Signs of Spring--Butterflys

The Dow Gardens Butterfly House Midland, Michigan is open all month and in preparation for our field trip we are studying buttterflys today. Pitty-pat is still sleeping but Tippy-toe and I have read three books today. When she gets up we will read them together, although she should be able to read them herself. We will see. Tippy-toe just soaked up the knowledge like a little sponge this morning. Separating them for learning times really helps them focus better. I can't imagine either of them in a class of 25 to 30 other kids.

Today's Booklist is from our own home library:
Life Cycles Caterpillar to Butterfly by Sally Hewitt
Born to be a Butterfly by Karen Wallace
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

I found a neat pasta and paste idea from somewhere online and didn't write the site down ooops! I am trying to give credit for all the ideas I use so I can use those sites again myself.i think I have everything I need for this craft in the cupboard.
spiral pasta--caterpillar
shell pasta---chrysalis
bowtie pasta--butterfly
small pasta---egg

I found a lifecycle printout to label at enchantedlearning.com

I traced circles on green cardstock for them to cut out and make their own hungry caterpillar.
Tippy-toe needs fine motor coordination practice so cutting is good for him.

Today's mittenmom approved video is "Meet the Sight Words 1" by The PreschoolPrep Company. Little-man likes the cartoon words.

We do alot on saturdays since I usually have weekends off from work. Also someone is usually home to occupy little man for our artsy-craftsy times. I set up a modified workbox full of worksheets for during the week. We go for a walk and read in the evenings after dinner. The weekends are more one on one times.

weather study

Today is beautiful we need to play outside! Its 80.1 degrees outside. Time to study the weather first hand. Sunny and beautiful and warm---rare in michigan, especially in April. and that's no april fools joke. I have all the windows open airing out the house. It's such a nice day to get out of work early and play with the kids and the dog. Aimee is here with her puppy jack. Pitty-pat will be setting out our trip to the park since she peeled all the paint off the back of her bedroom door this morning when she woke up. Cam just found it. It's been a long time since we had any of this kind of behavior. I blame the recent visitors we had for this acting out.

Not truants

We passed our truancy evaluation today. We are at least in good standing with the school district. Just keep our family in your prayers.

Frogs and metamorphosis

Last June we looked for tadpoles for our natural science but we were too late to catch some. This week we bought a special tank at WalMart made by Backyard Safari Outfitters. It has water area and land area for the tadpole-frog. We found some great pictures in DK Eyewitness Natural World.I copied some great printables form KinderPrintables.com I can't wait so we already started this unit study.
The butterfly house is open for another month in midland. I plant to take them as part of our metamorphosis study. I saw a great homemade journal some one made online with each page a different creature that uses metamorphosis. May be too advanced for us but will put it in our nature journal.

Trip to craft store

I was on call last night so I went to the craft store to find some new ideas. At Michaels I found some wooden shapes to use with our Geometry and fractions--An ovid. a ball, a large cube and small cubes that stack to replicate the same size large cube.
*I also bought pipe cleaners and pony beads and made several patterns for them to copy. A wooden mosaic form for a 1.29 makes the perfect tray for this activity. The edges keep the beads from rolling too far.
*I found Zebra print felt to make the letter Z to finish my felt alphabets I am cutting out for little man.
*I also bought some spring themed funfusion beed kits for a dollar.
*More balsam airplanes for our airplane theme Aaron is doing with them.
*But my best find was a dessert animal set. These will work with the felt map of the continets I plan to make on a fleece blanket. I loved this idea the minuet I saw it somewhere and plan to copy it. I will link to it when I find it again.

At the dollar store I found some wonder-under and colored yarn. I made a pipe cleaner needle and cut a placemat size piece of wonder-under for a begining sewing lesson. The yarn is easier to pull through this than it is plastic canvas. We bend our blunt needles trying to work with the plastic canvas. Today is a rainy day great for practicing fine motor skills indoors.

Airplanes

Aaron bought Styrofoam airplanes with the kids. They assembled the kids colored them with markers and put stickers on them. I can't wait to see them fly.

Dollar General Store Finds

pots for starting seeds 3.00
seeds 0.20 each 0.20
color by number set 1.00 each 2.00
plastic alphabet and number sets 2.00
alphabet stickers 1.00 each 5.00

Total spent 12.20 plus tax

Not too bad for making three new activities. The color by number sets were flowers and bees which will go with the flower and plants theme I am working on for our next unit study. The alphabet stickers go with some paint chips I picked up for free to make reading slide cards. and the plastic alphabets didn't come with magnets like I thought but we got out some magnets and two metal popcorn tin lids and are using them to study magnetics anyway today. Pitty-pat has a pin, coins,magnets from the fridge and is amazed at how the magnets make the pin stand up on the coins in from high above the safety pin. Tippy-toe is more into hanging the magnets from each other in the air. I printed out magnetic and not magnetic cards from somewhere(I will look up the link and plan to get them out of my file cabinet to put with this for the next time they get the magnets out of the activity file box.)
Little-man is happy with a set of tongs and a couple of jar lids to move around on his highchair tray.(also a free activity)I think he would try to swallow the magnets. Today he starts potty training after his nap! We bought a new potty chair, training pants and rubber pants--ready, set, go!

busy week

Aaron has been working with tippy-toe on his letters and he can now write 4 letters himself when asked. It's been busy here but I see such an improvement in both their behavior the skills, to sit and do school work will soon follow. Pitty-pat and big sis moved into to a bedroom suite downstairs putting beds in one rooom and making a playroom out of the other. It seems to be working out good. I just need to get the rest of Aimers things out of the playroom and clean up the mess she left down there. I am so lucky to have Aaron home with the kids.

