The Great Penguin Flop

This past week we studied penguins...or at least we were supposed to study penguins.  I meticulously cut out tens frames for our goldfish, matching cards, and researched with the boys where the various penguins we had in our pack came from.  I had this beautiful week of lesson plans sitting in the school area, and about 95% of it was a flop.

Monday, the boys were beyond over tired.  They were happy to start penguins, but with it being a snow day for the other kiddos around here, their attention span lasted all of 5 minutes.  And honestly, I cannot blame them.  Why would you not want to play in the snow?  The only thing they were truly interested in was a youtube video about emperor penguins.  I wish I had saved it, it really was awesome.

Tuesday was not a planned school day.  That is our day we usually attend the local playgroup and play with our friends and teachers.  However, Carter's stomach had other plans for us, and we were forced to stay home.  :(   I had to pull "school" time out of my hat really quick, since Pierce made it quite clear that he could not do his day without school.  So, we built our Melissa and Doug world map puzzle, and physically put our penguins on the continents they belonged on.  Just for comparison, we also put our arctic animals in the arctic circle.  That was actually a much better visual than I had anticipated, and the boys really got into looking all around the world.  They were also introduced to the concept of hemispheres.

 

Later that day we put sand on the light table, and they had a blast writing and filling their 3-D shapes.  Pierce actually pointed out to me which shape was the hemisphere and which was the sphere.  They were also having fun figuring out which was a cube, cylinder, and pyramid.  Over all, it was the best day we had all week.

Wednesday was yet another snow day.  That means everyone is home, and well, school does not happen when everyone is home.  I had learned that 2 days prior.  It did mean that we went outside and built a snow fort and played with penguins in the snow.  We had them belly sliding, and we even had humans attempting to belly slide.  That was hilarious.

Thursday we did water resist art.  I had the boys color on paper with crayons, and then try to water color over the crayon.  It does not work, since the wax from the crayons makes the paper resistant to the water.  That is the same concept of the oil the penguins have and spread all over their body; it makes their feathers resistant to the water.  They thought that was one of the coolest things ever, and made several pictures that way.

Then Friday was yet another wash out.  I was so incredibly sick this time, and there was no way I could do school.  I tried; I honestly did.  I wrote the poem on the board and everything.  But instead, we all loaded up into the car so I could get some Pepto before I had to drive to NY later that evening by myself.

Normally I would attempt to redo the lesson the next week, but the boys honestly were not too into the penguins.  Upon arriving home today, I packed up all the penguins, along with the penguin table, and brought out the materials for Valentine's day.  They are so excited to do Valentine's day activities!  And honestly, I am too.

I hope everyone else had a great week, and if I do not post before Friday, Happy Valentine's Day!

ABC...123

I have had a couple of people ask me lately how I am teaching the boys their letters.  At first my answer was to check here...and then somebody ever so kindly pointed out that there are a lot of themes, but not a lot of individual lessons.  Obviously my guys are learning something, so just how do I teach them there ABC's and 123's?  Here are some of the things I use nearly every day to reinforce letters and numbers.  My number one philosophy is that learning should be fun.  So if they are getting frustrated, or not having fun, then we stop whatever we are doing and visit it another day.

Light Table
We love our light table...and I love the fact that all I use as our light table is a clear container with Christmas lights underneath.  We have used many different mediums with our light table; shaving cream, sand, water beads, paint, pretty much anything we have.  We have also used play cars, paint brushes, fingers, and small world characters to play with the various mediums.  In terms of planning activities for the table, I always ask the boys if they want to practice their letters or numbers.  Most times they will say no...until I start practicing their names.  Most of the time they trace what I have done, but I don't mind.  They are still learning.  Even if they just make a bunch of squiggles, they are still learning that needed fine motor control.  The point is to have FUN.  And we do.

Activity Trays

My boys love to learn by digging with their fingers and tracing, which is completely age appropriate.  Something new I have done with them involve dig and finds.  It is almost like the light box, but I can leave it set up for them to come back to, and to pull off the shelf as they please.  For the tray pictured, we were learning about snow and winter, so I did a S and W search and find.  When it comes to finding letters, I have discovered that not putting two that look similar together is much easier.  For instance, b and d on a tray confuses Pierce.  So I will do something like g and m...they don't look alike at all.

