Homeschool: Week 3

Last week, we talked about the letter M and did a little study on the moon.

We had oreos one day as a snack, with the moon phases.

Another day we made "moon cake". i found the recipe on a blog about MFW curriculum. (get the recipe here). It's weird... you put the dry ingredients in a pan, then make craters and add eggs, vanilla, milk, baking soda, etc, in the craters. 

Then you dump in vinegar and watch the reaction. 

The kids loved that part.

After I mixed it up, the kids added "moon rocks" (aka raisins)

And then we baked it and enjoyed. It had a strange flavor - not bad, just weird. 

But the kids had fun making it! And no, we don't have 4 kids now. We just had a friend over that day, watching him for his mother.

We read books about the moon and then made a space ship.

We attempted space hats... but that just ended up looking silly ;)

Once on the moon, we "floated" around the room and then enjoyed a snack of astronaut ice cream.

Then it was back to earth, bye bye moon! 

Music starts with M, too. In case you didn't know ;)

So we made a toy guitar together one day.

Everyone had fun with that, and they were good sharers!

We played with some musical instruments as we sang songs, too.

Not everyone shared well that day.... but some days go better than others ;)

Here's a little video of the kids and their cereal box guitar. Faith loves making up her own songs and when it was apparent that's what she was up to, the video camera came out ;) Enjoy!

Magik Theater Field Trip

This past week a friend gave us some tickets to go see "Seussical the Musical" at a local children's theater. We'd never been to this place, and welcomed the blessing of free admission!

 

 

We were not allowed to take photos during the play, so I snapped a few before and after.

Even though the big kids aren't looking in the photo below, I love the look on Ruth's face. She's starting to turn into a bit of a ham!

 

I was worried about how Ruth would do sitting in my lap for an hour during a play. The movie theater wasn't for her (that's a whole other nightmarish story) - and Ruth doesn't have the attention span to sit and watch TV (which is awesome!). I worried she'd be bored quickly with the play and need to run around. However, she LOVED it!!! More than the other kids combined. She was constantly bopping to the music and loved all the lights and bright colors!!  

This was as close as she'd get to Thing 1 & Thing 2 - I don't think she had any clue they were behind her ;)  Notice anything special about Thing 2? He has downs syndrome - I thought it was so awesome the theater gave him such a great role and included him without ever mentioning anything was "different" about him! He did a great job, too!

Faith was too shy to pose with any characters, but Nathan happily went to meet the Cat in the Hat, Horton & the bird (I can't remember her name...)

 

I sorta kinda got lost downtown while trying to find parking at the Magik Theater. Every lot I found was full or for special permits only. After 20 minutes of searching, knowing we were going to be late if we didn't find something, I found a construction lot that let me park. The kids told me we were in the "bulldozer place."  It was a bit of a walk to the theater, so on the way back to the "bulldozer place", we walked through Hemisphere Park. I've never been, it's pretty back there! When the weather cools down we'll certainly go back, but we'll bring Daddy because he's better at navigating downtown and finding parking :) 

We found a playscape for the kids to play on and then walked by the Tower of the Americas. The kids sat on a bench to enjoy some of the waterfall fountains. And I took out my phone to snap some pics. Ended up with cute ones! It helped that everyone was in a good mood from the play & the park. 

We had a good time at the Magik Theater. And we'll certainly go back one day. The new season starts next month, we might even look into getting season passes since Ruth (especially) loved it soooooo much!

Homeschool Week Two

This past week, we learned about the letter S. And talked more about God's creation - specifically the Sun.

We made pizza one day for lunch. 

The kids followed the recipe (Ruth has even loves "helping" bake things this now)

Then we rolled out the dough & took turns kneading it. (yes, that's Ruth in the corner, crying, because she wants a turn!)

Nathan tried his hand at throwing the dough in the air to make a pizza.

But he wasn't successful so much.

So Faith pushed it out into a circle. 

And then we took turns adding beams to our circle - to make it look like the sun.

A little sauce...

Lots of cheese...

After 20 minutes in the oven, Ta Da! Lunch!

That day, we ate the sun :)

Another day, we had company most of the day (watching kids for another mom).

So we painted with shaving cream (added a little glue so it would dry hard).

The kids smeared it all over the place, then we tried making "S" in the paintings somewhere. 

That day we had glow-in-the dark star snacks.

Did you know if you make jello with tonic water, it glows under blacklight?

Well. Now you do - just add a couple Tablespoons of sugar to offset the bitter quinine.

The kids LOVED it!

When our paintings were dry enough, we took put them under the blacklight, too - I had added fluorescent paint to the shaving cream without telling the kids. So they were excited their S's glowed!