Balancing Work and Homeschool

Yesterday I had to work and pull a night of call for work. I purchased some file folders and Disney Princess stickers and hope to get pitty-pat interested in a Act Like a True Princess LapBook using a Disney Princess theme. Last week we rented a non-animated version of snow white from the library. The girls are moving in together into their new big girl bedrooms. It is so nice to see them getting along and cooperating toward a common goal. It takes time to blend a family. It's good for pitty-pat and tippy-toe to be seperated too. The time has finaly come for that to happen. After all they were each others only constant for so long. For those of you who don't know I adopted two of my little cousins at ages 4 and 5 years old, then a year later I also adopted their one month old baby brother(hence the blended family).

Christmas is Here

Today we cleaned the living room to set up the Christmas tree. Worked in our Unit Study "The Mitten" by Jan Brett and Snow Unit Study with "Stopping by the Woods" by Robert Frost. We are moving toward a workbox system. Today the kids kept asking to do school work. They really like the cutting out activities for they're Lapbooks.It's the same work but the box system seems to make it more interesting right now. I tried to make student I.D. cards and Aaron installed a program on the computer to help me (but I need to learn how to use it). Right now Cam is working on homemade paper ornaments with Pitty-pat and Tippy-toe. Of course the lights didn't work when Cam tried them (before putting them on the tree), so Aaron and Tay went to buy a couple strands.
Aim moved out tonight. She's eightteen it's a hard lesson she has to learn and I am afraid she's not prepared for the consequences of her actions. She's been looking for a reason to get mad and leave. Today she was asked to pick up her stuff from the living room (she's been asked for over a week)and it was her day of the week to do dishes. (I guess she doesn't realize, when you live on your own it's dish day every day!) The irony goes on forever with that one. At least she finished one semester of college. She has the skills she needs to get a good education. I love her and I hate to see her get hurt. Well this isn't really a homeschool entry so I will end it here.

Winter Wonderland

It was a bad storm last night and today. I stayed home from work. No school for the oldest kids. We all got up and cleaned the house for three hours. The kids got out to play in the snow and make a snowman. Aaron and I made a run to Dollar Daze, a store and found a lot of neat things to fill a couple of workboxes. Wipe off addition books, wipe off subtraction book, phonics workbooks, princess +/- flash cards, and colored dice for addition games. All for just $1.00 each. Hooray. Indoors today they have both played Leapster Kindergarten (don't tell them it's a learning tool). Jon had destroyed his power cord over six months ago and they were without the Leapster till just last Friday. Mostly they are fighting at the table instead of working on their lapbooks. Tonight Aaron bought ornaments to decorate with stickers and everyone is going to make one--EVERYONE even the surly teenagers! Taylor made one and headed to the basement but everyone else really enjoyed the activity. Now to put up the tree.

Snow Flakes

Reading "Stopping By the Woods On A Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost Illustrated by Susan Jeffers It's December in the great North and I am sitting here still waiting for snow outdoors to go with my unit study LOL!We are using the lap book ideas from Homeschoolshare.com I am new to Lapbooking and this website has alot of neat ideas.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.



My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.



He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.



The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.
I had always heard the last two lines of the poem and never knew they were from Robert Frost. My favorite poem is The Road Not Taken.

winter wonderland

Big snow is coming tommorro. Set up a snow unit study for little ones.

Girls Home From Craft Store

Aaron and the two youngest girls are home from the craft store. A Great field trip to get homeschool supplies. They are all three Cam, Liz, and Jon busy coloring the posters they bought. Aaron picked up some stickers and foamies for some ideas I wanted to do. Baked spagetti is done. The bread Jon and I made earlier is on its last rising before baking so it should all time out.

Baking Bread with JonBoy

Today Jon and I are baking bread. He was so amazed with the yeast when it bubbled over the measureing cup. Let's forget when I let the milk on to scald and it went over the pan while I was giving little man a cracker. Jon likes it when I let him help me in the kitchen. He is doing a kindergarden program on his leapster. The time for the bread to rise is flying by for him since he has been without a powercord for his leapster for about eight months now. This is only my third or fourth time trying to make bread without a breadmachine. I hope it turns out for him. I read an article this morning while looking for homeschool ideas and thought since the girls are gone with Aaron I would try the recipe with Jon. Little Man has fallen asleep in his giant play yard and our cat tiger is curled up with him. I will try to post some photos. I plan to use this blog to record our home school activities for our first year. I am not using a planner but have some unit studies I have put together into lapbooks. We use workbooks we have found and printouts for our math concepts. We are checking out most of our books we don't already own from the local library. this week we read The Mitten a folk tale illustrated by Jan Brett. We used the lapbook ideas from homeschool share and jan bretts web page to make our lap books. We are also reading M is for Mitten by Annie Appleford since we do live in the mitten state...Michigan.

New To blogging

We are planning to use this blog to record what we actually do for our home school with the little kids day to day. I am not much for record books and papers will fill waste baskets fast around here. So this will be a more accurate lasting record.

The Giving Tree

We read The Giving Tree by Sel Siverstein. We did acorn counting sheets. We started Nature journals and collected leaves for the tree pages. Filled the bird feeder for bird observations. We also made pinecone feeders to hang in the pines outside our house. We watched the video "Kids love spanish #2 alphabets and numbers" from the public library. For our field trip this week we took a walk in Aunt Caroline's Woods.

An Apple A Day unit study

We are reading "The Little Red House" by Caroline Bailey. We made apple shape books, A is for Ant handwriting sheet, and trace the numbers apple picture 1-10. Our spelling words this week are ant, apple, A, An, And, red, tree, fall, all, one, & ate. We also read a story about Johny Appleseed for our history lesson. The apple blossom is our state flower so we did a work page about our state. This weeks color is RED. We colored a page with a bushel of apples