READ, READ, READ

Books.  Grocery fliers.  Signs at Parks.  Everything you can read, read.  One of our favorite games we play in the grocery store is name that price:  they have to figure out what numbers are there and how much that item costs.  They also love to figure out what aisle we are in.  The grocery flier is used to reinforce numbers and letters as well; they circle what they want, and then we read the word together.  Same for the price.  In books we point out letters that we are working on in our theme.  At the playgrounds we will do a search and find of letters in the signs.  (How many "o's" are there?"  I do not think I could stress the importance of reading enough.

Rainbow Writing
I never knew this had a technical term until somebody had said it to me about a week back.  Apparently I do rainbow writing with my boys...on our chalk board every morning I put a new letter for them to practice tracing with many different colors.  They love it; and then they even sometimes start tracing the word that starts with that letter.  I have also found that it is a great way to center them in the morning too.

Arts and Crafts 

I will not call them worksheets.  I detest worksheets, and detest using them.  However, every now and then the boys look for them.  I have made them a blue binder where there are various sheets in there for whatever the theme is we are working on.  It could be something as simple as following a line from an inuit to an igloo, or something they can take out and color.  We have also created letters out of glue and glued on various items to create the letters.  It is something fun, and they have to use multiple senses to make things.  

He had made this for his buddy at the gym.  I dotted out the letters, he connected the dots.  

Making a P out of cotton balls

Immersion

I think this is the right term to use...I think.  I have decorated our home with many different types of posters that reinforce what we are learning.  I have puzzles scattered through the house the emphasize letters, numbers, spatial orientation, etc.  Yes, our house may perpetually look like a preschool, but it is totally worth it.  The key is to rotate and change what is on the walls and what is available.  Rotation will avoid the blending in effect we all get; I mean how many times do you really look at the family picture on the wall and REALLY notice it hanging there?  

TV Shows and Computer Games

I know this is a hot topic, and I may get some opinions on this.  However, I personally see nothing wrong with my children watching TV for 30 minutes a day, or playing a computer game for 30 minutes a day.  Some days they have the time, other days it is so nice out, they never see the inside of the house.  There is some fabulous programming available to toddlers and preschoolers.  Some of our favorite shows are Super Why and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  They also love to play www.sesamestreet.org and www.pbskids.org as well.  For my guys, we had tried www.ABCmouse.com, but they never really liked it.  

No matter what you choose to do, have fun with it.  By no means am I a perfect mom, and my children are not perfect themselves.  Be with them.  Learn with them.  Be excited yourself, and your children will catch on to your enthusiasm.  Have them see you reading your favorite magazine or book.  My goal every morning is to have just one thing stick that I introduce to them that day.  That is it.  Just one.  Some children just naturally love to learn.  Other children it may take more convincing.  However, it can be done.  It is just a matter of figuring out how your kiddo learns.  :)

The Gingerbread Mansion

As my amazing husband came home from work last Wednesday, I threw some supplies at him to make gingerbread houses, said have fun, and went out the door to do my yoga class.  I guess I forgot to mention simple houses the boys made, because what we ended up with was a mansion.  It is quite hilarious, and for me it is fun to see just how different Dan and I are when it comes to crafting.  But, if you want to make your own regular gingerbread house(or mansion) without a lot of work, here is what you will need:

Various candies
Graham Crackers
Frosting
A board to put it all on

I for one fail at making gingerbread.  I can never get it to come out an even consistency, and it never quite tastes right.  Quite frankly I also did not have the time this year to make gingerbread pieces (I guess a stay at home mom does not really stay at home).  I also did not want to buy one of those kits in the store, since they are crazy expensive and do not have what I want most of the time.  So, this was the next best thing.

