Six, Seven, and Spiders

We focused on math this week, and incorporated our letter for the week into our activities. Can you guess our letter? Six pieces of string to make the number 6. Seven-eyed, Silly monsters...

Malachi's creation:

Karis was pleased with hers too... though, due to her over-zealous glue squeezing, hers is a 14-eyed, silly monster.

Making Spiders with 8 legs...

Keeping with the spider theme, in Art we used string and chalk to make spider webs. After securing a piece of string to a nail in a board, rub the string with chalk.

Pull tight over paper and "flick".

After mommy added the outside edges of the web by hand,

Malachi added the spider and... Viola!

Karis much preferred spraying the hairspray to secure our chalk dust to the paper.

Back to math.... Using our sequence cards to discuss ordinal numbers...

Filling in shapes with our pattern blocks...

ssssssSSSSSSS...Snake Pattern.

The most delightful activity of the week was making patterns on paper towels. The kids did not know what to expect, so the end reveal was very exciting... even for mom! First you fold a paper towel four times...

Then you dip each corner in colored water...

and unfold...

We loved this!

Only by the grace of God, another week completed!

A little of this and a lot of that ...

Due to a bit of illness around our house, we had very unstructured school times. We just did a little of this and a little of that whenever we felt better and mom could fit it in.

We started our week with a trip to the library. It had been way too long since we visited. We came home with this pile of books which we read throughout the week (some multiple times).

Daddy read...

and mommy read...

Alphabet soup for the sick ones...

looking for the letter K ...

Salt writing...

Salt playing...

"Ball and Stick " writing ...

Separating letter pairs that are alike from those that are different ...

Matching letter mittens ...

Hopping from number to number in consecutive order...

Malachi's choice activity ...

Our new game: Rolling a large die, identifying the number, and doing a certain form of physical activity that specific number of times.

#1 was my favorite: Watching them try to do a somersault and inevitably falling into each other ... good thing they only had to do one at a time!

Making ice cream cones ...

This weeks favorite was music ... making a laughing cup. Paper clip, 2 foot string/yarn, disposable cup. Hole in cup, string tied to paperclip, string thread through bottom of cup. Add a little water to the string and then rub fingers/hand along string. The result is a "laughing" sound that brought us lots of fun. Idea was found in an issue of our Family Fun Magazine and is based on a Brazilian instrument called a cuica.

Music turned into science when we made a "telephone" and discovered how noise traveled along a tightly pulled string, into our cups, and straight to our ears.

One day we went outside and traced our shadows ... Don't ask me why they just had to wear their raincoats for this activity ...

We were supposed to check our shadows later that day, but you moms know how things go ... We didn't check them until the next day and saw that our shadows moved. Though I'm not sure if the concept of the sun moving actually penetrated their thoughts.

The shadow tracing was followed by stone collecting in order to make stone soup like we read about in one of our books.

First the stones go in the pot ...

Then the broth ...

Everyone added a handful of noodles ...

A little bit of carrots ...

I think he is saying "too many cooks in the kitchen"... Don't you just love the outfit that he borrowed from Karis?

The self-proclaimed "chef" had to serve the entree' himself ...

Yummy, Yummy!

And of course we had our share of a little bit of silliness ...

Play-dough, lacing cards, and an evening of lots of silliness with our friend Cameron ...

Lots of leaves to do a little playing...

Another week completed ... only by a lot of God's Grace!

Plenty of Fun

After a couple of weeks break, we are back in the swing of things and having plenty of fun with the letter P!

The letter P Potato stamp and a little peeker... Malachi went "P" hunting (complete with his toy rifle) and found many items around the house that began with the P sound.

No day is complete without pretend play... Asher joined the superheros this time as " Army Tank Man".

Malachi and Karis were completely into Puzzles this week.

We built a lot of our studies this week around penguins. Constructing the letter P out of baby penguin cut-outs...

Experiencing firsthand how feathers help keep penguins warm..

Comparing our height to that of an adult Emperor Penguin's...

Acting out math story problems... Four fish were swimming in the ocean. Three more fish joined them. Then a very hungry penguin came and ate up two fish... How many fish are left?

In Science we explored water (since penguins live in and around it). First we saw how water turns to ice when it gets really cold.

Then we made an icy home for a lonely penguin.

Next, we saw what happens to water when it gets really hot.

We learned that steam is water that is really hot.

Finally, we recorded our findings.

In Music, we used water to orchestrate a concert that penguins would love. Malachi chose to blow into bottles. (something he learned from Curious George) Karis chose to pour...

Asher tried to spoon water out of jars and made a watery mess.

In Geography we talked about Antarctica.

Mom tried to explain why Antarctica is so cold. Karis is holding up the "sun" as the earth rotates (we didn't have enough arms to make it revolves) ... but as you can tell by her confused look, this part of the lesson was a flop.

In Art we looked at printouts of some Picasso paintings, as did our little rubber frogs.

Then we drew our own portraits.

Permanent markers were the medium for our drawings. Karis was so pleased since Mommy never lets her use them and she always wants to.

As Picasso had a blue period, we chose a color for our own period. Then we made different shades of the one color and painted our portraits. (idea thanks to artprojectsforkids.org)

Then we painted a second protrait using many different colors as Picasso often did.

When the paint dried, mom traced over the original black lines again... for masterpices that are gallery worthy (well, at least according to mommy).We ended the week with plenty of popcorn and some poetry.Only by the grace of God, another week completed!