Easter Egg Addition

Apr. 17, 2014

We're currently working on cementing Seth's addition and subtraction facts. I try to throw in a bunch of different games to keep things interesting. Since it was a few days away from Easter, I thought I'd try having him match Easter Egg equations.

I wrote one equation on the top half of an egg and another (different equation, same sum) on the bottom half. For example: 5+5=? on the top and 7+3=? on the bottom. Then I separated all the pieces and had him match up the correct equations.

He actually caught two eggs that I somehow messed up (they didn't have matches--not sure what I did).  And yes, he enjoyed this activity about as much as it appears in this picture. Eggs or not, he still knows "work" when he sees it!

St. Patrick's Day Fun

Mar. 17, 2014

I'm not usually a big holiday person, but it's kind of fun to have a holiday theme to plan school around! I decided to put together a treasure hunt for Seth (to find a leprechaun's treasure, of course!).

Here's what I threw together that morning (yes, I plan REALLY far in advance):

(Note Seth found in his school drawer):

A leprechaun left his treasure somewhere here.

I can't tell you where, but it's very, very near.

To find where he hid it, a rainbow we must make.

We'll figure out the clues and then his treasure we will take!

You must solve a problem before you get a clue.

Here is problem #1, let's see how you do!

Problem #1: If you have 1 dime and three pennies, how much money do you have?
Clue #1: Mine is the color of a bright stoplight. I'm something Catherine takes a drink from every night. (Catherine's red waterbottle)

Problem #2: Count to 100 by 2s, 5s, and 10s.
Clue #2: There are five of us together, so yummy & so sweet. You'll find us near the mixer in the room where we eat. (5 orange Clementines)

Problem #3: Set a clock to 10:30 and 7:15
Clue #3: I'm squishy and foamy and float in the tub. I'm big enough to hold a baby Chub-a-lub.  (Aaron's yellow bath mat)

Problem #4: Find a sphere, cube & cylinder
Clue #4: Mom always brings me when she goes to the store. I hold her keys, wallet, phone & more. (My green purse)

Problem #5: What is 20+20?
Clue #5: Here is where you put your clothes at the end of the day. They always get so dirty when you jump & run & play. (Their blue laundry hamper)

Problem #6: What is 15-4?
Clue #6: Mom uses me to exercise because she wants to be strong. I live by the fireplace down where it's cold all day long. (Purple handweight)

Problem #7: Write '37' in tally marks.
Clue #7: Did you make a gorgeous rainbow, with six colors oh, so bright?
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple--that's right?
Because you made a rainbow, to the treasure you'll be led.
It's hidden in a treasure box under Catherine's bed!

The completed rainbow:

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (all items from around our house)

Enjoying the leprechaun's"treasure": green ring pops and gold (yellow M&Ms)

For fun, we also wrote our own St. Patrick's Day story. Seth dictated, I wrote, and then he illustrated. Who knew leprechauns had access to so many tanks, guns and explosives? I put it with our other St. Patrick's Day books so we can enjoy it for years to come: 

St. Patrick's Day Art

Mar. 4-17, 2014

We had some fun doing art projects for St. Patrick's Day. I started them off doing one of the classic elementary art projects: wrapping tissue paper around the end of a pencil and gluing it onto paper. We cut out green tissue paper and glued the paper onto a shamrock shape:

Obviously my kids lot interest WAY before they managed to fill in the entire shamrock: 

We also painted some watercolors: 

Two rainbows.

The one on the right has a pot of gold at the end of it.

And for extra fun on St. Patrick's Day morning, we made rainbow toast: 

This was such a big hit that we've had rainbow toast for breakfast several times since!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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 Cane Science

Dec. 18th, 2013

I raided the internet for ideas of what to do with the (ten billion) candy canes we had hanging around during Christmas. 

First we tried dissolving some candy canes in water:

They did dissolve, but the kids weren't super impressed with this one.

Next we tried bending candy canes: 

Ours were melted after only 8 minutes, but I let them cool for a minute and they hardened enough to pick up.

And the bending began: 

The final products: 

Once they hardened, they hardened QUICKLY. 

