Impromptu Art

We had some guests over yesterday so I pulled out some art supplies to do an impromptu abstract art project.

The original idea used canvases, masking tape, and acrylic paints.  I didn't have canvas and didn't want six kids using acrylic paints, so I adapted and used watercolor paper and chalk pastels.

This was Mika's finished product.

Maddie used oil pastels more than chalk pastels and didn't color everything in.  But you can still see where some of the tape had been, and she had a lot of fun turning herself pink.

This is what my table looked like when we were done.  If you  look closely, the whole thing is covered in colorful chalk dust.  It still looks like this today, 24 hours later.  I don't want to clean up the mess!

Tot Christmas School

I'm trying to do more with the littles.  I find it really difficult to fit doing things with them into my day.  I'm busy with teaching the bigs, grading, cooking, cleaning, unpacking, etc.  In order to find more time, I've banned myself from Facebook and The Well-Trained Mind forums during school hours.  It's helping a little.

So, this week, I've been Googling "Preschool Christmas Crafts" or "Preschool ______________ Crafts" with the blank being filled in with the topic I want.  Topics I'm looking for are things like snowman, Christmas tree, snowflake, ornament, etc.  My goal is to do one a day with them.  They are really enjoying doing crafts with me.

Yesterday, we did a Christmas bear that I found at First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts.  They came out really cute.

Josh did his craft almost entirely on his own.  First I got out watercolor paper and told him to make a tree with no leaves.  Then I put some of the blue liquid watercolor in a bowl and really watered it down.  I gave him a large brush and told him to cover the entire page.  When he was done, I let him sprinkle salt on the still wet paint.  While we waited for it to dry, I cut out the bear pieces for him because he doesn't have the scissors skills to do that himself.  He used a glue stick to put the bear together.  Once the paint was dry, I showed him how to glue cotton balls for snow on the ground, his tree, and snow clouds.  Then I used a roll of masking tape to tape the bear on; this made it stick up from the page a bit.  I wrote "Ho, Ho, Ho" on the little tag, and he copied it in red marker.

Maddie followed the same procedure but had more help.  She did the painting and salt.  I applied glue to the bear pieces and she put them together.  For the snow, I unrolled the cotton balls and she placed them on the glue.    She really loved it.

Today's craft, from the same website, incorporated some math and letters. Yay!

Today I used blue construction paper and had the kids put cotton balls down for snow.  I cut out the tree and snowflakes.  The tree had squares with the numbers 1-10 on them.  Each snowflake was also numbered.  Josh was able to glue the snowflakes in place on his own.  Then he glued on the snowman.  I made a little pipe cleaner scarf, pipe cleaner nose, and paper hat for him to put on his snowman.  The eyes are plastic pony beads.  Then he decorated his tree with dots of glue covered in glitter (done very carefully on his own).  I placed the foam letters down on the paper, and he picked up each one, removed the backing, and stuck them back down one at a time.

Again, Maddie had more help with gluing but she placed each thing on the glue herself.  She was able to place the snowflakes by matching the letters.  I worked on number recognition by naming them for her.  Our conversation went like this:

Me: Ok, get another snowflake.

Maddie: Picks up a snowflake.

Me: Which number is that?

Madde: Eight.

Me: No, that's a five.  Where's the five on the tree?

Maddie: Points to the seven.

Me: No, that's a seven.  Where's the five?  Look at the snowflake; find the same number.

Maddie: Points to the five.

Me: Good, that's right! 

I apply glue and she sticks it on.  About half of them, she chose the correct number the first time and half of them she required two tries.  She opted to decorate her tree with stick on foam hearts, and she wanted glitter stars in her sky.

I've really been impressed with how careful Josh has been in doing his crafts.  Normally, he's loud and won't be still for anything.  The fact that he's doing such a careful job tells me that he really wants to do these crafts. I'll keep working on having more for him to do.

Geodes

I decided to break out the geodes this week.  The kids really enjoyed cracking them open, though they were much harder to crack than I expected.  It turned out that most of ours weren't hollow, which explains why they were so hard to break.  Still it was a good excuse to go outside on one of the few non-rainy days and hit something.

The kids were thrilled to have a reason to don their goggles.  The littles love that I got them their own pairs.

Bang, bang, bang.  The towels we used to ensure pieces didn't go flying were totally destroyed by the time we were done with them.

