Weather Unit

Many weather stories! We (me included) learned sooo much! I am loving learning alongside my kids. I don't know everything or much about what I am teaching so I learn it the night before, or as I am reading a book, or watching a video, and I just REPEAT the stuff! We do lots of fun videos and songs I find on YouTube and can stream onto the TV. 

What's the Weather?! It's Sunny! It's Hot!

Exploring shadows and the sun's movement:

ROY G. BIV:

What's the Weather?! It' Windy! It's Stormy! It's Rainy! Hurricanes! Thunder! Lightening! Tornadoes!

"I looked up into the sky and thought I saw a _____, but it was just a cloud!"

 My Weathermen!

 

   Weather Lapbook:

 Homeschool Friends Outing:

Check out my pinterest account to find links to all these projects!

Seasons

 Summer: Beach in a bag craft, make ice cream, "Day at the Beach" sponge painting, playing in water (it is summer after all)

 Fall: Color on top of leaves with crayon to make leaf shape appear, leaf color match-up, leaf art, play with leaves in PlayDoh, fall pumpkin magnet pom pom play (we did stations with this one and the pattern blocks), scarecrow pattern blocks, raking fall leaves, make a scarecrow tp roll, fall leaf finger painting, finger-play and leaf songs found on youtube

We also did a fall sensory bin with items I collected around the neighborhood. The leaves were just perfect! The boys each had a magnifying glass and tweezers.

 Winter: Melting snowman booklet, color/cut snowman and name snowman with packing bubbles-painted snow, snowflakes made out of q-tips and coffee filters, roll-a-snowman, snow ball fight with cotton balls!, snowman sandwich lunch

 Spring: Make little bouquets in a muffin tin, bird nest cupcake holder, rain pictures

 Lots of paper work: the boys have a math workbook and K writing book. I was so proud of Nehemiah this week writing his first sentence! He also tried to write out rooster and I thought that was so cute. We also are still continuing the calendar everyday and starting our school day with several stories related to our subject. 

 Here's another look at our lapbook (or look here here here here), including some work we did that covered all of the seasons together:

We had our first co-op homeschool day. I think it went really well and I am excited for the consistency we are bringing to the group. We started off with a song (we will do the same one every meeting), introduced the behavior chart, made name spots for each kid, introduced the topic, read a book on the topic, did a craft project to make a seasons tree, then broke into stations. Fall: rake leaves, Spring: plant flowers into a pot, Summer: handprint sun painting, Winter: Snowman felt board, All: sensory bottles with different leaves for me to ask questions about the seasons and put them in the right order. Lastly, we did PE. We did different body control things like running, walking fast, walking backward, hoping on one foot, gallop, and limbo.

Shapes HGO

 We start off with some shape sorting toys while we wait for the other mommies to arrive, but it turns out everyone's sick, so we start sorting our circle shapes onto the matching color plate.

 Alison talks to the boys about some shape matching on worksheets. The boys were really wild and did not want to sit and do work, but we encouraged them to listen even if they don't feel like it. (So I guess they learned about shapes and some behavioral stuff too this day...I originally didn't want to homeschool my kids because of issues like this, but the behavioral stuff is soooo much more important than shapes! We have a long way to go, but I love this process of shaping my boys' hearts.)

Alison has a cool shapes poster hanging from the chalkboard. She goes through all the shapes with the pointer and has the kids repeat the shape back to her. Then she points to a shape and has them say what it is. Then she says, "who can find the triangle?" and if they are sitting nice, raising their hand, they get to use the pointer and show her. 

 She read a book called Mouse Shapes and the boys ate rectangle crackers and circle blueberries.

 Alison had made cut outs of the shapes and put them in a little baggie for each child. As Alison called out a shape, the child looked in the baggie to find it, and raised it up into the air to show her. Each time they got more food...hehe.

 We walked down to the park and painted with shape cookie cutters. It worked really well and they were excited to pour glitter over their shapes when they finished.

 Lastly, we played this really fun running game. The kids stood at one end with cones and at the other end was more cones and a bunch more shapes cut out. Alison would blow her whistle and call out a shape. The kids would run to the other end and find the shape she had called, holding it up into the air. They would put it back down and she would blow the whistle again for them to run back to the starting point. They did this for about 20-30 min!

Thanksgiving "HGO"

This is our Thanksgiving Homeschool Group Outing (HGO). I wish I had better pictures, but my kids got the camera that morning and messed up the focus!!! Ahhhh!!! The goal was to focus on "thanks" and "giving". We started off with a review.

 

The kids were sooo crazy after being sick and the time change and the weather change...so we had to bust out the snack already! I think they all had a granola bar and like 4 packets of fruit snacks.  Then we colored a picture that I laminated so we could use it as a placemat for Thanksgiving.  Alison had written down some things to talk about for being thankful, but the kids were being nutty so we only got to pray. I found this really cool thankfulness study though.  

The kids were not even wanting to color...so it was game time! Alison did Red Light/Green Light and held up a red or green piece of construction paper to help them know when to go and they ran after her (totally preggo too!)  

Then we enticed them back to the tables with a movie. I had downloaded onto my touchpad a short clip of kids receiving Operation Christmas Child boxes. This is a project where people fill shoe boxes with new toys, candy, and toiletries for other kids around the world who don't have much of anything. When they receive a box, it is a gift of love and gives an opportunity to share Christ's love to them as well. We wrapped our shoe boxes and filled the boxes with items we had bought from the store earlier in the week. The kids barely participated and mostly the moms ended up doing this part, but I think we all talked to the kids beforehand about what the boxes were for so no biggie! 

Lastly, we tried to squeeze out of the kids something they are thankful for and write it down on little leaf cut-outs and hang them on the adorable 'Thankful Trees' Alison made. Elijah (2) just kept telling me he was thankful for food (because we say thanks and pray when we eat food I'm guessing?) and Nehemiah (3) could only think of stuff that was right in front of him. He would say he was thankful for whoever was walking by and he kept insisting that he was thankful for the table (the park table)...I'm like that's so cool we get to go to a park and play with our friends and sit at this table...that's great to be thankful for, but what about maybe the table at our house and be thankful you have a house or daddy...he's like--no! I am just thankful for this table! haha. ok. At the end we did duck-duck-goose and Alison brought this apple peeler that will take off the peel of an apple and turn it into a slinky apple as you turn the crank. And that was it---the moment when we had all the kids attention. :)

I am thankful for these moms! Don't be jealous cuz I got mad video camera skills...