Letter D, Felt Board Stories, Gymboree School Skills, Right Start Math, and George's Secret Key to the Universe

Hello!  We have been very busy homeschooling the last two days. :)   Here is what we have been up to:

Yesterday we worked on "Letter D" using our CatholicIcing.com Preschool Curriculum.  We focused on St. Denis and made a craft on Jesus' Divine Mercy.

We also spent quite a bit of time yesterday doing some new Felt Board Stories.   My mother-in-law (MIL) graciously ordered for us some of the classic felt board stories.  (Thanks, Gigi!  We love you!)  LO has been "telling" the stories over and over again using the pieces. 

Here is a picture of the dinosaur felt board set.  LO loves dinosaurs!

Here is our felt story for Old Macdonald had a Farm.  We also have a book and CD to go with each of these felt board sets.   I love how the sets included the word cards along with the pieces.

 
The next set we did was "The Wheels on the Bus".  The bus even beeps!  It has a squeaky toy in it :)

And one of my personal favorites from childhood was "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly".  DH (Dear Husband) thinks it is a morbid song.  LO (Little One) thinks the song is hilarious :)

The coolest part of this set is that the pieces actually can be put in the "Old Lady's" mouth and into her stomach!  There is a piece of plastic keeping them in. :)

And our final storyboard is "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", which has many more versus than just the first verse that we had song prior to getting this set.  So much fun! :)

Once acquiring these sets and putting them together, I quickly realized I needed a way to organize the numerous pieces.  I put each individual story set into a gallon ziploc baggie, labeled them using my label maker, and then placed them in this nice Longeberger basket. (Thanks to my BF [Best Friend] I have had this basket since my wedding 7 years ago and have used it for many awesome purposes.  Thanks Kim!)  Also, please note the cute basket next to the felt board stories that is housing our Spanish curriculum. :)

Today LO attended his Gymboree School Skills drop-off class.   They studied the "Letter U".  They always start with a show and tell.  LO took in a dinosaur encyclopedia with a picture of a "Utahraptor".   For his craft today he made a "Unicorn."

After his Gymboree class we came home to our Right Start Math lesson.  We worked on quantities 1 to 6.  We used craft sticks to learn tally marks for representing "5 and 1 is 6".  He also used the craft sticks to make Triangles and Quadrilaterals.   We also learned a new song called "Yellow is the Sun".  And we used color tiles to work on our groupings of numbers.

For our bedtime reading, we have started reading "George's Secret Key to the Universe" by Lucy and Stephen Hawking every night.   I don't remember where I picked up this book as a suggestion for science (I'm sure it was on some homeschooling blog or at a homeschooling conference.).  Anyway, it has definitely turned out to be a good idea!   We read a chapter a night and discuss the book and  science concepts.   LO constantly surprises me with his reading comprehension.  He understands and remembers way more than I thought he would!   After reading our chapter today, we decided to do a quick science experiment.  In Chapter 2 of the book, the characters take a ruler and rub it in the person's hair to make static electricity.  Then they take the ruler and put it near a stream of tap water.  The water goes from being straight down to moving over when the static electricity is near.   So LO and I decided to see if the book was accurate.  We tried it with a ruler and couldn't  get it to work.  We hypothesized that it was the ruler and static electricity that we could get going with the ruler that was the problem, not necessarily the experiment itself.   So we decided to use a balloon instead of a ruler.  It worked!  :)   LO was really impressed!  (And myself, I have to admit!)   I rubbed the balloon in LO's hair and then put it near the stream of tap water in his bathroom sink.  As soon as the balloon got close to the water, the stream of water bent!  Pretty cool :)

And that is what we have been up to :)  Hope you enjoyed reading!