Sam's was the first one to break.  It wasn't hollow, but he thought it was cool anyway.

Here I'm holding the pieces of one geode together so the kids can see how it would have looked inside.  This one was the most hollow one and had a funky bump inside.

This one split in many little pieces after not wanting to break at all.  We all though the colors were nice.  If you look at them closely under a magnifier, they had some neat crystalization.

This one had some neat color changes.  It reminds me of the big ones you can buy that are professionally cut.

We passed around magnifiers and inspected various pieces inside.

Here's a close up of that hollow one with the funky bump inside.

The kids really enjoyed breaking these open.  I want to see if the library has some books to follow up with and maybe take a trip to a gift shop that sells the really pretty geodes.

Week 8 and 9

What a crazy, busy two weeks!  We're moving on Saturday...35 hours from now.

Last week, Mikaela and Samuel completed almost all of their normal school load.  There were a couple of assignments that were dropped but not many.  I didn't manage to get any photos, nor will I have a chance to write out any details.

I did manage to spend some time with Josh and Maddie as well.  I printed off parts of a pumpkin unit study for younger kids, and we did some of it.  I cut out jack-o-lantern parts for them to glue together, than Josh wrote "jack-o-lantern" under it.  He also did some measuring with a pumpkin ruler, which he loved.  I have library books on apples and pumpkins, but Josh hasn't had much interest in being read to lately.  Maddie loves the books, though.  Here's their jack-o-lanterns:

This week, we have focused more on getting our move done.  Mikaela and Samuel still completed some school. They worked on their introduction and conclusion paragraphs for their writing assignment (that never ends).  They did some math.  They completed a chapter of history and did their usual three sessions of Rosetta Stone.  We managed to get one astronomy lab and one geology lab completed.  We were able to get Sam to two of his taekwondo classes, and both kids will be at their flag football lesson tomorrow morning.

We were also told on Monday, that we had to take care of the cleaning of the new house.  Thanks for the last minute notice!  Either we could clean it ourselves and bill them or hire a cleaning service and get reimbursed.  We opted to do the cleaning ourselves.  Sam and I have been going over their each morning to work on it for an hour or two.  He's earning money by helping me out.  While he doesn't clean as fast as I do, he is still working hard, and we are getting more done than I would do alone.  Mika has been helping out with the littles while we clean.

While we're home, I've been bouncing around between packing, helping with school, doing laundry, cooking, and spending a few minutes here and there with the littles.  Today, I also cleaned inside and outside of cabinets and drawers as I emptied them and got the oven looking new again.  Whew!

Here's Maddie's contribution to our work this week:

I have no idea what happened with the photos to cause that weird back-lighting.  Mikaela took the last photo. 

Tot School - Week 7

I tried something new last week with great results.

It's silly, really, but I repurposed some baskets I have into workboxes for Maddie and Josh.  My hope was that it would help organize me in coming up for things he could do, but it has really worked wonders on him.  Where he fought me with doing any activity I tried to do with him (for the most part), he now wants to work through the boxes.  The funny thing is I'm putting things in them that he resisted doing before.  I've even discovered this week that toys that he's never shown any interest in are enthusiastically played with when put into a workbox.  Silly, huh?

Here's his workboxes:

 I'll make nicer labels after we move, but they are working for now.  I haven't been filling box 6 since we dont' usually get that far anyway, but he's been begging me to put something in it anyway.  I might see if I can do away with it when we move so I don't have a box on top like I do now.

I used the letter A theme from Confessions of a Homeschooler to come up with some simple activities for him to do.  In addition to sorting apple pictures by size, putting together apple puzzles, we've done some art activites, some phonics, and some math worksheets.  I insert the latter two and calendar between baskets as I can.

Here's Josh doing some apple prints.  They didn't come out as well as I had hoped.  I don't know if that's just they way they come out or if it is the fact we were using very old, low quality, tempura paints.

We also did some potato stamping.  I cut a rough circle, star, the letter A, and a square in to bits of potato.  They really liked them.

I also had Josh draw and picture and asked him to tell me a story about his picture.  It's all about moving, which has been difficult for him to embrace.  He doesn't want to move again.

Week 6

It was a pretty standard week for the big kids.  I didn't get to do very much with the littles because I was busy trying to get as much packing started as I could.

