Monday's Discovery

It is finally here! Yay! After worrying about it, DH finally put in our safety gate at the top of the stairs. I stopped doing school upstairs because I was always worried about Kaleb falling down those stairs. Now, I don't need to worry (unless he figures it out). Monday's Discovery - a safety gate.

Here he is trying to get out!

I had to add this one because he has been trying to stand up, if you can see it through the bars. We had school upstairs today for the first time in a long time!

Madeline (part3)

Just a couple of more activities that we did for the book Madeline. We finished up our study on spiders by making a 3D spider and bat from an egg carton. J painted them black and we added googly eyes and pipe cleaner legs.

Here are J's finished pieces.

We practiced using tally marks as we counted the house. I found a worksheet that had us go through our house and count the bedrooms, sinks, tables etc...

After we walked through the house, we counted the tally marks and wrote the number. I wrote that we were going to make crepes and we did. They were very good except that J wouldn't even try them! Keke has asked for them again.

Our final product - not bad for amateurs, huh? The filling was brown sugar, sour cream (yogurt for us), and bananas. They were very good and relatively easy to make. I found it at All Recipes. Keke is my food photographer. Well, we had an awesome, jam packed time with Madeline but now, we are off to another learning adventure.

Madeline Links

Panorama of the Eiffel Tower

Time For Kids - France facts

Pinterest - Madeline ideas

Family Fun - Madeline's hat cake, cute

Official Eiffel Tower site

HomeSchoolShare Madeline lapbook

Madeline (part 2)

We are still reading and having fun with Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. This past summer, I knew that we would be reading Madeline and I just happened to find this Paris shirt complete with a picture of the Eiffel Tower. J loved it.

We worked on our writing letters correctly. I wrote them on a chalkboard and gave J some water and a paintbrush to trace them.

We are still learning about France. We have read several books, listened to some French words, and we will be eating some Crepes tonight. I made this simple French flag puzzle for J to do.

I printed out twelve girls and we put the girls into two straight lines. We also "divided" them into three and four straight lines as well.

I found a simple drawing lesson on how to draw Madeline and we practiced following directions. Here's J's, not too bad.

We read about the appendix and looked at charts to locate it. J colored the body worksheet I found at Home School Share.

 We also learned about germs and how they make us sick. We conducted an experiment on the reasons we should wash our hands. First, I gave J some lotion to rub on her hands.

Then I placed some "germs" (glitter) on her hand.

Then she put her hands together and saw how the germs spread to her other hand, and somehow to me!

We tried to wipe the germs off with a paper towel but it just didn't work. So J had to wash her hands with soap and water.

For Science, we are learning about spiders. J helped me create a spider fact chart. After we read books about spiders, we add a fact to each of the spider's legs.

We have read several books about spiders and even played a game.

We learned about the different parts of a spider and labeled a diagram. J wrote the labels by herself.

And the game of the week is one that I found on the Internet. We have been practicing writing our numbers. So this was a chance to practice in a fun way. J would roll a die and place a pom pom on the number she rolled. She then would have to write the number.

It is called Spinner the Spider and it was found at CanDoKinders. She had some great printables. So far, it has been a good week. Some books are just easy to work with and Madeline is one of those books. See you soon.

Madeline

First, I would like to say thank you for all of of family and friends that wrote to make sure we were okay after the earthquake. We did not feel a thing on this side of T. It is nice to know that we have people who care. Thanks, guys!


Our book for the week is Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. We will be learning about France, germs, manners, and spiders. We started with our rhyming words. J wanted to write the word "map" herself so she did.

We are working on correct formation of her letters, still a work in progress but not too bad. She found the letters to build the word and then wrote it again.

We practiced our number writing along with the rhymes that go with it.

And we worked on different ways we could add to make the number two.

We read our book, Madeline and I had made her some Madeline paper dolls that I downloaded from the Internet (sorry no link). She was intrigued with this and kept pulling them out to change the outfits and such.

Since our story takes place in Paris, we learned about several of France's landmarks and found them in the book! It was interesting to find these historical buildings beyond the typical Eiffel Tower. We made a mini book with actual pictures.

I found a paper Paris city from the blog Made by Joel. I printed it onto cardstock and we colored it with markers. Folded, the city stands. It was pretty cool, complete with an Eiffel Tower.

