Tot school: Easter Eggs, the letter J and preschool plans

I pulled out our sensory table from the garage to actually use it.  It's been in there for a long time because I just haven't had the room for it.  It still had beans in it from months ago.  I decided to let him have one last play with the beans before we took them out.  I threw in some Easter eggs, and our egg coloring cups.

He had fun making shakers with the eggs and beans.  He also had fun making a "garden."  I had these little foam flowers on tongue depressors from a lesson at church, and gave them to him.  Ignore the what?, where?, etc. that was for the church lesson.  He was just playing with them.  Although he would ask me a lot, what does this one say?  He knew there were words on it.  So I told him what it said, and then made a question for him because I'm not sure it made much sense to him why they said who what where why, lol.

Here he is "planting" his garden.  I had to show him how to do it first, then he re-created it for me to take pictures.

Oh, look at this nice garden all nice and peaceful!...

...time to destroy the garden with some beans!  Here they come!

Bam!  That garden is gone.  All this happened within a few seconds!  Boys.

Later I took the beans out when I'd had enough of the beans, and made an egg sorting game with tongs.

All done!

This is his tot school printables for the letter J.  I didn't take any pictures of him doing any of these.  We just did them.  As you can see we also made jellyfish on the left side of the picture.

Since he is not really a "tot schooler" anymore, I've been trying to decide what I want to do for him now.  He is doing one more round of letter X tot school printables, but after that I think we'll be done with those.  We'll still continue with a letter of the week, but we'll do it along with The Itty-Bitty Bookworm preschool plans.  I'm going to try and focus on that alone, with more learning trays (Montessori style), and see if we can get some more preschool action going on around here!

Desiree

Sunday Gratitude...(and Easter)

Before I get to my thankfuls today I wanted to share our Easter real quick.  I think we had a lovely Easter Sunday.  It dawned bright and beautiful and early because I had some excited boys who wanted to get to finding their Easter surprises.  I think Aric was up around 5:30, but I made him lay back down until at least 6:00.  We had to start at 6 though because we have 8am church!  When everybody was up at around 6-ish the kids found their baskets, and their eggs.  We had some breakfast, headed to church.  After church we got ready for our friends the Rosses that were coming over for Easter dinner.  It was so nice to have friends over.  We don't have people over for dinner very often (except the missionaries), and April came to me after and said we need to do that more often.  The kids all had fun playing games after dinner.  I should have got a picture of our mega table running from the dining room to the living room!  I think that's why we don't have people over very often, we have a super small dining room.  I never know where I'd put anybody, but now I have a way!

Here is our collection of Easter symbols that we had from each day of telling the Easter story.  I didn't get nearly all of them together.  I'm hoping to do better next year.  Also, I didn't realize that the Easter rock letters had gotten all mixed up by one of the kids when I took this picture!  Ooops.  I don't want to go retake the picture, so you'll have to switch the letters on your own :-)

This is Aric's basket

This is April's basket

This is Aaron's basket

Alex's basket...

I started making a list of all the things I have to do tomorrow.  I really don't know how I am to get through it all, except that I trust in God to help me.  To Him I am so thankful for all that he has given me, and will give me as I seek Him.

Today I am thankful for...

• ...Beautiful sunrises, and that I was able to catch this one in a picture (mostly).
• ...Friends to share dinner with on this special Easter Sunday.
• ...The sounds of laughter and fun as children played games together all evening.
• ...violin lessons for April, and that she is picking it up so quickly.
• ...for friends that inspire me to be better, and help me in whatever way.
• ...for a hubby that helps me make delicious food especially when we have company.  He is awesome in the kitchen.
• ...(as an extension to the last one) for the yummy steak dinner that hubby prepared for us on Friday night when we came home from baseball practice.  It was melt in your mouth steak, so good!
• ...that we have Aaron's baptism scheduled, and that it's coming so quickly.
• ...that April and her Dad decided to start making a dress for April for Easter on Saturday.  They didn't finish, but she might have a new dress to wear for next Sunday.  It's so hard to find a decent dress for older girls anymore, so I'm thankful for the ability to make our own.
• ...for blogging, and how much others inspire me, and how it gets me writing.

I loved watching them work together, so thankful for my talented Hubby.

Happy Easter!

  

My homeschool weekly journal: Easter week

Life this week...

I am trying to wrap my brain around planning for next year.  It keeps coming to the forefront of my brain no matter how much I push it back.  So, I gave in this week, and I'm starting to think about it.  I have been so worn out this Spring I really didn't want to start thinking about next year yet.  But, as I am thinking more about it I am getting more excited, and feeling like we need to give the rest of this year our best.  I'm also ready to purge a lot of old school books, and workbooks.


Other happenings this week...

We dyed Easter eggs for the first time in a few years.  It was fun, but for some reason they couldn't keep them from getting cracked.  They (re)learned that eggs are fragile!

Egg shell candles are so pretty!

Everything all set up.  Each child had 5 eggs.  I tried to set it up so it would be easier.  I think it helped.

Love the colors!

They ended up with less than they started because they kept breaking them.  Maybe they'll be more careful next year!

In our homeschool this week...

April has had 2-3 rehearsals each week for her upcoming play.  The play is As you like it by Shakespeare with a Harry Potter theme.  Here is the poster for the play.