Use the frosting as glue - spread it across the joints of your house; meaning the edges of the graham crackers.  Once those are dry, use more frosting to "glue" on your various candy pieces and decorations.  This is what we came up with.  Keep in mind, my husband engineered walls to go with the roof, but the walls did not support the roof.  And the fact that he put in trusses in the roof, that tells you how big this thing is.

It must taste delicious, since part of our house is now missing...or ti could be that we have a toddler and preschooler in the house.  :)  Hope you enjoy this project as much as we have!

Christmas Splash

I forgot how much I love to do themed baths.  I haven't done one in awhile, and now I wonder why. It entertains my two fish I have as children, it allows complete exploration of materials while in the bath, and, as I found out during this one, it allows for quite a bit of pretend play as well.

All I used for this bath was green food coloring, and various foam shapes.  The great thing about foam is that as long as you get it wet, it will stick to the bath tub.  Easy set up, means happy Mommy and kids.  I also discovered that wiggly eyes will stick to foam when wet; no glue necessary.


The trees and  gingerbread men I purchased in large packs, that we have also decorated with stickers.  The circles I cut out of larger sheets of foam, and the little shapes I found in a box in my craft area.  I also found the stars in the same craft area, but I know I have recently seen them at my local Michaels.

It was so easy for the boys to play and move things around.  After all, all the materials required to stick was water.  I also had on Christmas music while they were taking this bath, which lead to gingerbread men singing, Christmas trees being decorated, and candy canes being counted and lined up.  

yes, we have goggles in our tub.  Pierce is convinced he is a scuba diver.

Now that I did this bath, I am trying to figure out what the next kind of Christmas bath I want to create.  :)

Sparkly Cinnamon Pine Smelling Fun

I promised I would attempt to write, and for the first time in about a week, BOTH of my children are napping at the SAME time.  Yippee!  This gives me an opportunity to cram the 30 million things I need to do into a few hours of space.  :)

Just as I predicted would happen, the boys are all about Christmas trees, present wrapping, and the Arctic.  I have to admit that the movie Polar Express has added to the Arctic interest, with the caribous crossing and all.  With that being said, here are a few activities we have accomplished in the last few days.  We have been snowed in, so that has allowed a LOT of time to do things.

Play dough Meets the Arctic

I did not plan on this happening, but I should know when it comes to homeschooling, that what you plan is not always what happens.  I intended on making red and green peppermint smelling play dough, but the odds quickly stacked against me.  First off, I was apparently out of peppermint oil.  And red food coloring.  And it was a sleeting icy mess in which I could not get my car up the driveway, even if I had tried.  So, plan B.  I made green play dough that smelled like Anise, and to still have red play dough, I made it our of beet juice (not the best smelling, but it looked nice).  I got out the Christmas tree cookie cutters, along with snowmen, beads, pipe cleaners, etc., and set it up on their craft table.  They didn't really have a complete interest in it, and I asked the boys why not.  Pierce stated, "we need brown play dough."  So back into the kitchen to make a 3rd batch of play dough, that smelled like cloves and was brown.  When I went back to the table with their play dough, they had the Arctic animals there waiting to be explored.

It was also decided they needed some cinnamon sticks to build pens to keep their animals in, so they could make an Arctic zoo.  They furthered their Arctic play dough adventure by getting their trains, and making train tracks through all of the Arctic animals (hrm, this sounds like a familiar scene in a certain movie).  

Artistic Trees

I have seen various tape resist art on contact paper all throughout Pinterest.  My friend also accomplished this feat with pumpkins back in October.  I decided to try it with the boys, and see how cool the trees would look on the windows, to go along with our other decorations we are making.  I taped off the tree area, and gave them various colors of paint.  Of course, I pictured a green tree with a multi colored background.  But, my two little artists had their own plans.  

 As you can kind of see, the trees were a cool blue/purple/pink/green color.  And the whole piece of contact paper was as well.  I gently moved the paintings downstairs to dry by the wood stove, and came back to find all of the paint flaking off the contact paper.  I don't know if there was something I was supposed to do to the contact paper before we painted, or if we used the wrong type of paint.  However, I have promised the boys this week we will try a different contact paper experiment.  I was so sad.  Their art looked awesome!


