Chinese New Year

We did Chinese New Year early since I want to spend next week making Valentine's cards and gifts for the grandparents. 

We started out watching a Ni Hao Ki Lan video on Chinese New Year celebrations.  Then we read a couple of books: Dragon Parade by Steven A. Chin and Chin Chiang & the Dragon's Dance by Ian Wallace.  We discussed the various things mentioned in the stories like: lion statues at entrances for good luck, red is a lucky color, firecrackers to scare away evil spirits.

We read The Story of the Chinese Zodiac from http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/ and made a simple wreath with printouts of the zodiac animals from http://www.dltk-kids.com/.

We did a magnet page from Making Learning Fun. I don't do these pages using magnets since Vicki is still putting things in her mouth.  We usually glue on pompoms or use bingo markers.  This time we used small foam shapes that we glued on.  The kids really like gluing and it is good for motor skills and hand strength since we use the big bottles of glue and they have to squeeze pretty hard to get the glue out.  I'm thinking of getting a 3/4" hole punch from the craft store so I can punch holes from the huge variety of scrapbook papers I have, to use for these pages.  Making Learning Fun has them for a huge variety of themes often incorporating numbers and letters as well.  The page we did this time was D is for Dragon to fit in with our Chinese New Year theme.  The picture is of Georgie's dragon but Vicki is also very good at putting the shapes on the circles provided.

We did a coloring page from http://www.dltk-kids.com/.  Usually the kids don't like coloring and just scribble a few lines and stop but Georgie enjoyed this one.  This is the first time I've seen him color in a full picture, much less neatly and within the lines. 

We made a dragon toy following directions from Enchanted Learning with some slight modification.  The kids had a lot of fun painting the pieces.  First they had to hold the heads up like masks and roar like dragons.

After they dried, we put the pieces together into our dragons and then had our very own dragon parade.

We are still doing our MEP math program but Georgie is obsessed with addition and constantly asking what two numbers added together equal.  So, I decided to start doing some addition with him starting at the beginning with +0, just to make sure of what he knows.  He easily did all the +0 facts so we will do +1 next week as well as continuing with greater than and less than using MEP.

We're also continuing with Progressive Phonics and a variety of reading games.  We completed the -at words and are doing -ad words.  We're moving pretty slow with this since we don't do it every day and Georgie gets fidgety fast.   I did keep track of the words Georgie is able to read so far without help: at, bat, cat, hat, flat, fat, mat, pat, rat, sat, bad, dad, had, lad, mad, pad, sad, a, and, big, blue, can, I, is, little, look, me, my, not, play, red, said, the, three, to, two, yellow, you, am, are, at, but, he, like, on, so, that, they, too, was, what, with, as, very, ball, day, duck, eye, pink, had, lot.

Next week we're going to be doing a lot of crafts for Valentine's Day.

Groundhog Day

We spent just one day discussing Groundhog's Day.   We glued together a Groundhog from a template on dltk-kids.com.  I love this site for ideas.  We discussed hibernation and read a few books on Groundhogs Day.   The one we enjoyed most was Groundhog Day by Gail Gibbons.   It had lots of information about the history of Groundhog's Day and about Punxatawny Phil.   I had George do a story using a story starter from http://www.kidsparkz.com/.  He loves to tell all kinds of wild stories so I thought using story starters or having him tell stories about whatever topic we're doing would be something he'd really like.  The story starter went:  "If I was a sleepy groundhog, on February 2nd I would...."   The full story, as told by Georgie is:
If I was a sleepy groundhog, on February 2nd I would build a very big sculpture that looks like a box of letter H's.  I would make a big dinosaur sculpture and then I would catch him but he was the fastest runner in the whole town.   Not exactly about Groundhog day but interesting still the same.

We did our math and reading in the afternoon.  We did one lesson from MEP since Georgie didn't feel like cooperating for very long.  We did start -ad words in the Progressive Phonics books.    He's doing really well with the reading and I've started keeping track of the words he can read well.  He knows more than just the phonetic words that we've worked on.

I'm trying to decide how strict I should be with doing "school".  On the one hand, Georgie is only 4 1/2 and officially he wouldn't be in kindergarten until September at the earliest and probably not for another year if we planned for him to go to school (with his late summer birthday they don't want him until he's 6).  He asks to do school every day so does like it but mainly wants to do crafts and definitely doesn't like following instructions (see Story Starter above). 

On the other hand, he needs to learn some discipline and how to behave.  I was trying to read them a story (that's fun, right?) and he was very disruptive.  I did not ask him to sit still and listen but instead of playing quietly he sat next to Vicki and I throwing poker chips at the back of the book.  And, a little more following directions would be a good thing.  He doesn't mind doing reading or math but doesn't want to hear stories or learn about our themes.  I guess we'll just keep working on it and see how it goes.

Back to Community Helpers

We don't have any pictures of us actually doing our work from the rest of the week since George Sr. took my camera with him to India. 

