Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Hurricane Sandy

This week we had a couple of days inside due to Hurricane Sandy's visit.  No going to work for mommy and daddy.  So we had plenty of time for homeschooling and for catching up on our homeschooling blog. :)

Starting with our homeschooling activities from last week:

Here is a picture of LO reading his science books and magazines.



Here is a picture of LO watching a video from the National Zoo app about animals.


Here is a picture of our little budding paleontologist excavating his baby dinosaurs out of plaster of paris.

And here is a picture of our Magic School Bus Dinosaur Kit.   We made the diorama and finished off the whole kit.  We have been working on the kit for a couple of months.  The diorama is the culminating activity for the kit.

We learned about the letter "E" last week using our CatholicIcing Preschool Curriculum.  Here is the letter "E".  LO traces the "E" with his fingers and we use this to discuss how to draw the letter "E".


After practicing with our finger with the "E" on the board, I had him practice writing the letter "E" on a lined dry erase board that I picked up from Target's $1 bins.



He drew the "E" on the bottom all by himself :)
Here is a picture of our craft for the letter "E".   He made it all by himself.  (I did the writing, of course.)

Here is a picture of LO at his Gymboree School Skills class.  He goes once a week for this drop-off class.  It's 90 minutes long and he loves to go.


When coming back from LO's School Skills class, we discovered 16 bees on the bushes in front of our house!  Yes, 16 (sixteen) bees!   Incredible!  I had never seen this before.  This was a homeschooling experience that we did not plan on.  We discussed bees and nectar and plants.  Very cool.  One of our neighbors are also homeschoolers.  They are teenagers and also came outside to study the bees.  It was like a little co-op activity for our two houses :)   It was very interesting to me that the teenagers and my preschooler could all learn about the bees together and converse about them. 


On Sunday I learned that my LO knows how to sing his ABCs :)   Here is a link to a video of my LO and his cousin singing their ABC's together :) https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?v=10151147861891843

On Monday we did our next Dinosaur Train PBS lesson.  http://www.pbs.org/teachers/dinosaurtrain/lessonplans/dinosaurssatoz/
We listened to the song and watched the video.  The lesson called for options of memorizing the song (which we have already done) and making notecards with the letters on it (which we had also already done).  So we decided to do the extension activity which involved making a book about dinosaurs.   The book is still in progress, so I will post pictures when it is completed.

Today (Tuesday), we focused on the Letter "F" and did the next lesson in our CatholicIcing Preschool Curriculum.


The craft was to make a sunburst to represent Our Lady of Fatima.  We put paint on the bottom of  a paper plan and then spun the plate on white paper to make the sunburst.  Pretty cool!


During our "hurricane" days we also played loads of board games, read tons of books, and practiced playing Hide and Seek.  I also learned that LO can count to 10 all by himself without error :)  

Thanks for reading!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Running like an Argentinasaurus

And here is LO running the length of an Argentinasaurus :)


Another "reading" video

Pre-Reading Skills :)

LO "reading" his alligator book :)

Running like a Spinosaurus

For some reason the blogger will not let me load multiple videos in the same blog.  Maybe there is a limit . . .

Here is LO running the length of a Spinosaurus. :)

Dinosaur Activities!

Hello!   Today we had a lot of fun with dinosaurs! :)  We started with a Dinosaur Train PBS Lesson that asked the question "How big are dinosaurs?"  We went outside and measured out approximately 40 feet (length of a T-rex), 60 feet (length of a Spinosaurus), and 100 feet (length of an Argentinasaurus).  Then LO ran each of the distances while I took videos :)  Check out the pictures and videos :)



After the outside activities we moved inside to make some dinosaur cookies!  :)  Yummy! :)   The recipe was in the back of one of LO's books.  He loved helping make the cookies!





And that was our awesome dinosaur homeschooling day :)

Our Rosary Board

Hello!  I got this idea from Catholic Icing :)  I think it turned out pretty awesome.  Thanks, Lacy!

Please go to Lacy's blog to read about the Rosary Board idea and for directions.  I modified the directions and used materials I already had around my house.   The circles are poster paper and the backing is a poster board (it's actually the back of my felt board).  I printed the pictures from the Internet.  I liked that it had the descriptions of each one so that everything I need to pray the rosary with LO is in one place.  I added the days of the week for each of the mysteries in glitter glue. 

Hope someone else find this activity useful :)