stART--The little mouse, the red ripe strawberry, and the big hungry bear

That is a long title for a book, but it sure is fun to read.  To go along with our red theme this week, we all enjoyed reading this book and making a big red strawberry at the end.  Then, I let the kids decide how they wanted to "protect" their strawberry from the bear. 

First we started out with some red construction paper, and a small piece of green foam for the top leaf.

Then I drew a strawberry shape on the red paper for the kids to cut out.

 

 I traced a leafy pattern on the green foam and cut it out for him.  Then they put some dots for the seeds.

  

 Then, they chose how to disguise.  For the smallest tot, I chose for him to cover it in a blanket, so I just gave him some sticky back fabric to put on his strawberry.

  

 My 3rd grader loves this story so she couldn't pass up doing the craft with us.

  

 She chose to draw the glasses and mustache disguise like in the book to trick the bear from getting her strawberry.

 

The kids really enjoyed making this, maybe because they love strawberries so much and can hardly wait to eat them again.

To see more fun stART ideas go see A Mommy's Adventures !

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

Desiree

Workbox fun

Some 3rd grade workboxes from this week:

Sequential spelling:  We've decided to get this book out again.  We took a break for a while, but since we've brought it back, and I've let her check her own spelling, she's kinda liking it now.

Art:  This is a 3rd grade art project from this blog--"Deep space sparkle art lessons for kids".  It has some great lessons, and my daughter enjoyed this.  This is the easy winter landscape, but she wasn't too happy with how it turned out.  I made the mistake of showing her the other kids' examples on the blog after she was done, and then she really didn't like hers.  She thought her trees looked like cactuses.  I told her we could do it again if she'd like, but I always have to remind her that there's no right or wrong with art. 

 

Lapbook:  She added another element to her Lanie lapbook.  These are mini books found at the homeschool share website.  She did Lanie's pet and hobbies.  She decided to just draw her pet bunny, and used the draw write now book to help her.

 

Copywork:  This was in Miss A8's workboxes to pick a poem from the book It's snowing!  It's snowing! and copy it in her copywork book.  She really enjoyed this for the first time.  She's not a big fan of copywork, but she's coming around.

Preschool boxes

 Craft:  This was an elephant craft that I had to go with Elmer's special day.  It was making an elephant out of hearts, but my preschooler never touched this box.  I even tried pointing it out a few times.  He wanted nothing to do with it.  Oh well!

 

This box wasn't very popular either, but Mr. A3 wants to start learning/doing things with ducks so to start out I decided to let him have some fun stamping with these rubber ducks, possibly too young for him, but I thought he might enjoy the rubber ducks.

Letter of the week:  We had several X boxes, and this was one of his favorites.  He liked driving the cars on the letter X. 

 

These are just a few of the boxes we had this week.  Today we had some fun things in the boxes but I didn't get all the pictures.

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

Desiree

The color red and the letter "X"--preschool corner

We have had a happy week here at our house.  For preschool my boys had a red day (with some activities), and the letter of the week was X.

It's a rare day when my Mr. A3 is excited to get dressed.  When I told him it was red day, he hopped to it, and with a smile!

Here are both boys playing in red.

 

Then Mr. A3 started with his first red activity, and that was building his "Mack" truck from mega blocks. 

 

Almost done!  We worked together on this one.

 

Then he taped red tape on paper, and I don't have it pictured but he decided to cut up his paper after it was all taped.

 

Here is the littlest tot, I gave him red circle stickers and then he decided he wanted to color with the red marker.

 

Mr. A3 made this valentine craft from "no time for flashcards".  It's a valentine's shaker.  After he finished painting it we put valentines colored pom pom's and bells inside and stapled it shut.  It turned out very cute.  Forgot to get a picture of the final product.

 

Now for the letter X.  

Here is one of our favorite new things!  He is driving his car on the letter X and while he was doing this he was making the sound of X (thank you letter factory :-).  I found these highway abc cards here.  I laminated it too so we can use them again later.