We ended up not getting much done Friday.  The kids weren't feeling well and ended up napping all afternoon (despite neither of them being nappers in the normal course of things).  We did discuss Firefighters using activities from Teacher Book Bag (available on http://www.currclick.com/) and watched Elmo Visits the Firehouse video.  I think we'll need to return to this topic in the future with a Fire Safety unit.

Since George Sr. was away in India and it was way too cold out to go anywhere, we decided we would continue to do school on Saturday.

First, we read The Berenstein Bears Learn About Strangers  since Georgie loves to talk to everyone and anyone he sees.  We discussed who you should call if you get lost or need help.   Then, we did our Teacher Book Bag information on Police Officers.  Turns out Georgie was afraid of police since "they put you in jail" so I'm glad we discussed this.  We took our fingerprints and looked at them under a magnifying glass.  We tried to look at them using the Eye Clops they received for Christmas but the magnification was too strong.  We did end up playing with it for awhile looking at other things - skin, hair, stuffed animals, feathers, etc.  It's really neat but works best on things that are relatively flat.  We watched a Sesame Street video on police.

We read the Teacher Book Bag information on Mail Carriers and made collages out of stamps we printed off.   We used this for cutting practice since the stamps printed out with 20 on a sheet of paper.  I cut them into strips and then let the kids separate them.   We discussed the post office - which we visit fairly frequently since I belong to Paperbackswap.com and have to go mail books.  When we do Valentine's Day, I'm planning to have them make valentines to mail to the grandparents and we'll talk more about the post office when we go there to mail them.  We finished up watching a couple of Sesame Street videos on the post office.

Our last Community Helper was the doctor.  Georgie absolutely hates going to the doctor, whether its for a check-up or a sick visit.  He fights it every inch of the way.  I'm hoping by discussing it and playing doctor, it may help.  We did the Homeschool Share "Taking Care of Me" booklet and discussed how to stay healthy.  We watched a few Sesame Street videos on going to the doctor (can you tell I recently discovered the online Sesame Street videos?) and then played doctor.  The kids have a Fisher Price doctor kit and we went through each item discussing how it was used by the doctor and why it was important.   Then the kids played with the kit, some dolls and some bandaids.  This was a big hit.  They had a great time playing, especially with the bandaids.  I guess I won't know if it helped any until the next time we need to go to the doctor but I'm hopeful.

We finished up by doing Lessons 3 and 4 in our Math Enrichment Programme.  Georgie really likes these activities.  So far, its all pretty much review but I'm hoping he'll continue to like it when it gets harder.  It has a nice mix of physical activities, discussion and writing that seems good for him.

We also did a review of our -at word family since we haven't done much phonics since before the Holidays.  I'm trying to use a mix of stuff so he doesn't get bored.  We read In My Hat from http://www.hubbardscupboard.com/ and he was able to read the whole thing himself.  He did a fill in the letter worksheet from http://www.kidzone.ws/ and a tracing page with the words: at, bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat and sat.  He seems to have these down pretty good so next week we're going to start with the -ad word family, with sight word activities added in as we have time.

I've been trying to really mix up our activities so that the kids aren't bored and they are learning in different ways.  Both of them love to play games but neither of them are good at following the rules.   We did find a game that works really well for both of them with little modification.  They recieved the game Sequence for Kids for Christmas.  The idea is to draw cards with animals on them and match the pictures to those on the game board until you get four in a row.   I removed the unicorn (free space) and dragon (take another players space) cards and we didn't stop at four in a row but filled in the whole grid.  Vicki ended up knowing a lot more animals than I would've thought.  Georgie may end up getting bored if we play this a lot so I may make it so he has to answer a question or read a word before putting a card down, or do them in ABC order, or something. 

Next week:  Monday and Tuesday we're going to discuss Groundhogs Day and hibernation.  The rest of the week we are going to discuss Chinese New Year.

A Side Trip to India

George Sr. had to take a business trip to Mumbai India and Jr. requested we learn about where he was going so we stopped our Community study for a day. Since this came up at the last minute (I really should have thought ahead and planned for this) we didn't have much to work with.  I wish we had time to go to the library for picture books since I'm trying to do more reading with the kids.  I also have "Riki Tiki Tavi" on DVD but its out in the garage.  That would've been a great movie to watch while discussing India (and short which is also good).  But, we made do with what we had.

First, we found India on our wall map and our globe (I'm trying to show the kids that they are two different models of the same thing so we do both whenever we look up something) and read the details on the page in our Scholastic Atlas of the World.  Georgie was a little upset to realize Daddy was on the other side of the world.  We looked at the two pages in Children Just Like Me that were about India and Georgie found it interesting that the one didn't have electricity.  He asked the usual question - what about tv?