Language Arts

Mikaela read about subject complements.  She completed an end-of-the-section review which included any punctuation, usage, and errors often seen regarding the parts of a sentence.  She'll be moving on to part 3 of her grammar book next week.  For vocabulary, she finished list 3 and got 100% on her test.  She's been enlisting Sam's help in studying with her flashcards; he's going to end up knowing all of he vocabulary for next year before he even starts! Her poetry took a close look at poetic elements used in a couple of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poems, "Cross the Bar" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

This is Mikaela's vocabulary test this week.  She had to give the meaning of the stem that is in all capital letters.  I goofed and put the same word down twice and missed putting one word on there completely.  (I could photocopy the tests, but I find it easier to just type them out.)

Samuel finished his grammar book.  After taking a practice test, he took the final test and began analyzing sentences in the practice book.  I have him scheduled to complete one sentence a day, but he requested doing two a day, which he has been doing.  He completed lesson 6 in vocabulary, learning the words ostentatious, inexorable, doleful, indolent, and  alacrity.  He loves finding his words in books that he reads.  In poetry, he read about different kinds of meter.  I also have him practicing reading comprehension from a free download I got from Scholastic's last sale.

This is Sam's final grammar test.  It required him to label the part of speech of given words, part of a sentence of given words, type of phrase, and type of sentence.

Math

In math, Mikaela learned subtraction with negative numbers.  She's been reading the teacher's manual on her own (since I've been so busy) and doing the worksheets on her own.  She's been doing really well with this so far.

Ironically, Sam is learning essentially the same things Mikaela is covering.  He just started Art of Problem Solving's Pre-Algebra.  Where her book covers adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing with negative numbers over four weeks, his covers all of them in one chapter.  Her's mostly tells you what you need to do, while his leads you to discover the rules, shows you why they work, and then uses those rules in advanced problem sets.  The explanation of how to do certain types of problems reminds me of geometry proofs.  Each step shows you what to do and lists which rule applies.  He's doing well.  Some of the problems are quite challenging, but he's learning (as am I).

History

In history, the kids read about how China felt they were the center of the universe and didn't need western goods, thereby closing their borders to foreign traders (with the exception of Canton).  They read about the rules regarding foreigners.  They also learned about the opium trade and opium addiction.

They also worked on a geography project I gave them: create an imaginary continent that has a bunch of required landforms (have to know what they are to include them).  Then draw and color it on poster board, label places with their names, add a compass rose, a scale, and a legend.  They have been really enthusiastic about this project.

Science

In astronomy, Sam is learning about light and telescopes.  Mikaela took her test for the last chapter about the sun and started reading about Mercury.  I did not give them a lab.

In meteorology, we learned about the transfer of heat energy and energy balance.  We discussed a couple of demonstrations that we couldn't do because of the weather and completed a lab showing the effects of carbon dioxide on air temperature.  We thought the lab failed; it just took longer to show results that it was suppose to.

In geology, the kids completed a streak test with brick, chalk, a penny, and different pieces of sand.  We had difficulty with this because it can be hard to tell the difference between a streak and a scratch (for us anyway) and hard to pick out quartz, feldspar, and mica from the tiny pieces of sand.  But we did the best we could.

Foreign Language

Both kids completed three thirty-minute sessions on their respective Rosetta Stone languages.

Art

Mikaela and Samuel both completed a very simple art project that involved tracing around masking tape to create rings and then erasing appropriate lines to make some rings appear in front of others.  Then they colored them.

Field Trips

We took the kids back to Lattin's Country Store and Cider Mill.  We were hoping the yellowjackets would be gone; they weren't.  After doing a few things there, we headed over to Tumwater Falls to see the salmon running.  I posted about it here.

Littles

I didn't get to do much with the littles because I was busy with packing.  They did enjoy making bracelets with plastic pony bracelets and pipe cleaners.  Maddie wore hers for a couple of days.

Tot School - Week 5

It was a fairly typical week with the littles.  Madelynn is almost always more interested in the activities than Josh. 

I'm trying to do a police theme over the next couple of weeks.  We've been reading picture books about police, and we put together this toilet paper roll craft.  Well, he colored the police officer and Maddie scribbled on the robber a little bit.  Then I cut them out and put them together because they had lost interest by then.  Josh does like the finished product, though.