 

He also made an x is for xylophone letter of the week, found here.

 

And, he did do-a-dot art, x is for xylophone from makelearningfun.com.

 

Now he wants to do a ducks theme, any good ideas?

 

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

Desiree

Today--snuggles

Picture of the day

I came out from my shower this morning and found these 2 snuggling on the couch watching a movie.  It was so sweet!  Mr. Blue sometimes prefers her to hold him or play with him.  I love that!  I love that bond that they already have.

Outdoor Hour Challenge--Winter sky and stars

There's a great blog called Handbook of nature study, and we have decided to join Barb in her Winter Outdoor Hour Challenges.  I am so excited to get out more, and even more excited that we didn't have to wait until Spring!  It is possible to get out there in the winter, and look at nature, and it's still amazing.  These outdoor hour challenges are very inspiring, and we hope to do as many as possible.

We did our first Outdoor Hour Challenge tonight.  The challenge was to go out at night and look at the winter sky and stars.  My kids were so excited when I told them that we were going to go outside and take our blankets and pillows and look at the night sky!  

We mostly just looked at the moon, and the stars that were visible weren't very many.  But, there were enough for Miss A8 to make up some constellations of her own, she even named them.

This is the best picture I could get of the moon while dealing with my 1 year old.

 

Both A8 and A3 looking up at the sky with their binoculars.

 

Mr. A3 folding his little binoculars up.

Miss A8 making her first drawing of the moon.

 

Then she decided she wanted to add some star constellations (made up ones).

 

Here was our surroundings while we were star gazing (good thing it was dark so you couldn't see how messy our backyard really is :-)

 

Okay, this just made me laugh really hard.  My sweet boy Mr. A3 decided he wanted a snack, so he goes back inside and comes out with 3 cold hot dogs.  Note that he does like his hot dogs cold, we all cringed a little, but he was happy!

 

Miss A8 eating her banana snack.

 

Sorry it's sideways, but here is Miss A8's winter nature journal page with all her drawings of what she saw.  Notice that there is one not-made-up constellation.  She correctly drew "Cassiopeia", and labeled it in the bottom right corner.  She knows that one!

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

Desiree

Today--The boys

Picture of the day

Wondering why they are both wearing red?  Well, today was red day at our house.  I dressed the boys in red (which was very cool apparently), and we had some red activities.  These boys sure do love wrestling and being silly together.  It's so nice when they get along!

Today--Sunday lessons

Picture of the day

The kids having their own Sunday school class in the long morning before church.  What a nice peaceful morning we had, and we even kept the tv off!  Here she is trying to remember the creation and what was created on each day.  What a cute/memorable moment.  Oh, and the bands around their heads are them dressed up as Nephite children (maybe a handful of you will understand that from a recent lesson we had at primary :-)

Today--movie night

Picture of the day

Getting movies in the mail is really a lot of fun.

Today--my favorite thing

Picture of the day

This was my absolute favorite moment today.  It was a rough day today with this guy, he woke up at 3am, didn't go back to sleep (except for maybe another hour at ~6:30), and the rest of the day was a constant battle.  But, I really enjoyed sitting down with him here and playing lego's with him.  He's really starting to like lego's, and asked if he could play his pirate lego set with me today.  We built the ship, a treasure chest, and there's a whale too. 

Valentine sensory tub

I love hearts, and this tub has a lot of them.  It is also a number matching game.  I found these pink and white heart containers at the dollar store and wanted to put them into the sensory tub somehow, so I decided to write numbers on the matching top and bottom.  Then my preschooler would have to find the matching numbers, and he also liked putting some of the beans inside.  There are also confetti hearts, and little plastic purple hearts.  I saw a very similar tub here on "no time for flashcards".  That's where I got the idea to include the red and white beans, and the confetti.

 

 

 

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

Desiree