Sparkly Pine

We have had quite the growing collection of pine cones in our house.  Or as Carter puts it, pine corns. I knew eventually I would do something with them, other than sort them by size, weigh them, etc., but I just couldn't figure out what.  It was actually while painting the trees that I decided we needed to paint the pine cones and play with glitter.  My boys LOVE glitter.  To the point that I am convinced there will forever be glitter in our floor boards, couches, etc., no matter how many times I clean and vacuum.  I have come to terms with this.

I had the boys start out by painting their pine cones with which ever colors of paint they wanted.  I then layered the glitter in a shallow tray so that they could roll the pine cones and glitter the tips.  Well, they loved the first part of those directions.  But, the second part was vetoed.  The tips of the pine cones being covered in glitter was not enough.  They needed more sparkle.  And so we developed our fine motor skills by pinching glitter and sprinkling it over the pine cones.  These will be added to our tree.  :)

I loved how they worked together to create their art.  And I love how they came out.


The most important part of all of this was the boys were able to express themselves and have fun all at the same time.  They are able to show pride in their work, and love to show everyone their ornaments on the tree when they come in the house.  I also love to see that they are making correlations between what they read/see and what is actually tangible in their hands.  That gives me those warm, tingly, goose bump feelings.

Yesterday we spent about 75% of our day in the snow, and this morning we spent it grocery shopping.  But it was great that they were pointing out different numbers, letters, and items.  We were also discussing what was healthy vs what was not healthy thanks to the lovely NuVal number system we have.  I cannot wait for them to wake up soon, since we have plans of making some really awesome gingerbread houses out of graham crackers today (way too busy to make gingerbread).  Hope you are all having a great week, and I will try again in a few days to do some more updates.

Thanks for reading!

Baby its cold out there...

I made another small world for my boys this week. According to my lesson plans, I was not going to discuss the Arctic until next week. But as always, I am changing things up to go with what the boys want to explore.  

Pierce still talks about his manger everyday, and requests various songs about Jesus. On top of that, he and Carter now want to know all about igloos, Eskimos, and polar bears living near the north pole. It may not be the most accurate lesson in the world, but this is just a starting point so they can explore. :)

Here is what I used:
Our sand table (still inside)
Christmas drape cloth
Artificial snow
Blue sparkly pom POM's (representing water)
Cotton balls
Too animals:  Arctic set

To be honest, I recycled almost everything I had in there from the Caterpillar world. I put down the Christmas drapery, placed some artificial snow on top of that, and the Toob animals. I dumped a bunch of blue cotton balls in one end with the killer whale and beluga whale to represent the water...without the mess.

So far it has just been a brief introduction, but they have already loved touching and seeing the various animals and Eskimos.  Pierce's new favorite word is caribou, and Carter thinks the igloo is way to cool. (I am thinking time to find some sugar cubes and make igloos).   At some point this week I will probably add on to the small world so that they can make hoof prints, sled tracks, etc.  I also discovered with their previous small world, the texture needs to vary for them to stay interested. But for now I feel this is a sufficient set up.

I also have a sensory bucket of pine, bows, ribbon, ornaments, and garland set up as well. They haven't seen that yet, but since we put up our tree this weekend, I am sure they are going to love it. This week I still plan on digging into Santa, elves, and trees.  I just may need to modify a few things to suit their interests. :)

I hope everyone has a great week, and I will attempt to update in a few days. Attempt is the key word in any moms world. :)

The True Meaning of Christmas

Despite the fact that we do not attend church every week, it is more than important to me that the boys learn the true meaning of Christmas.  I do not want to instill it in their heads that it is solely about Santa, the elf that visits, and asking for a ton of toys for Christmas.  I want them to learn it is about giving, the birth of Jesus, and the gathering of family.  Yes, we have obviously talked about Santa, seen Santa, and even have our elf visiting from the North Pole.  Yes, I have set up our small snow world with ornaments (seen here), and we have created a Christmas Tree space of their own, where they pretend to make candy and presents for everyone in the house on a daily basis (seen here).  But, before we immersed ourselves too much into the cultural traditions, I took the week to immerse them in my religious beliefs.