Josh doesn't know any of his shapes except circle so that's one thing I want to work on.  To do that, I created shapes on the kitchen floor with blue painter's tape.  He loved the shapes.  I have him jump to the shape that I name and then describe.  I'll say something like, "Jump to the pentagon.  It's the shape with 5 sides."  He's an active boy so he likes that.  I want to sew a few bean bags for him to toss on the shapes, as well.  I got this idea from this blog.

I also made marble game from a free printout and a box. (You can get the printout at this french blog.  Just click on the template at the bottom and print it landscape.  Then you can color and put it on a box.  Finally, cut out the space between the animals' legs.)  Josh loved it, and I had marbles everywhere.

Maddie loved it too.  In fact, all of the kids loved it.  I ended up getting a couple of narrow long pieces of wood out of the garage and creating bumpers to help them be more successful in scoring and contain the marbles better.

I also sent Scott to Costco to buy a large bag of cheap rice.  The love playing in it, but clean up is a bear.  I end up with rice all over the first floor.

I also took Josh and Maddie to the children's museum to play for a bit one day.  They were so good leaving that I told them we can go back again very soon.

Tot School - Week 4

Week 4 was a little more successful.

Josh and I went over S and M for phonics.  I'm using Phonics Pathways, but I did the lessons on the white board instead of reading it out of the book.  The book introduces the consonants by teaching them with the vowels (ie. sa, se, si, so, su, ma, me, mi, mo, mu).  I wanted to help motivate him so I added a final consonant to each to make a word and helped him sound out the words.  At the beginning of the week, he was mostly just copying me, but my the end of the week, we was reading at least half of them.  He got so excited when he figured out which word he was sounding out.  It went like this: "mmmmmmm aaaaaaaa puh, mmmmaaaaa p, mmmmaaaaap,  map! like a treasure map!"  His eyes really lit up.  He was so excited that he willingly showed both his dad and grandpa his lessons.  In fact, when grandpa came to visit, he pulled him directly into the dining room to do it rather than letting him get settled first.

We also did some fine motor skills and sensory play again.  I chose chocolate pudding.

Do you see the letter M in the pudding?

 
In case you didn't know, playing with chocolate pudding is messy.

We also played with bubbles.

And practiced scissor skills with index cards.  This is one of Maddie's favorite things to do.  She had developed better scissor skills than Josh without any help.  Josh made a big jump in ability and no longer uses the scissors to just tear the paper.

I also finally pulled out Josh's Spectum Grade K math workbook.  He actually likes doing some of this in small doses. We did two pages where he had to find the item(s) that are different.  One page had rows of pictures, and he had to put an X on the thing that was different.

He started this page, which required him to find things that were the same.  Each row had multiple copies of two pictures.  He colored all of one picture red and all of the other picture green.  It was a lot of work for him, so I didn't make him finish it.  He did, however, insist on finishing it after grandpa came.  He really wanted to show him.  It's also the first time I've seen him color this thoroughly; usually, he just barely puts any color on the page.

He went on to to this page with grandpa, too.  He wanted to do more, but grandpa suggested he ask mom if he could do more pages.  That distracting him enough to let my dad get settled.

It addition to this, we went on a farm tour of Lattin's Country Cider Mill and Store.

Tot School - Week 3

My grand hopes of doing school with Josh (and Maddie joining in) are not working out as I had hoped.

One of the main problems is that I'm so busy with Mikaela and Sam's school needs (lesson planning, organizing, grading, teaching), that I don't always have time for the littles.  I'm hoping that as I get the lesson planning and organizing done, I'll have more time.

The second problem is Josh's interest.  He's already resisting 5 minutes of calendar and 5 minutes of phonics.  All he wants to do is play on the computer, play on the Wii, or watch TV.   If I deny him those, then he goes outside if he can and wanders around.

I did manage to get him to sit down with a tray of sugar.  I was hoping to review the vowels, and get him to write each one at least once.  I managed to get him to do just a capital A before he refused to cooperate anymore.

Then he decided to do this with the sugar instead:

He said he was giving himself a mustache.

Meanwhile, Maddie wanted to be cleaned up and gave me this look when I asked her to wait a minute:

I was trying to help Mika and Sam with their science project, and was taking pictures of what they were doing so I had the camera in hand to capture this wonderful look.

