Got Clementine's?

What do you do with a lot of Clementine tangerine's that need to be eaten?  That's what I was asking myself a few days ago.  I just decided to dump the bag out on the table and see what my preschooler wanted to do with them.  I just asked him if he wanted to help me peel them, and he got a pan out and said he wanted to "cook" them.  He has played with them, hid them, put them in all kinds of various containers, counted them, peeled them, and yes he has been eating them. 

I hid them twice for him to find, like easter eggs.  Here is one of the hiding spots:

I realized that they would sort really well on a mini muffin tin pan:

He had exactly 24, and one big orange jumped in for some reason:

We counted a little, he's very pleased:

Here he is finding the hidden ones

Another one:

He played with these for a few days.  I have them rounded up in a basket on the counter now, and hoping that I found them all after the fun play.  :-)

Home schooling one day at a time--as long as it takes

Desiree

Lego play

I decided to bring out something that I hadn't brought out for a while, the lego's.  My toddler is good about not putting these in his mouth, and I was also surprised at how interested he was in playing with them.  He can't put them together yet himself, but he would hand me the piece he wanted and I would put it on for him.  He tried connecting some of the bigger pieces, and was successful a few times, but mostly he would just set it on there and clap his hands.  Like that door that he's playing with.  We had fun playing peek-a-boo with that door for a while.  I would put something behind it (usually just another lego piece), and he would open it and giggle with excitement.  Such simple pleasures, such a simple toy.  Legos really are genius!

Here is my toddler's creation.  He really liked putting that little blue tonka car in the middle of his little lego creation.

Here he is playing with that door again:

And again:

Now, I said my toddler didn't have a problem with putting the lego's in his mouth, but my preschooler on the other hand...I turned to look at him and he was chewing on this wheel!  He likes the wheels, and promptly took it out when I asked him to.  Unfortunately I was having so much fun taking pictures of my little guy that I didn't get a shot of his creation before he decided he was done and destroyed it.  Oh well, I'll have to get one soon.

Home schooling one day at a time--as long as it takes

Desiree

Tot school 5

Aaron is 43 months (3 1/2 years old)

Aric is 16.5 months (1 year old)

Wow, it has been a while!  I think it has just been survival for us over here the past little while.  I think we are finally getting back into the groove of things now though!  We had a great week, and some great tot school time!

We have had some great weather so we can still go out and here's what Aaron has accomplished, riding a bike with no trainers!  He is so proud of himself!

This was a graham cracker house decorating activity we did last Sunday after Church.  It was totally unplanned, so we just used what we had around the house.  They had loads of sweet fun!

Here's Aaron's sweet creation:

Here is April's, she used a Goldfish container because we didn't have any more milk carton's.  Like I said, we used what we had lying around!  We even ran out of graham crackers!  They still loved it:

Pom pom spooning activity with Christmas colored balls.  Both boys had fun with this although I had originally put it out for the youngest:

This was definitely a lesson in sharing and getting along!

Aric loved this activity:

The Cheerios Christmas play book.  I even had colored Cheerios for this one!  In case you are wondering, the idea is that you use the cheerios to decorate different things.  For example the current page that he is doing he has to decorate the Christmas tree with some "ornaments".

He is so excited to be able to play a game on the Wii.  He can do this battle game on Mariocart.  He likes to do some activities on the Wii Fit too.

The Mitten story and activity.  One of his favorite stories this week was The Mitten by Jan Brett.  He wanted to read it over and over again, so I thought we should get some activities to go with it.  Here is the first, cutting yarn, and gluing it on a paper mitten (this was a very popular activity!):

He stopped cutting for a little bit to retell the story to me.  I couldn't have planned this moment better my friends!  This is what it is all about, what every homeschool Mom hopes for, those moments that tell you: Yes!  he is learning and comprehending wonderfully!

His finished mitten, ready to dry.  We will put the two mittens together and glue the animals inside next week:

Days of the week and Calendar.  He is so proud of his work!  These are magnets for each day of the week.  Here he lined them up and even sang the Days of the week song as he did it.  Yes, they are definitely not in order and some are even upside down, as my 3rd grader was so quick to point out.  You have to go with the flow sometimes, he'll get it someday, but for now he's proud:

Open ended art.

Here he is painting, that's what he wanted to do.  He was instructed to cover the whole sheet of paper so we could use the pictures for another project.  I had to show him, and after that he got it.  It was quite a task to cover all the white, even the corners.  We are going to use these paintings to make a Hans Hoffman inspired picture next week.

Kumon's first book of cutting.  He really enjoys the Kumon books, I'm glad.  It's hard to find things that interest this boy, but we do and I love it.  He did some cutting today.  Here he is cutting up to the colored flags, but first he had to cut out the little number at the top of the page that tells us it's activity #2 :-)  He did that on each page, who knew?!  It's just a little square at the top of the page with a number in it.  I love this kid!

More cutting.  This time he's cutting the train page.  It's a page with train cars stacked on top of each other and he needed to cut between each one on the gray line.  Then, they lined up to make a long train.  He was all over that!

Here he is driving the train out of the school room:

 Some other things they did but that we didn't get pictures of are playing an online game called Starfall, watching rudolph the red nosed reindeer, helping Mommy cook (they both love to be in the kitchen "helping" me), the hungry caterpillar puzzle, reading new books that they open up every day as part of Christmas countdown), and finding Christmas lights as we drive around. 