I started the week by reading to them from their children's Bible about the journey for Mary and Joseph, and the birth of Jesus in the manger.  We set up our own Nativity, and Pierce loved being able to match up the Nativity with the names in the book.  He is finally at that age where he is putting things together from multiple contexts...which is making my job much easier.  :)  Carter was more about playing with the animals, but hey.  He is a young 2 year old.  And he is being exposed.  That is the important part.

To have even more fun with our lesson, I had printed out some full size letter J's for the boys to decorate.  I had them think of whose name starts with J in the Bible, and the only one they mentioned was Jesus.  I also tried to have them correlate the J with Joseph, but that is not happening.  It is Jesus for them, and that is all there is to it.

Yesterday we colored in our angel coloring pages ( found through this website), and I was going to have the boys paint coffee filters with glitter and glue them onto popsicle sticks.  However, we had a surprise visit from family, so we did not have a chance to do our craft yet.

I also glued together some popsicle sticks to represent the star that lead the Shepard and Wise Men to the manger.  Pierce is specially fascinated with the meaning of the star (after all, he wants to be an astronaut), and was searching for the brightest star in the sky last night.  The boys are very excited to decorate their stars when they wake up from their naps today.  They already have visions of glue, glitter, paint, etc.  :)  

Of course we also borrowed a ton of books from our library.  Out of all the books we borrowed, it is very apparent that the boys have 2 favorites.  The first one is titled, This is the Star, and is written by Joyce Dunbar.  It is very repetitive, and builds on itself.  It honestly makes it understandable for Carter to even follow along on what the Star did.  The second book is The Donkey's Christmas Song, written by Nancy Tafuri.  This is not as religious, but it allows for a lot of interaction with the reader, and it still explains the story of Jesus's birth, through the eyes of the animals in the manger.

Every night we have ended our day by me tucking them in singing them various Christmas songs that go along with the theme for the day.  Their favorite so far?  Angels we Have Heard on High.  I have to admit.  That is one of my favorite ones too.

What are some of your favorite traditions or activities you like to do with your children to teach them the true meaning of Christmas?

A Space of Their Own

With the boys being at the perfect age for Elf on the Shelf, Santa, and the magic of the season, I have decided they needed a space of their own to decorate.  My hope is that by them having a space of their own to decorate, they will not be so eager to decorate the real tree over and over and over.

We started out by our elf bringing them their own felt tree to decorate.  They love it. I purchased this at Target for about $10.  Yes, I could have done it all on my own, but I am honestly running out of time to do fun projects like that, school work, sleep, work out, and, well, you get it.  Plus, I honestly think that I would not have been able to get the felt cheap enough.  Anyhow, they spend every night decorating this tree, moving around ornaments, and creating new "patterns.

Tonight I started bringing out the rest of the decorations.  After all, Christmas is in 23 days.  :)  I brought up some empty Christmas themed containers, blocks, nesting dolls, our bell tower, and of course our mechanical Santa.  Last year we decorated, and all Pierce cared about was the bell tower. This year, both boys were amazed by everything.  I put shatterproof ornaments inside a metal tin, that Carter immediately decided was an awesome drum.

Pierce still decided the bell tower was pretty awesome, and spent about 15 minutes listening to the music, checking out the scenery, and asking Santa which songs were his favorites.  :)

They also took turns putting their blocks inside various containers, pretending to make Dan and I candy, and pretending to be Santa themselves.  I love the imagination the boys have.  It even helps make us get into the holiday spirit.  I mean, how can you not, when they are so excited and role playing?

At the end of the night, everything was put away, and placed under their felt tree.  This is their part of the house.  They can play with this stuff any way they want to, and I cannot wait until I see what they create tomorrow.  What are some of your favorite ways to decorate kid friendly for the holidays?

Caterpillar!

