these pics of Riley playing in the corn.

This is my favorite pic of all....he is so cute! He ended up with corn everywhere - in his shoes, pockets:)

Aquarium Experience

We are currently working through a Year of Adventures and this adventure came just in time for our Night of the Moonjellies Row. Because of our interest in nature journaling, this was also a great adventure for Science.

Kaleb is hamming it up here - he is "thinking" about his aquarium map. And don't you love my toddler's clothes? He dressed himself and insisted that they matched because they were both red. I tried to talk him out of it but you can see how that worked.

A bird that I can all most reach...In the aquarium, they have birds flying around and my tot all most had bird poop one his head while I was taking this pic. It just missed him!

Riley, my tot, inside a shell.

Love this photo - J is way too big for the shell!

Here's the photo of Kaleb and the moon jellies. Aren't they amazing? We had too much fun learning about jellyfish when ready Night of the Moonjellies. Another fun adventure - see you soon.

Letter X Interactive Notebook with free printable

Letter X is finally here....so close to finishing:) Hope you enjoy the download.

My letter sort game is based on treasure chests. Sort the upper and lower case coins into the correct treasure chest. Add envelopes to the back of the chests so the coins will slip right in the pockets.

I added a letter review game - get to the treasure ...X marks the spot. You play this several different ways. One way - your child chooses an alphabet card and covers the letter that he/she says. When they are all covered, they can get the treasure.

My math game is addition to five. Using colored linking blocks, your child chooses a math card and works through the problem using manipulative. If the answer is a number 3, for example, they find a 3 and cover it with a green block. If you don't have the linking cubes, you could use pom poms. Have fun with the letter X.

Download Letter X Interactive Notebook HERE.

FIAR - How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World

Our Five in the Row book these past few weeks has been How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. It is definitely one of my favorites and I even used this book when I taught third grade overseas.

First, Kaleb made a passport so he could collect stamps for every country that he visited. Each country stamp also included the ingredient that was found there.

He learned about the parts of an apple as well as the life cycle of an apple.

He compared the weights of several items to the weight of an apple. He loved when I pull out the balance! He tried to discover the amount of blocks that would balance out his apple.

He wrote a mini book about how to make an apple pie.

We had a taste test of several types of apples which was fun. This was the first time we tasted Pink Ladies and learned that we liked them.

He mapped out the adventure in the book on a world map. We discussed why she would use certain types of transportation according to the map.

I challenged him to make an apple from Legos. He then made an orange candy corn man as well.

He worked on a mural of a cityscape which unfortunately got super wet when my tot spilled the paint water on it. We were disappointed but we had fun drawing it.

Lastly, we made an apple pie. I peeled the apples and he cut them. I used a store bought crust.

It turned out pretty good and we ate it with ice cream. This book took us a few extra weeks because of the hurricane but we finally finished it. We will be working on How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the USA next. It should only take a week for that book, then on to our next FIAR book. 

Nature Journaling - Week 4

With trying to catch up after Hurricane Irma, we haven't been able to spend the time we wanted to on our nature hikes. But that doesn't mean we haven't had anything to journal about. This week's journals contain animals that we learned about during Science as well as some other cool things we saw:)

This week, we learned about otters and skunks. I love the use of the danger sign!

J also drew a dinosaur that she saw at Dinosaur World. I love the colors. And she drew her bunny Gwin.

Kaleb shared a picture about the moon jellies that we saw at the Aquarium. HE even drew himself in front of the case!

Here is Kaleb's bear - complete with humps on the back because he learned that grizzly bears have humps on their back.

My journal which includes a skunk and a dinosaur. We have been outlining our pictures with sharpie markers and they are bleeding through our pages. Next time, I will buy journals with water color paper instead of all purpose paper. Our journals are becoming a great memory of our learning this school year so far. See you soon.

Tot Tuesday

My soon-to-be three year old has surprised me this week in many ways. One way is that he decided he was ready to wear underwear and go on the potty. Once he put those pants on, he was done with diapers. (even though some of us wanted them when we went to the zoo:) He conquered the potty training all by himself. I am not saying that he hasn't had accidents but he hasn't once asked to go back to wearing a diaper. Go, Riley!

The next surprise is his climbing this playground wall. He didn't think twice and he just conquered it. He slipped a few times but he made it to the top. I went to his side to help him but I didn't have to help. He did it on his own. My two year old is growing right before my eyes. I cannot believe it. In some ways, I am sad because he is my baby. But in other ways, I am proud of the strong boy he is becoming. Have an awesome day.

Salvador Dali Experience

Recently, we were given the opportunity to visit the Dali Museum for Homeschool Day. It was the perfect time to learn about one of the artists that my husband loves - Salvador Dali. He was a surrealist with some interesting ideas and paintings. This was definitely out of my comfort zone as I love the Impressionists. But it was a great experience for us:)

We started by our Dali experience by reading all about him. Then I allowed the kids to choose the art projects that they wanted to try. Kaleb decided to do the animal sculpture with the long legs. It was supposed to made from air-hardening clay but I found our clay had hardened:(  So I improvised - we used play dough.

I gave them each half a container of green and half of blue play dough to work with. We found some chopsticks and dowels for the legs as well as wood shapes for scutes and tails. They also used googly eyes for fun.

Kaleb was very pleased with his creation. I love his toothless grin at the moment.

J wanted to work on the collage of pictures from magazines. This was fun to watch. I kept reminding them that they were to choose items that didn't go together.

J's picture had some interesting concepts - Kaleb thought the toilet dog was just great! J loved her eye/nose shoe.

Kaleb made two pictures - this was his second. He wanted a toilet dog as well and he put mustaches on each of the people to remind him of the true Dali.

The next project was one that I choose - Dali's Mustaches. I had them draw a face and add a pipe cleaner mustache in any silly design that they wanted.

You can't tell from the picture but Kaleb's mustache (on right) is in the shape of a heart. Love these!

The museum had a bunch of activities for us when we arrived. One of the activities was create your own Dali mustache. I had a hard time getting this picture because we were laughing so hard. We spent all morning at the museum and had a great time. They had listening devices for each of the kids and a great "Mustache Tour" for them to listen to.

I was a little disappointed because some of the gardens were closed off due to Hurricane Irma. Maybe next time:( But we did get a cute picture in front of the Dali mustache! Not too bad for our adventure. See you soon.


Links

The Pinterested Parent - has a cute and easy project for a melting paper clock.

Artsy Crafty Mom - has list of ten projects for Dali.

Little Yeti - has a cute project of a long legged elephant.

Elementary Art Fun - has another long legged elephant art project.

Use Your Colored Pencils - has a great project that uses Dali's mustache. These are so cute!