Happy Valentine's Day

Hope everyone enjoyed the day. We certainly did. The kids made cookies...chocolate chip to be precise. The kids both enjoy cooking and baking. I will admit it is very, very time consuming, but well worth the effort. Not only is there the fun bonding time, but there are lots of lessons to be learned.

First, following directions of the recipe. Usborne Books at Home has a line of cookbooks for young children and adults too who are learning to cook. The instructions are very simple and many have a picture for the pre-readers. Also, if you have children with food allergies, I have found it fairly easy to substitute the allergic ingredient with the non allergic ingredient and the end result is delicious.

Second, basic math skills can be easily incorporated with the different measurements. And for the younger ones, simple counting, one to one correspondence, lessons in size difference as well.

Third, delayed gratification is another important lesson learned. This is a hard one for the first time bakers to understand. They think their cookies should be done instantly. The first time we baked cookies with my then 2 year old, she could not understand why she could not have her cookie NOW. It did open up a very basic science lesson on how the oven works.

Whatever cooking/ baking you decide to do with your children most importantly enjoy the process and the end result.

Treasure Box Book Paper Flowers

The kids are really enjoying the Treasure Box Books by the Maryknoll Sisters. Included in each book are various craft activities. The activity we did this particular day is the paper flowers. We collected branches from the yard, glued the tissue paper on them, and displayed them in a vase.

Days of the Week

This week we focused on the days of the week. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I created a lapbook from various things I found on the internet. On a side note, I love lapbooks. Not only are they educationally challenging for the kids, but they have the ability to revisit the information whenever they feel like it.

Religion we focused on the Trinity. A great go-along is 3 in 1 by Joanne Marxhausen. It discusses the Trinity and compares the Trinity to an apple. The three parts of an apple (peel, flesh, and core) are all still part of one apple. It was a concrete way of explaining that the trinity has three parts (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), yet is still only one God.

Summer's Official End

As this Labor day weekend is coming to a close, it's time to start thinking about the upcoming school year. [Truth be told, today is not the first day I've thought about it] For the school year I purchased Catholic Heritage Curriculum Kindergarten. We will do this in combination with several other fun things over the course of the next two years. It looks to be fun and dd is looking forward to learning how to read, write, and in her words, "doing a project." She's been asking me to go over all the things she will learn this year and is in love with learning. As for ds, I will use letter of the week prep program. He's the monkey see monkey do type of kid and wants to do everything his big sissy does. This picture was taken of our great pumpkin that just keeps growing. We actually have 8 others like this growing on other plants. Who knows how large they'll be by Halloween.

Flowers Unit

Spring has sprung finally! It's been a long winter for most about everyone and the signs of spring are very evidents. We are doing a mini unit on flowers. A couple of the basic things covered include:

• Flower Identification (Daffodils, Tulips, Roses, Iris, Lily, Morining Glories, Pansies, Poppies Sunflowers, Zinnias)


• How flowers grow (Seeds, Water, Sunlight, etc.)


• Parts of the flower (Roots, Stem, Leaves, Flower)

Books we're reading to help supplement include:

• Flower Garden by Eve Bunting


• Fluffy Grows a Garden by Kate McMullan


• The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle


• Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by G. Brian Karas


• How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? G. Brian Karas


• Holly Bloom's Garden by Sarah Ashman


• Flowers and Showers A Spring Counting Book by Rebecca Davis


• Lucy's Secret by Mireille Levert


• Allison's Zinnia by Anita Lobel


• The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker


• Bumblebee, Bumblebee, Do You Know Me? by Anne Rockwell

We will include several arts and crafts as well as science projects, too. I will post each as we complete them.

This unit will also compliment Mother's Day as well.

Attatched is a picture of the kiddos from this morning enjoying the tulips.

Organizing

As with any school one must organize. I am slowly going through my long list of favorites and adding them to my links in somewhat of an organized fashion. I would like to get a few solid themed units together. A few ideas include:

• Prince and Princesses
• Pirates
• Human Body
• Farm Animals
• Bugs
• Gardening

Currently I am working on a counting lapbook from homeschoolshare.com. It is for number recognition from 1-100. I am thinking of reading the Usborne book "How Big is a Million." The two would compliment each other nicely.

I would like to include days of the week calendar as well. I bought blank paper calenders that J can place a sticker on each day. At that time we review the day of the week, yesterday and today. The calender is also helping J recognize numbers higher than 20.

We are also started growing seeds. Plants include lots of pumpkins, sunflowers, and gourds. They actually seem to be growing (yippee!!!) We'll see how they grow in the garden outside.

Catching Up

With Lent and Easter upon us, I've taken a break from posting. Hopefully, I'll continue adding stuff as we go on. For Easter we made a lapbook regarding the resurrection. J enjoyed hearing about Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. If I can figure out how to I will post a picture of the lapbook.



J is learning really fast how to hold a crayon the proper way and is very interested in writing letters. While she's not perfect by any means, she can draw circles freehand.



She also wants to read. She is sounding out words and wanting to know how to read.