Let the Games Begin!

We have officially started homeschooling as of this week. March 18 was our first day, odd perhaps but why not? That's what homeschooling is about - right? - freedom.

Celosia School Year D Week 1 (March 17-21)                    3 weeks on, 1 week off (make-up)



MONDAY             TUESDAY             WEDNESDAY      THURSDAY

Language	Math	Science	Music	Physical Activity	Alternate Activity	Art
Read Diary of a Worm, pick something he wants to record	Number sheets with noodles, rocks, household items	Scientific Salad Dressing p. 16 1) Oil w/garlic 2) Vinegar w/herb	Review instruments p. 6-11 CYHI #1	Monday 10 -11 am Recess at school	Read about Scat and Tracks	Take pictures for diary (him, cat, dog)
Diary of a cat entry, Raising Rock Stars	Add one, subtract one with cars, candy, marbles, money	Solvent or Solute? p. 17 1) water w/sugar 2) water w/sand 3) water w/salt 4 water w/rocks	CYHI #3	Gymbo Thurs 3 - 4 pm	Make a scat and tracks book with labels, Caleb trace first letters	Take photos of scat and tracks
Diary of a dog entry, Raising Rock Stars	Math book activity	Perfume Chemistry p. 19 1) Alcohol and cinnamon 2) Alcohol and orange peel 3) Alcohol and rose petals	CYHI #2	Trampoline, Soccer, and Running		Gymbo Thurs 6-7 pm

Books:

Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin
Super Science Concoctions by Jill Frankel Hauser 
Can You Hear It? (for music/art appreciation)

That's the plan and we're about halfway through. We got off to a slower start since he was sick on Monday.

Weekly Review - Thanksgiving

Raccoon is 37 months

I am 30 weeks pregnant and struggling with fatigue, so we took things easy with Tot School and only loosely followed our Thanksgiving/math theme.

This was our board for the week. We focused on Raising Rock Star Preschool Letter Ff. I only do an abbreviated version (the verse, the letter, the word cards, and the book) since Raccoon isn't interested in the other activities yet. Our "map" was the water cycle, our person was Thomas Edison, our rhyme was The Queen of Hearts, and below the letter F, I put a song about November.

I've written before about how much Raccoon likes me to make up stories for him. I saw this suggestion for story cubes, and knew it would be the perfect use for our accumulating RRSP word cards. I have a ziplock bag with all the cards in it, with the newest ones in the front. The stories come out a little crazy since I just incorporate whichever card is next, but Raccoon likes them and I show him the cards as I tell the story. After I tell him a specific letter story, "F" this week, then I shuffle the cards and tell him a longer story with various letters. It's a great game for our long car ride (1 hr+) to church every week.

For example, "Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Peter. He had a flag in his room, but one day he discovered that a flamingo had stolen it! He didn't have any shoes on his feet, so he asked his fish, "Have you seen my shoes?" "No," said the fish, "but I think the frog knows where they are." He asked the frog about his shoes, and the frog said, "They're behind the fan." So he put on his shoes and followed the trail of feathers the flamingo had left behind. When he discovered the flamingo holding his flag, he poked him with a fork and the flamingo cried. "Don't hurt me," the flamingo said. "I just took your flag because I'm so cold and need a blanket." "I'm sorry I poked you," said Peter. "Don't cry. I'll make you a fire to keep you warm." So the flamingo gave Peter back his flag and Peter built him a fire.

I wrote about not being a mathy mom (here and here are two moms who are), so I decided to try more number/logic activities this week. Sorry that the picture isn't very good. In each of the three small containers I put a different number of objects (one rock, two stones, four shells). I asked Raccoon to guess what was inside and how many things there were. Then we lined them up with the tube noodles on the hanger (one-to-one correspondence). I thought we could use the noodles on the hanger as a type of homemade abacus, but Raccoon wasn't really interested.

 

Puffy paint! I made up one batch and put it in some empty glue bottles that I'd saved.

 

 

As usual, Raccoon wasn't satisfied with the activity as is and made up his own "game." He added water and decided it was for painting cups. I'm glad I decided to have him paint on a cookie sheet!

 

 

When we first started doing crafts, I was a little surprised that Raccoon didn't enjoy cutting more. I saw that Carisa at Tot School has used these scissors with her son and daughter, so I got a pair for Raccoon. I was disappointed when I saw them at first, having expected something more than just the small spring in the middle, but to my amazement, they were just what he needed. He used to open and close scissors with both hands, but after just a few times with this new pair, he can now use any scissors in our house.

 

 

We had to introduce a new rule - scissors are only for paper. In his excitement, he wanted to try his scissor skills out on our couch, his clothing, headphone wires...

 

 

TP bowling! I got the idea from this post. Raccoon did it a few times, but wasn't as interested as I thought he would be.

 

 

He decided that he wanted to make "monsters" instead, and the TP rolls were the eyeballs. This one is on our kitchen floor, and he made several others in the living room.

 

 

Introducing Mousey, Raccoon's best friend since March. Being Thanksgiving week, we watched This Is America, Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers. Afterwards I found some feathers I'd been given years ago and made Raccoon an Indian headdress. We were having a Goldilocks day, so he decided that Mousey should wear it instead.