I am also teaching Aaron's class at co-op, and this is the book (The Pigeon finds a hot dog) and craft we made this week.  The craft is just a pigeon made out of construction paper.  The kids made some pretty cute pigeons.  I can't wait to read the newest pigeon book "The Pigeon needs a bath!"

Here is Aaron's pigeon.  I love how he made tail feathers on his.  More like a realistic bird.

Since we have been going a lot that means picnic lunches at the park for us.  We were lucky with a few nice days this week also.  That makes for a very nice picnic!

April's smoked gouda cheese.  She loves that stuff, and wanted me to take a picture of it as she was savoring it :-)

This picnic happened to be on Monday.  It was so peaceful, and the sunshine felt so good.

I loved that I captured all the kids playing in one picture from where I was sitting.

This was from our Friday picnic.  We also did a little Easter nature walk during this one.  I'll post about that later.

What I'm reading...

The first book is a book based on the Thomas Jefferson education philosphy called "For the Love of Learning" by Amy Edwards.  I bought it through our co-op because this is the method that they use at our LIFE academy classes.  The other book I am loving is "Once upon a flock" by Lauren Scheuer.  It's a fun story about this lady and her chickens, and one that I can relate to in so many ways as we have gone on our chicken journey. 

 

What the kids are reading...

April finished Catching fire by Suzanne Collins this week.  She'll be getting Divergent tomorrow for Easter, and I'm sure will have that read in no time.  I can't keep up with all her reading.  I asked her what she was reading this week because I couldn't remember all the books off the top of my head, and she rattled of quite a list!

 

Aaron is reading this with me Believe and you're there: When the White Dove Descended.  It has been a great book to read as we are getting ready for his baptism.  I had bought it a while ago (like years) but the kids didn't really get into them at the time.  But now, when I told them this book was like the Magic Treehouse books where they travel to a time in history they were all over it.  Aaron has been enjoying it.





















Aric has been enjoying Elephant and Piggie in this book Should I share my Ice Cream? by Mo Willems.  He loves these books.



Alex has been enjoying The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle on audiotape this week.  We are going to do a unit with this book next week.

 

 I guess that's it for this week.

One last photo to share...

The kids painted little stained glass Easter pictures.  They turned out pretty cute.  Makes me smile everytime I look at them






Desiree

Mt. Pisgah

We decided to take the opportunity last weekend while we were down in Springfield to take a family hike on Mt. Pisgah.  I remember hiking here as a teen with youth groups, Michele does too!  It has been years since we've both been back. 

It was a beautiful day!

We had a good start up the hill.  This hike is pretty much up the whole time, so it didn't work so much for our little 3 year old.  He would stop and play in the rocks, and he wanted to be held most of the time.  I ended up taking him back to the car about halfway up, so that Dad could take the big kids to the top.

 Heading up...

 Some dandelions.  They were such a bright and cheery yellow.

 the view from about halfway up.  This is about where I took Alex and Aric back (Aric wanted to go with me, I think he could have made it to the top though).

 Pretty purple flowers.  I think they are Irises.

 Yep, this was pretty much Alex every few feet.

 Michele took the camera with him to the top.  He got some pictures of the view.

 The kids explored some relief maps.

 They enjoyed the view, and thought it was pretty cool at the top.

 

Wordless Wednesday: Spring!

A Christ-Centered Easter (book)

Day 1 basket of items donkey, palm branches, and bottle (anointing)

I discovered this book on this website put together by an LDS gal who has a list of all her favorite things to do around holidays (if you click on the link scroll down to Easter).  So, I decided to give it a try.  I looked at the book at the local LDS bookstore, and decided that it would really be a good resource for our Easter celebrations.  So, we are giving it a try!  We've done day 1 and 2, but we aren't doing all the activities listed for each day.  I didn't have enough time to plan for most of them, but I'm adding in some things of my own.   I am also trying to find the symbols for each day of the Easter story.  It has been fun so far.  I really love how organized this book is, and the simple activities it suggests.

As I have been trying to get into Easter this year, I took a look at some old blog posts of Easter time to see what kinds of things we have done over the years.  I was surprised to learn that we haven't dyed eggs for 2 years!  And, that I used to do so many more fun Easter things!  When did I become such an Easter dud?  Well, I'm trying to make up for it this year, and I have stuff ready for the Easter baskets this year unlike last year which was a complete Mom fail.  I'm pretty excited for their baskets this year, and I'm happy to report we are going to dye eggs this week too!

Desiree

Homeschool favorite: baseball and homemade watercolors

I am still here!  I decided to take a little blog spring break.  Turned out to be a month long, but it was so good for me especially as the busy spring season picks up. I enjoyed the time off, but I'm happy to get back to sharing some of our homeschool life lately!

We started baseball season last week with a local homeschool league.  It is my homeschool favorite this week because I just love that we have this opportunity to play ball with other homeschoolers. 

Alex isn't old enough to be on one of the teams, but he has a great time playing for 2 hours at the park while his brothers and sister are practicing.  He had fun practicing with our t-ball stand for a while.

It's going to be a great season!

Another favorite was actually from a few weeks ago.  We made homemade watercolors!  This was so much fun, and my boys loved mixing up their own colors.  Painting with them was even more fun!

We used this homemade watercolor recipe:  Allparenting homemade watercolors.

What is a favorite from your homeschool this week?

 Desiree