Party

My kids were invited to a Dr. Seuss party, they had so much fun and were well behaved! It was a pajama party too!
 

Play time/Cleaning out Junk from my Homeschool Cupboard

Will is building a plank house and Ruth is decorating her tipi. Best part of homeschooling is that when kids want to explore some random topic, you get to do it! We also looked at wigwams, wattle and daub, longhouses, earthen houses, and adobe houses. We learned about the benefits of each structure and the regions where they were built.

 Ruth apparently had a blast creating a castle! We used up left over geometry pieces and chalk (that's what is in the bowl). Wet chalk dries really cool.

I cut the bottom off of two milk jugs. Then we played catch.

Old shoe box turned stegosaurus, via Ruth

Playground of dreams

Water Experiments and Homeschooling

Roll the dice then find the state or capital that starts with that letter

We've done all sorts of water experiments this week. We looked at water in its solid, liquid and gas forms. (The timing couldn't have been better because we were later able to talk about cement mixers and keeping cement a liquid and how it turns into a solid...they're building a house right next door to us.) And while the water was boiling we talked about absorption and watched water climb the paper towels and mix in the bucket below. (Bonus: we got to talk about mixing colors)

 Immediately after these two we decided to test which materials absorb water best. We used sponge, towel, paper towel, giant pom pom ball, craft paper and an egg carton. We made hypothesis about which would do best and which would not absorb much at all. Then we added 1 tablespoon of water to each section of the muffin tin. The funny thing is that since we just did the paper towel experiment, both kids guessed that it would do the best soaking up water. The towel did the best, egg carton was the worst.

Playing "real" angry birds

Sorting money

We made our own number line. The kids LOVE looking at the numbers they colored and counting the objects next to the numbers. I think this is really going to help Will with number recognition. This is hung on the wall by the back door/table so we're constantly looking at it and talking about it.

We also added a HUGE map and other useful charts that now decorate our living room. I have been wanting a huge awesome map for a long time. I love that we're immersing ourselves in educational resources. After we read books we always look up where the author is from or find the country the characters were from. We also all love that the bottom has all the nations flags! (I guess it's good I have never been good at interior decorating, otherwise all these "school" decorations in the living room might be annoying!)

I saved the old egg shells and filled them with paint...

 Then we smashed them on paper in the backyard...the only downside is that 18 eggs was NOT enough!

Art AND Science! Ruth colored with markers on paper towels and then sprayed them down with water and watched her artwork spread out as the water spread through the towel. 

The Land of Rain

Hockey Fans

We all got green t shirts tossed to us from the rink, go Americans!

Weekend

Laughing babies are the cutest

 We visited Brian and Tia this weekend. We had so much fun running around at the lake and playing games.

Playing on the train tracks at the pond

Eating pizza in the back yard

I finished Claire's quilt, this is my favorite piece of it. HOORAY! Thanks again, Paula for my sewing machine, it is definitely my favorite belonging.

I believe in SCIENCE

Gummy bear science. We hypothesized about the effects of water, salt water, and vinegar on red bears. Then we carefully measured the water and vinegar.

 I wrote their hypothesis for each liquid under each tub. I'm excited to compare the results with their guesses.

Then we played don't eat Pete with the extra bears!

Sharp shooting number recognition

Smashing our paper mache from last week, super fun cause and effect

UPDATE:

Here the kids are comparing their before and after gummy bears. The vinegar soaked bears got the biggest and the salt water bears got bigger but not much bigger. The kids compared how the bears looked, smelled and felt different. Then I told them to see if each of the bears tasted different than normal bears...this is the picture that came after that suggestion. Funny thing is that they were willing to try each of the bears, even though the first was so nasty! So fun.

Active Schooling

So we've been trying to get creative here to better help Will with school. He is fidgety. Since we're working on number recognition with him right now, I came up with a couple fun games to get him moving and focusing on numbers!

He picks a card, tells me what number it is and then we do that many jumping jacks, or count to that number while doing a wall sit (his favorite). (It's nice to get a mini-work out for me too!)

Today we played a game where he has two piles of cards. One pile has pictures of objects and the other pile has numbers. He has to count the object, match it to the number card in the other pile and then take a victory lap around the dining table, then repeat. He loved shouting as he ran around the table and this short break helped him get excited about focusing on counting again. He did a great job with counting the pictures of cats, cars, submarines, and other objects; he was careful and counted them all correctly! I played this same game with Ruth (with bigger numbers) to help her practice this skill. She had a hard time carefully counting each flower or star on her cards. It takes a lot of patience and focus to sit and count carefully!

Also, we went to a hockey game this weekend with Brian and Tia. It was super fun. Beforehand we went to Bookwalter (it's a winery...I had to tell the waiter 3 times that we really didn't want any wine!) for dinner. The food was killer; perfectly cooked meat, and fun yummy appetizers.