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: 

Catherine Writing

Mar. 14, 2014

Catherine was dying to have her own "school", so I started her on a very, very simple letter-of-the-week lesson plan. For our first activity we made some fingerprint ants crawling along the letter A:

That was about all I expected her to do, but she had other ideas. With no prompting at all, she flipped her paper over and wrote herself an 'A':

Apparently teaching Catherine to write is going to be MUCH easier than teaching Seth...

Bead & Magnet Writing, and Math Games

November 14-21st, 2013

We tried this game called "Outside, Inside" for math, but it wasn't as big of a hit as I was hoping. Maybe next time I can make it more dramatic with a drop from a higher height. Either way, Seth got some practice with addition and writing equations. 

We also reviewed what we've learned about money and played another store game. This time instead of using amounts that directly corresponded to a coin (.01 for a penny), I used different amounts so Seth would have to add different coins together. He was confused at first but quickly caught on and even surprised me with his ability to break the amounts down into different coin amounts. 

We also had some fun doing some writing with magnets. Seth wrote this all by himself. It says, "I can go to gymnastics." 

This one says "The ball bounced."

(stupid sideways Blogger again)

"Gab lix to play with me"= "Gabe likes to play with me"

I love seeing Seth figure things out for himself!

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). 

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. 

Writing in Playdough

September 10th, 2013

Another attempt to get creative with writing practice--Seth loved practicing his letters in playdough (using a toothpick to write). 

Sight Word Stamping

August 1st, 2013

Another fun "writing but not really" activity: stamping in playdough!

Seth practiced "writing" his sight words using his stamps.

These are the stamps we bought--we love them!

Counting To 100

July 10-August 1st, 2013

Here are some of the ways we learned to count to 100:

Putting gems on our 100s chart:

Counting 100 beads: 

And putting the 100 beads on a "snake" (or a necklace, if you're a girl): 

We also decided to kill two birds with one stone and make a reading chart.

First we cut out 100 strips of paper:

Then we wrote a number and the name of a book Seth has read on a strip: 

And then we hung the strips up in a chain! 

We'll get to 100 eventually, but not for a year or two at the rate we're going, which is perfectly fine.

To celebrate him being able to count to 100, I let him count 100 jelly beans:

When he finished, he got to eat them! Yum!

ABC Wall

July 10th, 2013

Another brilliant idea to get Seth writing: I had him help me make an ABC wall to hang in our school room. We did a few letters a day until we had them all up. The plan is to eventually add the lower case letters and his numbers. 

Bubble Experiment

July 8-10th, 2013

We decided to try out some of the bubble recipes I found on Pinterest.

Helping make the solution

Mixing the ingredients

Here were our three contenders: 

#1--the glycerin solution

#2--the corn syrup solution

#3--the Dollar Store solution

Seth's hypothesis: 

Catherine also wrote a hypothesis: 

We let the solutions sit for a day (or two--things get crazy around here), then gave them a whirl: 

The results were...inconclusive. All three performed about the same, but Seth preferred the corn syrup solution since it smelled good (I used orange dish soap). But we had fun trying!

Creative Writing

June 19th and 26th, 2013

Two more ideas for kids who are less than thrilled about writing:

Shaving cream in the bathtub

(hard to tell, but it says "SETH!")

ABC BINGO (Pinterest find!--she has a lowercase version, too)

It's amazing what I can get him to do if I can somehow turn it into a game!

Pick Your Best Letter

June 18th, 2013

I don't really have a source for this idea--it was a combination of many different suggestions. 

For each letter:

1. Write the letter with a highlighter or bright-colored marker

2. Make two spots next to the highlighted letter for them to write the letter on their own

3. Once they've written the letters, have them circle the one that they think is the best

Seth and I didn't always agree on which letter was the best, but it made for a good discussion when he picked differently from me.

Whiteboard Writing

June 18th, 2013

Trying yet another way to make writing more fun for Seth--a whiteboard! He was okay with the idea (better than paper), but he didn't love it. Oh, well...

I was just planning on writing a few letters (the first half of the alphabet), but Seth took matters into his own hands: 

Not bad for a boy who hates writing!

Sidewalk Chalk Writing

June 13th, 2013

Seth HATES writing, so we get creative with how we practice our writing.

Sidewalk chalk writing was actually a hit!

I called out random letters and he had to write them--I think he did pretty well!

He was very proud of this--he drew a picture of a crash (a standard depiction for Seth) and wrote KRASH underneath (the SH was kind of written in the crack of the sidewalk).

Salt Writing

June 10th, 2013

We were supposed to finish writing the second half of the alphabet in the sandbox, but it was raining (of course). Plan B was tracing the letters in salt, which probably worked better than the sandbox but wasn't as easily contained.

(We have done this using sugar in the past, but Seth tended to start eating the sugar and making a huge mess. Apparently salt isn't quite so tempting).

First Day of Kindergarten!

June 3rd, 2013

Here's what we did on Seth's first day of kindergarten!

We started by putting his phonics flashcards into alphabetical order. No issues here besides the classic mistake of thinking "LMNO" is all one letter (note to self: work on that one):

Then we played one of his awesome Happy Phonics games: I Can Spell!

(This is my favorite learn-to-read program ever. HIGHLY recommended).

This was the original plan:

Pick a picture, use the cards to spell the word.

(Sorry for the weird stretchiness--Blogger is being stupid at the moment).

But he decided that was too much effort and took to writing the words instead.

No complaints here:

And since we were already writing, I threw in some lines for practicing writing on:

Not bad for a boy who hates writing because it "makes my hands hot."

Then it was on to money identification!

(I found the money posters here, and the poem here--I edited the poem slightly to fit my needs)

I also made up my own little sorting game, where he had to use the posters (now up on the wall) to sort the coins correctly by name. Once he had sorted them all, he had to match the cards with the correct values to each pile. He had to check the posters several times, but he seemed to enjoy the whole thing!

After a short break, we headed outside to practice writing upper-case letters in the sandbox. We made it through half the alphabet. He still needs some work on B, D, F, G, I, J, K, but he's in much better shape than I expected.  

Then it was on to piano practicing (which he can't do independently--I sit by him and give him a mini-lesson every time). For the record, Seth was the one who wanted to start lessons. I would have waited another couple of years! 

We ended the day by having Seth read aloud some BOB Books, and then listening to me read some books about children around the world (social studies) and magnets (science--we'll be playing with magnets later in the week).

He would still rather play with cars all day, but I'm hoping to help him understand that school is not optional now. I'm just glad I've done enough research on teaching little people (especially boys) to realize that he needs to take breaks from school in order to process everything. 

Day one, done!