We printed off crafts from the Internet - we did the Diwali Diya craft and printed some peacock templates from www.dltk-kids.com/.   We also did an elephant mask craft from http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/ but instead of a mask we used googly eyes.    We read about peacocks in our Scholastic Encyclopedia of Animals and did peacocks a few different ways.  In general, the kids don't like coloring but are really big fans of gluing and painting, so we try to go with that as much as possible.  Gluing is actually less of a mess in our house than crayons or markers since those tend to be used on walls and furniture whenever possible.
We tried to make peacock tails with coffee filters by coloring them with blue, green and purple markers then spraying them with water so the colors would run.  Neither kid did more than a few scribbles of coloring so the full effect wasn't there.  I thought they still came out looking pretty but by the time they dried, we had had enough for the day so they were never used.

I cut bodies and feathers out of scrapbook papers and they put them together into peacocks.  This was simple and they were able to do it by themselves while I cleaned up our coffee filters and set up the next activity.

We used irridescent blue watercolors to paint paper plates, then added spots using dab painters, and body template, googly eyes and feathers to complete our peacocks.  The kids had a great time doing this one, Vicki was quite enthusiastic with the dab painters.

Once the feathers were out, the crafts were done.  The kids had a great time playing with the feathers - blowing them around, trying to keep them in the air.

Community & Community Helpers

This week we are going to continuing studying Communities and begin on Community Helpers.

We started by sorting pictures of different objects (cars, buildings, people) into different types of communites - Suburban, Urban and Rural (town, city and country).  This project came from Teacher Book Bags (available from http://www.currclick.com/).  We colored in maps showing the streets and buldings in a community.  We read On the Town by Judith Caseley, which is a wonderful introduction to places and people in a community.

We've started a new Math curriculum with Georgie.   We are using a free program developed in England and Hungary called the "Mathematics Enhancement Programme".  So far Georgie likes it a lot - it has a nice mix of elements - physical activities, songs, writing pages, and discussion.

I'm trying to add a lot more games into our program.  We have a bunch of file folder games plus we received some new games for Christmas that should fit in nicely.  This week we played:  Winter Dominos (printed from DLTK-cards.com), Dr. Seuss ABC Stretch (similar to twister with letters and letter sounds), Picture/Letter match (file folder game), Fishing with Rover sight word game (file folder game from Frogever Smart Games) and Vicki played a color matching game with Smily Faces.

One of the things the kids received for Christmas was a chalkboard to be mounted on the wall.  I'm trying to find ways to allow them to be creative more often without having to worry about crayon and marker all over the walls, furniture, etc.  We ended up picking up a second one since they are currently not capable of sharing a 2 foot by 3 foot space without fighting.   The two boards are mounted underneath the bulletin boards used to display their school and art work.  The bulletin boards are high enough that they can't reach to pull things off.

Finally!

Since the holidays ended, we've been working on getting things organized, cleaned-up and getting everyone healthy.  The kids had really nasty colds right after the New Year that seem to be taking forever to go away.  We have finally been able to get back into our school schedule.

We've been working on a Community theme.  First we learned about our state - New Jersey.  We marked the location of our house, Granny Franny's house and Gramma Kayes house by gluing arrows to a state map.  We read the section on New Jersey in "Smart About the 50 States".  We also colored sheets with the state bird (Eastern Goldfinch) and flower (violet).  Georgie did a writing/tracing page with our address.  We're going to work with him on learning his address and phone number but I'm sure that's going to be an ongoing project.

We read the Dr. Seuss book "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" and Georgie dictated his own story "I Saw It On O------ Road".  Here's his story:
"A snake pulling a football and a cat pulling a basket with a thing of cookies in the basket......A lion pulling a shoe and a girl singing with a bologna sandwich...and there's more.....An elephant pulling a rock, a little big and enough heavy for the elephant to pull it....a dinosaur pulling a bird and the bird flying and pulling the dinosaur and its a three horn tritops.....and a bat pulling a map.....a pigeon pulling a statue and a sticker with eyes.....a cup with a blanket with a shoe with chalk with a basket."

He also wrote a story with daddy.  Here's his cover page:

And the story goes like this:  "A fish named Webo was friends with a dog named Zappa.  They liked to go to the zoo.  Their favorite animals were the Tigers."

Vicki's been going to a "Tot Fun Time" class at the Y. She gets to sing, dance, play games and do a simple coloring project two days a week.  She's having a lot of fun with it and it gives her time with mom or Georgie thats just for her.  Some of the projects they've done lately:

Next week we're continuing our Community studies with different types of communities and community helpers.

Christmas and New Years

The kids had a great Christmas.  They received all the educational toys and games that were on their list (Thanks Mom!), lots of blocks, Leapsters and new movies.  They both had a great time this year opening their presents, with the help of Big Sis Stephanie.

We had another snow storm New Year Eve and Georgie wanted to go out and try again to build a snowman.  This time I was brave and went outside to take pictures instead of doing it through the window.

The kids had brand new snowpants, gloves and boots so they were able to stay out a little longer this time.

Zappa loves the snow.

The first attempts to make a snowman failed.  The snow didn't pack well enough to make a large snowman so they eventually decided to make a little guy.