I did manage to get Josh to do one phonics lesson this week.  I wrote sa, se, si, so, and su on the board and went through sounding them out.  I added ending letters to show him some words, and he got a kick out of that.  Today (Sunday), he grabbed one of the kids Bibles and wanted to bring it to church because he could read now.  I'm hoping he'll become more motivated after I sneak in a few more lessons, and he sees that he really is learning to read.

I'd like to get him doing prewriting exercises, math, and more library book reading at some point.   I also wish we had more freedom to do more trips like I did with Mika and Sam when they were little, but having older kids ties us to home more.  We do have a field trip to a cider mill this coming week though.

Tot School - Week 2

Josh and Maddie seem to really like doing school every day.  It's only about an hour of day, and most of it is just fun stuff.

We continued to review vowels.  We're working on their name, their sound, and how to write them.  Josh has trouble remembering the sounds for e and i.  I'm undecided if we should continue with them another week or rely on the continual review that comes with later lessons.  For example, the next lesson is on the letter s, and you work on it by combining it with all of the vowels rather than separately.

Here's Josh writing the letter i with a dry erase marker on the laminated play-doh mats I printed for him.  I also bought him an individual chalkboard with writing lines on it, and had him try writing it with chalk.  He only has the tolerance to write each letter once or twice, so I'm trying to find as many fun ways to practice.

We also did the calendar and weather every day.  That takes care of counting practice.  That's about all of the math I've done with him so far.  I'll be adding more math-type activities soon.

I had both littles join in on the big kids' art project for the week.  First, I drew a border on a square of black paper, then I had him draw the letter A on it.  Afterwards, I helped him trace the letter with glue.  When it was dry, he got to color it with chalk pastels and blend it in with his fingers.  He did two: the letter A and the letter E. 

Meanwhile, Maddie kind of freaked out about the mess the chalk was making on her hands and arms.  She scribbled a bit on her letter, but I ended up just doing the other vowels.  We have them hanging up so I can point to them and quiz them on the names and sounds. 

Finally, the big kids were inspecting course sand for their geology lab today.  Josh and Maddie got out some beans, and were inspecting them with their magnifying glasses just like their older siblings.  It was cute.

Tot School - Week 1

In prior years, my time went to working with the older kids, and there was little left to do anything formally with the little kids.  They were mostly on their own.  Unfortuantely, that meant they watched a lot of TV.  This year, I'm trying to work with them on preschool skills.  Josh has some skills down really well and could probably be doing kindergarten.  However, his attention span and fine motor skills are still at the preschool level.  I'll see where he is next summer before deciding if this year will be preschool or kindergarten for him.

I'm trying to keep our lessons short and fun.  For guidance, I'm using Phonics Pathways and What Your Kindergartner Should Know.

Here's what we accomplished this week:


We started each day with the calendar, talking about the month, days of the week, weather, and counting off the days to today's date.  We also talked about yesterday and tomorrow.  Both Josh and Maddie really like this part of the day.

Our calendar door

Next we moved onto phonics and penmanship/fine motor skills by going through a lesson in Phonic Pathways and then practicing writing the letters in a creative way.  I had intended to take a full week for each lesson, but Josh was against that, so we went through all of the vowels this week.  I figured daily review will solidify them.  Here's some of the creative penmanship and fine motor activities we did this week.

Shaving cream, a favorite

 

Beans

We glued beans and lentils to the letter E.  Don't do this unless you want beans and lentils all over your floor!

Watercolors

We painted a couple of alphabet worksheets.

Flour

We wrote letters in unbleached flour.

Mess

 

 

Don't use flour as a writing medium unless you want your dining room to look like this when you are done.  At the very least, have a good vacuum.

We sorted Lucky Charms marshmallows and created a graph with them.  Then we discussed the graphs.  When we were done, the kids ate their work.

I made this fine motor skills and color matching toy today, as well.  It's an oatmeal container.  In the lid, I punched holes for each color of pipe cleaner that I had.  Around each hole I put paper hole reinforcements which I colored with Sharpie markers to match the pipe cleaners.  Maddie really liked it.  (I got the idea from this website.)

We also read an easy picture book about Australia and a few books about firefighters.

That's it.  I would have liked to do more but our schedule was chaotic.  I'm sure we'll work out the kinks as the weeks go on.