J made everybody blue since we didn't have a marker for our skin color. She also drew dogs by some of the people.

As a family activity, after dinner, I supplied them with frosting and some vanilla wafers. They were to build an Eiffel Tower. Here are our creations...

Keke is a perfectionist but it didn't work like she thought.

DH was alittle competitive. He thinks everything is a contest. All in all, we had fun and afterwards, we ate the wafers with some ice cream. We still have a ton of learning fun to do, stay tuned....:)

Monday's Discovery

The morning always seems to rush right by. I am trying to make the beds, clean the kitchen, start a load of laundry....Sometimes, in the evening, I will load the washer with clothes and get it ready for the morning. Well, this time I forgot to close the door and guess what I found?

My monkey took all of the clothes loaded out of my washer. He had a good-old time!

I guess he was helping me, kinda. Great Monday Discovery - laundry.

I know this picture makes him look like he has a black eye but he doesn't. I thought it was cute and it is taken through my laundry door. He thought it was funny when I found him pulling out all of the clothes!

Very Last First Time (part 2)



We are still working with our book, Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews. I was alittle slack in taking pictures, so please forgive me. We watched a video on how to make an igloo and then J created one with sugar cubes and glue. She left the igloo open so she could play with it.

In case you were wondering, we are going through a ballerina phase. She has worn tutus and tights all week. After J made her igloo, we experimented with an ice cube and some salt. We found that we were able to pick up an ice cube with some yarn and salt.

We painted with ice cubes that were colored with food coloring. A nice mess on our hands but fun!

Then we acted out the story, complete with ice hole and mussels to collect. We also learned about simple machines - the lever - and she is using a "knife" as a lever to pry the mussels from the rocks. We watched a video of ducks diving for mussels on the sea bed.

Keke asked me to make her a Red Riding Hood cape for Halloween. We don't celebrate Halloween but some of the girls are dressing up as princesses in the high school. My daughter wants to be different so she choose Red Riding Hood. I made her a cape from two polar fleece blankets and two t-shirt jersey sheets. I wasn't sure I would have time to visit the fabric district so I used what I could find here. J is modeling it for you as it is not quite done. I have to finish the hem. I altered the pattern to make it longer for Keke so I need to make some adjustments. The pattern and tutorial was free from Fleece Fun. Isn't she pretty?

It is not perfect but Keke really liked it. And the hood - it is soo large! I will post a pic of my daughter dressed up soon. We had a busy week but we are off to another book and a new location!

Very Last First Time Links

Walking by the Way has a great igloo idea but there is no way I could have saved that many milk bottles, especially since ours only come in one-liters!

My Little House in the City

Scienceray has the ice on a string experiment

YouTube a video of ducks diving for mussels

YouTube a video of a dissection of a mussel

YouTube how to make an igloo

YouTube an Inuit song

Time For Kids some information on Canada

HomeSchoolShare  my favorite resource!

Very Last First Time (part 1)

Our FIAR book this week is Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews. It is a book about an Inuit girl who walks alone beneath the frozen ice searching for mussels. She quickly becomes disoriented and can't find her way back to the ice hole. It discusses fears and how she overcame hers to find the way out of the ice. This story takes place in Canada and we have been learning alittle bit about the country.

J is coloring a Canadian flag - love that tongue sticking out! We are reading about the Inuit culture and J wrote the singular/plural forms of Inuit people (singular - Inuk) I just wanted you to see her handwriting. She has been practicing.

We are learning about bats this week for Science and here are some of the activities we have been doing. We read Stellaluna by Janelle Cannon. It is about a bat who is raised by a bird family. We discussed the differences between bats and owls (we studied those last week) and we filled in a Venn diagram.

We discussed carnivores, herbivores, and ominvores and created a mini book about them.

We worked on color words and colored bats to put in numerical order. We are working on recognizing larger numbers (past ten).

We discussed diurnal and nocturnal animals. She cut out animals and glued them in the correct area.

Our game for the week is Boggle Jr. It comes with letter cubes and cards with three to five letter names. We did not play the traditional way but I placed a card in the holder. Then I sounded the word out for her and let J determine the letters for each sound.

We will work with this for awhile. This is good practice for her reading skills. We mainly focused on bats so far but we will be learning more about our book this week.