 

 

Later he wanted to be Squanto and help the Pilgrims plant a garden, so he raided our vegetable basket and used our couch as his "dirt."

Weekly Review - Fall

Raccoon is 36 months

 

Here's a peek at our Tot School this week. It's been our first full week in awhile, so there are lots of pictures. Mostly the really long posts are for me because I know that when the baby comes in 15 weeks (end of January), everything will be different. I want to remember this time, as crazy as it is sometimes.

 

I was a little late putting our board together for this week, so we only did it twice. Raccoon's favorite part is the person, (George Washington Carver this week) and the nursery rhyme which we act out. The other things are a spooky maze, along with the verse and "I Can" page from Raising Rock Star Preschool Ii, and a song about George Washington Carver from Scholastic's Famous Americans.

 

 

These are magnets from a Melissa & Doug calendar, but Raccoon enjoys playing with them on the fridge.

 

I saw this idea for a masking tape painting and thought Raccoon would like it. The only crafts he's interested in right now are ones that involve something spooky.

I tried to take the tape off after the paint had dried, but it stuck to the construction paper too much, so I ended up leaving it on. I helped Raccoon with the face on his monster, the spider hanging from the ceiling, the black around the edges of the house, and the orange duck footprints on the left. He called the big black blob a "scary shadow."

 

This shadow matching activity is from this Fall Fun Learning Pack.

 

I saw the idea of matching with pipe cleaners here (about halfway through her post).

 

Raccoon is very interested in maps, and here we put together a museum map with exhibits, then Bugs Bunny took a tour with Raccoon as his silly guide.

 

This is my version of a noodle sensory bin (I got the idea here). I thought Raccoon would like sorting out the red noodles and then we could make another "bloody" pasta skeleton, but he decided that wanted to keep all of the colors together. The chopsticks ended up being too frustrating for him, but he liked scooping the noodles into the tin with the measuring cup.

 

I think Raccoon's favorite part was helping me to put the noodles into two jars when it was time to put them away.

 

Raccoon's Abuela let him play with her button collection, which he promptly declared was his "treasure" and insisted we put it into a "chest." He carried it around all afternoon and even fell asleep holding it tightly.  

 

Once his treasure was safely packed into the chest, he wanted to dress up in all his pirate gear.

 

And once the dressing up starts, Spiderman is sure to follow! He just got the mittens and Spidey hat from his Grama and he was excited to finally have the complete costume, right down to his Spiderman slippers.

 

Raccoon enjoyed putting leaves on this "tree," and we talked about what happens to leaves during the different seasons. We only have wet and dry season where we live, so it was a good opportunity for us to discuss the other four seasons found further north. I got the idea for the box with holes here, then I added leaves from the Fall Fun Learning Pack to go with our theme. (From here on, the pictures are all from my iPad; sorry for the low quality.)

 

 

After Raccoon put them in randomly, the leaves fell off the tree for fall, then in the spring they grew back. I asked him to pass me a certain size (small, medium or large) and I put them in order by height.

 

 

Right now, Raccon is definitely stronger in verbal ability than math, so I'm always on the lookout for hands-on number activities. I saw this block idea here, although I only did 1-5. After he put them in order, my fingers walked up the stairs and jumped off the tallest stack. He added the chip can because he wanted a bigger jump.

 

 

We did the classic baking soda and vinegar "volcano." Raccoon loved squirting the vinegar into the medicine cup and watching it fizz. He asked if it was soda, but tasted and smelled it to disprove his hypothesis. :)

 

 

Raccoon is going through a sorting phase right now, so we organized his play food into groups before he went shopping one morning. We did bread/carbohydrates, fruit, vegetables, meat/protein, dishes, and a desert section. He decided to start shopping in the desert section first.

 

 

Raccoon knows all the basic colors, so I made up an activity for him awhile ago with alternate color words from here (I thought the pdf came with word cards like pictured on the front, but it doesn't). My printer is having another off week so I colored them by hand. The matching part is deciding whether it is the left pair of words or the right.

 

 

I got the idea here for matching words to a verse, but we ended up just putting the cut-out verse together on his corkboard. The verse is Philippians 4:13 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," from RRSP Ii.

 

 

Of course, once we got the corkboard out, we had to work on our skeleton and mummy monsters too.

 

 

As soon as I read about hammering golf tees into pumpkins, I knew Raccoon would be interested. We don't have pumpkins here or golf tees, so we used a watermelon and real nails instead. Raccoon has loved any kind of tool since he was about one, and he did all the hammering himself.

 

We called the nails "hair" and then I carved a face into the watermelon per his instructions.

 

At the end of the week, I saw him doing this on his table and he told me, "I'm making a game for you, Mama." I asked him, "How do we play?" He replied, "With water" (the napkins under the noodles are soaking wet).

 

 

It turned into more of a stack-the-fruit game (granadilla and pitahaya if you're wondering what those are). We also made the granadilla into an impromptu "pumpkin" with a noodle face. Afterwards I had to set the noodles in the sun to dry them out, but I like that Raccoon has fun playing with me enough to want to make up more games. Sometimes he gets out his school stuff and tells his stuffed animals that he has "surprises" for them. I love that he thinks learning is joyous and playful.