We had a few break before they realized the bending was done.

The kids LOVED this one.

Will definitely do again next year.

Christmas Art

Dec. 9-12, 2013

Christmas is a great time for fun art projects!

First we made some ornaments out of pipe cleaners and beads:

Candy canes, icicles, a globe ornament, and snowflakes

Then we made some wreaths out of paper plates, torn paper, glue and glitter:

Seth's wreath

Catherine's wreath:

Catherine was a bit more into this whole glitter thing...

We also made cards for our family with glitter glue.

It was great fun and the cards were so cute--I just wish I had kept one for myself!

Turkey Math

November 12th, 2013

I made this super easy number line to help Seth recognize what addition and subtraction looks like. He had a great time playing with it and mastered the concept quickly. I let him use the number line to do the problems I made for him in this turkey math game: 

Each turkey has a number written on it. Seth had to do the equations on the feathers and then match them to the correct turkey. He actually had a lot of fun doing this! 

Can't leave the toddler out, of course! Once Seth was done Catherine had her turn--she sorted the turkeys and feathers into piles by color (and did a most excellent job, too). 

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). 

Halloween School Activities

October 28-30th, 2013

We finally got some use out of our number magnets and used them to make subtraction equations! We used some of the candy we got from our trunk-or-treat as manipulatives. "Seth got eight pieces of candy and ate five. How many were left?"

I also got brave and let the kids help make Halloween sugar cookies. They had a great time cutting them out and decorating them later with their friends.

We also had a lot of fun at our co-op Halloween party! We decorated cookies, sang songs, and wrapped each other up like mummies!

Co-op Sick Day

October 28th, 2013

Our kids came down with a mild case of Hand, Foot & Mouth which we decided not to share with our co-op. Since we were missing a day of learning about plants, we headed outside for a nature scavenger hunt.

We saw lots of great plants, leaves, rocks and bugs, but this was the highlight: we now have TWO Catherine the Wooley Bear Caterpillars. One for each hunter. 

For Halloween I changed up the "Roll a Pumpkin Game" we played last year. Instead of one die, we used two. Seth would have to add the two dice together to find out what to draw. Great addition practice and fun watching Seth's pumpkin get covered with all kids of crazy things. 

I decided to use the white board to help Seth practice reading some of his sight words in context. He's really good at reading them off a list but tends to stumble over a few of them when they're in a sentence. I tried to make it fun for him, but he still doesn't really enjoy reading for school. I'm learning to kind of back off and just give him lots of chances to pick things up on his own. Comic books are great for that (we love Tiny Titans), and we also love the Fly Guy books. 

Pumpkin Math!

October 21st, 2013

We ended up with quite a few pumpkins after our trip to the pumpkin patch, so I thought it would be fun to use them for some school activities. First Seth lined them all up according to size and labeled them 1 through 8. 

Then we filled out a paper for each pumpkin. First he wrote the number, then drew a picture. We used a ruler to measure height, a measuring tape to measure circumference, and a scale to measure weight. 

In retrospect, 8 pumpkins was WAY too many for a little guy. Four would have been just about perfect.

The best part, of course, was carving some of them that night!

Equations and Ghosts

October 15th, 2013

I started introducing Seth to written equations. We would take turns: first, I would tell a story problem using his cars ("There were 5 cars driving and 2 cars crashed. How many cars are left?") and he would write the equation and solve the problem. Then he'd tell me a story and I'd write the equation. He had a lot of fun crashing the cars and got a very basic understanding of how equations work.

And, for a fun Halloween craft we decided to make ghost windsocks out of styrofoam cups and tissue paper. 

BEWARE!

October 2nd, 2013

A nice mix of art & writing for Halloween! We made this signs to hang in our front window (using blood red paint, of course!). Seth had a great time painting ghosts and writing scary messages: 

(I know it's sideways. Blogger is stupid sometimes).

This one says, "Boo! Beware!" I've discovered that Seth is much more agreeable about writing if he can see the purpose behind it. He hates worksheets/books, but he'll write someone a letter or make a sign. So I just have to get creative about his writing projects. 

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!