It is no surprise by now; my children are in love with all big machines.  Excavators, bulldozers, steam rollers, bucket loaders, it doesn't matter.  They are all loved equally the same in our house, and the favorite brand that they love?  The Caterpillar brand.  Those bright yellow and black machines are spotted everywhere we go.  When I happened to stumble across a small pack of Caterpillar machines at Target, I could not resist but buy them for the boys.  An even better bonus?  I was able to sneak them in the cart, with them there, and they never knew.  Yeah me!  :)

When we came home, the boys were watching Mickey's Christmas Carol, while I set up their invitation to play for the day.  They knew it involved the sand table, since they saw me carry it inside and upstairs.  However, that was all they knew.  I had to keep them out of their play/school room, and that was much harder to do than I thought.  Here is what I used:

Insta-Snow

Tiny glass ornaments (left over from when I was in college)

Various figurines

Garland

Packaged snow

I made the snow according to the directions on the package, and I did not have enough snow to cover the box like I wanted.  That is when I added in the packaged flake snow, which gave the perfect texture that I needed.  Finally, I added the finishing touch; the small vehicles.  

And here was the reaction from the boys:

They were so busy, they did not even look up at the camera!  That is a sign of success in my book.  Pierce then decided we needed to add some cotton balls so he could have some big stuff to bulldoze.  

They played in this for a good hour or more.  And even today, once we were finally home, they went back for some more.  

Our next small world set up is going to be all about the North Pole.  And that also means I may need to go buy some more Insta-Snow...unless anyone else has some ideas.  :)  Have a great night!  And hope you enjoy some small world play if you choose to try it.  

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

We had a splendid Thanksgiving week.  While, it was kind of a mixed holiday week, we over all had a blast.  I was informed by my boys on Monday, that Thanksgiving should be over and that we needed to start getting ready for Christmas.  With that strong statement, we did start decorating.

I found some super cheap foam trees trimmed in glitter, and some super cheap craft stickers to go with it.  Coupled with markers and some winter stampers, we had a blast listening to Christmas music and decorating our trees.

Yes, Carter needs to wear his glasses inside and out.  He is too cute!

We also had a lesson on icicles.  We happen to live in an area where the highway is lined with the shimmery icicles, and they have always intrigued Pierce; even as a baby.  Now little brother is kind of following in his footsteps, and they ask me to pull over on a daily basis to see the marvels of nature.  Obviously, I am not going to pull over on the highway.  However, there is one street in town that has a great showing of the icicles.  And it is not a busy street, so I do not mind pulling over.  They were amazed at the icicles!  And honestly, I was too.  They are an absolute beauty, and it is great for demonstrating the difference between solids vs liquids.  :)

I know I was not expecting the amount of detail that we saw.  To be honest, as much as I have always loved being outside, I have never been the one to stop and smell the roses...or look at the detail on icicles.  It was great to see how the layers of ice formed to make the icicles.  

We also created a center piece for our table.  This was an unexpected project for us.  I happened to see a few project ideas of pounding golf tees into craft blocks; and I honestly went to Michaels with that plan in mind.  Instead I walked out with a bunch of artificial ever greens and ornaments on wire.  I love how the boys created this project on their own, and I love how they can keep moving it around so that it is not the same every day.  

The other open ended project they did this week was sticking pom poms inside jars, ice cubes, bags, etc.  We also found these awesome sparkly pom poms at Michaels, and of course had to purchase them.  My boys love everything about pom poms, so why wouldn't they love these?  They have tinsel sticking out the side, which gives it this amazing texture as well.  We also happened to have empty plastic jars, and Carter has enjoyed opening and closing the jars.  

I guess it is safe to say we took a break from "school" this week.  However, next week we are going to start studying the nativity and learning the true meaning behind Christmas.  I want to do this before we get too carried away with crafts, gift making, etc.  We set up our Nativity last night when we came home from our Thanksgiving festivities, and I started to tell the story to Pierce.  However, they were so tired, I do not think it really stuck.  Buddy the Elf also showed up last night (our elf on the shelf), and the boys are crazy excited that he is here.  And that reminds me, he needs a new home.  :)  Have a great night everyone!