Home schooling one day at a time--as long as it takes

Desiree

Dollar store Santa Hats

Here is a fun craft we did over Thanksgiving weekend.  I found these santa hat kits at the Dollar store!  They were so super easy, and everything was all included and cut out.  The kids just laid it out and glued it down.  They really liked this craft.

Here is April, she chose the Christmas tree and presents scene:

Here is Aric, he is only 1 so he couldn't do the glueing, but he sure did have fun just playing with the felt on the hat.  He moved the letters around, and put them in different places.  I glued them on later.

He played with this for quite some time.  His was the Ho Ho Ho design, if you hadn't figured that out already ;-)

Here is Aaron's.  His is the rudolph face.  He had fun putting it together.

Looking at his work, he is smiling because he thought he was pretty funny putting the holly for a mouth:

The completed Santa hats:

If you have a dollar tree near you check for these kits, it's a great deal, and fun to make!

Home schooling one day at a time--as long as it takes

Desiree

Projects and fun

We had 2 great projects recently that I wanted to share.

First is the Thanksgiving menu planning project.  April's assignment was to plan a Thanksgiving menu and she had to keep the cost of the food for her whole family under $125 dollars.  So, we got out the store ads and she picked all the items we would need for dinner.  She cut them out and put it on a large piece of construction paper.  Then we added all the items up for the total, and if more than one item was needed she took that into account too.  For example, she had 3 bags of rolls, because she thought we'd go through 3 bags of rolls (she really likes rolls!). 

Her grand total was:  $96

Then she found out how much money was left over.  Thanksgiving dinner is expensive!  She couldn't believe that one whole dinner would cost as much as an American girl doll. (of course it's quite shocking to some that a doll would even cost that much, but we won't go into that)

A close up of some of the items she chose, and this is a pretty close guess to what we will be actually shopping for:


And finally, our second project, a preschool project:  To get him excited for his snowman boxes, the night before, we put a snowman puzzle together and drank hot chocolate with mini marshmallows in it. 



Home schooling one day at a time--as long as it takes

Desiree

Workboxes!

Okay, we got back to it today, and here was our first day back into a full workbox day.  It was so great, and I was so excited to get all 12 boxes filled for both my preschooler and my 3rd grader!  They loved it!  Unfortunately we got through only half of the boxes today because my neighbor was in a pickle and I needed to watch her little girl.  That's okay, if we don't finish them they are there for the next day.  Sometimes life just happens.  It's important to finish all the boxes though and we really usually do.

Here are the 3rd grade boxes all filled:

Here are the preschool boxes filled.  I decided to just switch over all boxes from the trays for Aaron because he was ready.  They hold the things that he'll be working on better now too.  He has all snowman stuff in his boxes today:

 

Thanks to a great blog called Confessions of a Homeschooler, I found these great snowman: letter S activities.  They filled up all the boxes!  (sorry, all the boxes are mixed between the two in this post)

Preschool Snowman cutting practice:

3rd grade Creative and Critical thinking:  She worked on a November page.

 

3rd grade box: place value game, she rolled the dice and put x number of hundred dollars, ten dollars, and one dollars, whatever was rolled (materials are from her Saxon Math book, I just laminated them and added the game feature to make it more fun).

 

3rd grade box:  "P is for Pilgrim" book and activity, she had to make a thanksgiving menu.

 

Aaron doing his snowman cutting.

 

Preschool box:  Number and writing practice (he liked this)

 

Preschool box:  Build a snowman, for the bottom ball he glued mini marshmallows on the paper, and put the rest of the snowman together.

 

 3rd grade box:  Fun crafts for American Girl dolls.  This was requested as a fun box by April, so I put it in there.  She wanted to make play cookies to share with her doll.

 

Preschool box:  color the snowman picture.  I'm so impressed with his tracing of the S!

Preschool box:  Snowman patterns, he hasn't done this one yet.  This might be a little above him, we'll see.

 Preschool box:  Snowman puzzle

 

 Preschool box:  Snowman bottle cap word game (match the bottle caps to the letters to spell the word).

 

 Preschool box:  Snowman scavenger hunt

 

 Preschool box:  Build a snowman

 

 Preschool box:  S is for snowman with little round magnets.

 

 Preschool box:  Snowman numbers 1-10 to lay out on the floor.

 

 3rd grade box:  Thanksgiving on Thursday reading and vocabulary sheet.

 

 3rd grade box:  Add leaves to Thanks and Giving trees and write down 3 things you are thankful for and 3 things you have given to someone else.

 

 3rd grade box:  Kit, American Girl, Learns a lesson (a thanksgiving story) lapbook.  She is working on chapter 2 now.  (oh and the pens are her new special pens for lapbooking, I decided that her lapbooks needed some colorful writing, she liked this)

 

 3rd grade box:  Journal writing.  This is the only notebook I could find, not my first choice.  For some reason her journals keep disappearing.

 

 3rd grade box:  Sue Patrick's typing lessons, her first one!  We even have a type writer out now!

 

 3rd grade box:  Read it!  Draw it!  Solve it!  Just a word problem or puzzle to solve each day, love this book!

 

Also, she worked on a Saxon 4/5 math lesson too, I just didn't get a picture of it.

So, that's it for workboxes this week!  

Home schooling one day at a time--as long as it takes

Desiree