Valentine's Day!

Feb. 10-14, 2014

Holidays are always fun at school! We had lots of fun with Valentine's Day this year. First we painted Valentines to send to our family members:

Then we made our Valentine boxes for co-op (a giant Lego):

We started learning about estimation with Conversation Hearts: 

And we graphed our hearts by color (graph found here):

Happy Valentine's Day!

Candy Experiments & Gratitude Leaves

November 4th, 2013

We put some of our Halloween candy to good use for school! First we did an experiment about whether the candy would sink or float in a bowl of water. First Seth wrote down his hypothesis (above), then performed the experiment: 

After observing the candy, he would go back and write down his conclusion and see whether his hypothesis was right (FYI--pretty much everything he got floated). 

Next we opened our M&Ms and Skittles and sorted them by color. Then we made a bar graph to compare the colors and did a little math using the graph. It was easy for Seth to recognize when the bars were equal, and to see that a bar with two more squares meant that there were two more yellow candies than blue ones. But he had a hard time translating that to addition--instead of comparing the two columns and just adding one or two more, he would try to re-count the entire column. 

To kick off the Thanksgiving season, we made gratitude leaves and hung them around the house. I drew leaf shapes on construction paper and Seth would cut them out and draw a picture of something he was grateful for.  

And then we hung them all over the house to remind us of all the things we're grateful for! (Seth is apparently very grateful for broccoli soup). 

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

July 12th-August 10th, 2013

We had a lot of fun learning about bugs this summer!

We went on a bug hunt in our house:

(I put the bugs there myself and they still creeped me out)

The mighty hunters, ready to go: 

Loading up their nets: 

Nets full of bugs: 

Once the bugs were all found, we sorted them into piles: 

Then we graphed them by lining them all up and comparing the numbers: 

Finally, we matched our bug flashcard pictures to the piles of bugs: 

We also went on a real bug hunt outside! 

Our coolest discovery: 

A hoard of caterpillars devouring the leaves of this tree!

But the best way to learn about bugs is to have one as a pet:

 

Seth adopted a wooly bear caterpillar which he promptly named "Catherine"

We learned what this type of caterpillar eats and what it likes as a habitat.

Eventually, our caterpillar made a cocoon:

We deposited the cocoon outside where it hopefully produced a moth one day!

And, because we love caterpillars so much, we made our own:

Catherine wanted a sad caterpillar: 

Bugs are a lot of fun to learn about, especially during the summer!

Independence Day

June 29th-July 4th, 2013

There were so many great ideas for Independence Day projects that I had a hard time deciding which to do! Since Seth isn't really into anything too artsy, I picked some that were simple and interesting.

First, we tried puffy paint fireworks: 

Despite what it looks like, he really enjoyed this!

Our fireworks after getting 'puffed' in the microwave.

I definitely like the black paper better, even if it did leave black puddles in the microwave.

We found some red, white, and blue marshmallows at the store and decided they would make a great math manipulative. First we sorted by color, then counted, then 'graphed' them. This was Seth's first time graphing and I was amazed at how quickly he understood the concept.

(Yes, he ate them all shortly after this was taken)

This one was a lot of fun and didn't end up being NEARLY the mess I was expecting! I bought sponges from the dollar store, cut them into (passable) star shapes, and pulled out the acrylic paint. 

I put a cutting board inside each shirt to prevent the paint from seeping through to the back and then let the kids go to town. And by that I mean I carefully restricted access to the paint and sponges, but still let them do whatever they wanted on their shirts:

I think they turned out pretty cute!

Normally at this point I would iron them with a paper towel on top of the paint, then wash and dry them inside out. But I ran out of time, so they just got to wear them after the paint dried. 

Two cute kids!

Our last project was kind of a sneaky one on my part--I wanted to see how Seth's scissor skills were progressing, so I found a great flag project that he would have to cute and glue.

Much to my surprise, there was no complaining about the cutting. I did have to help him hold his scissors correctly (and fix the position once or twice mid-cutting), but he did it all himself!

Happy 4th of July!