Another day we attempted a sun science project... NASA has a kids science page with instructions on how to make smores with the sun. They wanted us to line a box with foil, but I had a bunch of foil pans and that should work just as well, right??? Apparently I need some lessons in solar engineering (or whatever its called). We let our "oven" preheat for 30 minutes, then put the marshmallows in. NASA said it would take 30-60 minutes in direct sunlight for them to melt. 2 HOURS later, in direct TEXAS sun, they still weren't melted.... so I added the chocolate anyways and we pretended the marshmallows melted. Anyone know what I did wrong? Would a cardboard box lined with foil hold heat better?? Maybe I need to go back to kindergarten. If you want to try this, the instructions are here: http://climatekids.nasa.gov/smores/

The chocolate still melted, and the sun did that! So our science project wasn't a total failure.

And any project that ends with eating chocolate can't be bad!

(Above, Faith was mad because he smore was too big to eat... the other day she was made that her shoes touched the floor. And this morning, she was mad that her spoon couldn't pick up cereal.... she'll outgrow this phase one day, right???)

Nathan and Ruth had zero problem enjoying their dessert!

All in all, the week went good. The kids know what S sounds like and can pick out words that start with S, with at least 75% accuracy - at least if they're really paying attention. Both kids made progress in learning to write the letter S, too. Nathan gets frustrated easily when he can't do it, I think there's a perfectionist in him starting to peak out. So my hardest thing this week has been calming him down and encouraging him to keep trying it on his own.

Why, yes, Faith is wearing a glove in the photo above. For no other reason than because she is 3 years old and likes to wear strange things on occasion. haha

And we started our count to 100 - instead of a bean jar, like the curriculum suggests, we're adding a glow-in-the-dark star to their bedroom ceiling each day, and counting them. We didn't start till Thursday, so they have 2 stars so far. 

I've also started introducing new songs to the kids. Right now their new favorite is "This Little Light of Mine" - even Ruthie gets in to it sometimes!

It was another good week of school. Next week, we'll work on S and M. And talk about the moon. We might even take a trip to the moon. Want to come join us?

Homeschool Week One

Week one of homeschooling went ok. We're using "My Father's World" kindergarten curriculum - though we're not calling it Kindergarten... in case he needs more time learning the basics of reading & writing. We also kept Nathan back at church in SS & Cubbies. He's friends with so many 3-5 year olds, that he didn't even notice he's in a class of 4 year old's (with a few other boys who also aren't doing Kindergarten this year). What a praise that he hasn't a clue we held him back :)

MFW curriculum is great. But it calls for us to spend the first 2 weeks talking about Creation while introducing the alphabet. It seems to assume the student has never even seen the letters, or learned the ABC song. So I made the executive decision to spend just one week on lesson one. Because Nathan can recognize all the letters and knows 90% of their sounds. Instead of "dumbing it down", I'm letting it be review for Nathan and preschool for Faith. So far, so good.

What did we do for the foundation week on creation?

Day one we read the Bible and talked about light & dark.

Then we found pictures in magazines and made a collage of light & dark on a giant paper #1.

We finished with a snack of light & dark oreos - which was a hit :)

After Ruth went down for naps, we played ABC bingo, colored and did some scissor skill worksheets. 

Tuesday, we read about how God separated sky & water/land. We talked about how clouds are made, sang a few songs, made a #2 collage and finished with a snack of blue jello and marshmallow clouds - another hit! After Ruth went down for naps, we did another coloring worksheet and played some more with the ABCs.

Wednesday, we talked about how God made plants - so we talked about those and made another collage. By this point I'd gotten into a better groove on how to include Ruth in the project. So everyone had fun. And we finished with another fun snack: celery & peanut butter trunks with grapes as leaves, and blueberries as flowers. I know... blueberries don't grow in trees... but it's all we had in the fridge :)

Thursday we read about creation day 4, made another collage, sang songs again and had another cool snack - oranges shaped like the sun. We did more scissor work, coloring & handwriting practice during Ruth's nap.

Friday we went to the Children's museum, so we kind of abbreviated that day's lesson. We still read the Bible and made our #5 collage. And did some math & handwriting stuff, but then we all napped ;)  So no photos of a cool snack, because... well, there was none. The field trip was cool enough!

Saturday will not normally be a school day. But Daddy ran a 5K and then was planning to help some friends move. So we stuck with our schedule and finished out the 6th day of creation. At the last minute, friends came to join us so we all talked about animals & people, and finished up the collage. Then ate gummies shaped like smiley faces, to resemble people. Sure... we could have done something cool like painting with animal crackers and yogurt. But give me a break, it was Saturday ;)

Here's a picture of the kids' finished collage. They did a great job. And it only took Faith 3 days to learn that glue goes on the wrong side of the paper, so you can see the right side when it's glued down ;)

The older kids also made creation books, coloring or painting & cutting out each day's number. It wasn't until this week that I realized how poorly Faith knew her numbers... I feel like a terrible mom not knowing that. But after week one, she knows numbers 1-7 and what God made each day. And she understands how to work a pair of scissors. Which, I realize, is potentially a very very scary thing. ha  Oh, and if you ask her what day of creation is her favorite, it's day 5. When God made SEA MONSTERS. (according to the NASB) hehe

That was our first week of homeschooling. I don't plan to take a lot of photos each week, but I'll try to do a weekly update with some of the things the kids learned or are learning.