Homeschool this week was so so so rewarding and fun! We got into so many things!! We began a new month of February and with that comes a new monthly bible verse and catechism. Our bible verse for February is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Already, one week in, Ellie has the first half of her verse memorized spitting it out to me rolling it right off. I love how capable she is! She is so much more than I ever was and I am really proud of that! The catechism point for February is: "Are there more gods than one?" No! There is only one true and living God.
We made heart shaped bread this week from scratch. We used the bread machine on the "dough" setting, then we took the dough and shaped and patted it into a heart, did an egg wash, and topped it with chia seeds before baking it. Ellie has so loved eating a piece of her special bread every day. Time in the kitchen is awesome for learning methodical processes, measuring, chemistry, and bonding.
Ellie and I wanted to do some fun things with flowers. We bought one $3 bouquet of white daisies at Publix and used that bouquet for 3 different projects! The first one was to use a few of the flowers and the stems as well for paint project! Ellie discovered she could twirl, blot, brush, and draw with her flower in the paint on her paper. She made flower prints, splatters, and we even discovered that if we did not dip a stem into paint, we could actually color her paper with the chlorophyll from the stem making a beautiful bright green design on the paper.
The next thing we did with the flowers was to play, "Flower Shop!" I dissected the bouquet into different sizes. The different sizes were given a specific value, a price tag. I kept that simple. This would be the second time I have playfully introduced Ellie to money. So she has a small foundation making this game one she can grasp and build her knowledge on. Upstairs in her playroom, I set up her shop with her cash register at her table, my cash, and the flowers lined up with their price tags. Playing this game created imaginative play, pretending, role playing, manners, conversation skills, visual concept of money, learning appearances and values, counting, and taking turns. We switched roles a few times. She began as the shop owner and then she later played the role of a customer and I the owner. As a customer, I asked Ellie many questions about her product and I saw her mirror these phrases I used with her when it was her turn to be customer. I even gave myself a pretend name of which she followed suit and gave herself a pretend name and even took it a step further to create a pretend dog in her shop that was as tiny as her hand and she named it and we pretended to pet it. Wow what a chance for SO MUCH BRAIN DEVELOPMENT!! I loved every minute of it! She even wanted to sort her coins and put pennies with pennies and dimes with dimes, etc. Organizational skills! We played this for a good hour until I finally said, "I have another idea for the flowers! a science experiment!"
Our floral science experiment with the white daisies was to disperse them amongst 5 different glasses filled with 5 different colors of food dye in the water - colors of the rainbow except the purple - and we discussed (as we have before) the anatomy of a flower and the vessels in the stem through which water is ported up from the roots all the way into the petals to keep the flower hydrated. We made hypotheses about when we would see some color appear in the petals. Ellie found this very exciting and she told her daddy about it before bed time. Ellie also got her own small bouquet in her room that she adores smelling.
We went hiking! We had a good mid 50s weather sunny day and we took to the mountains for a short hike with a huge payout. We saw frog eggs had been laid in a small puddle of a pond. We observed the frog eggs, discussed the catatonic state of the frogs who are hibernating beneath the muddy water for winter, and we discussed the life cycle of a frog. As luck would have it, that evening, I ran an errand to Target and found the cutest t-shirt in the girls department of the life cycle of a frog. It was just too perfect. After observing (not touching) the frog eggs, we walked to the falls, had a pic-nic, and read several books in the sunshine beside the rushing water.
Another morning, we made healthy blueberry pecan muffins. Get that recipe, here. So simple, easy, nutritious, guilt free, and amazing! I can't wait to make more with Ellie.
We made heart art! We cut out a heart. I let Ellie practice cutting hearts and I cut out one and taped it to the center of her watercolor paper. She then took her acrylic paints choosing her colors and painted around the heart. I told her it was ok to paint on the heart because we would be peeling it off but try to stay on its border. She really took this seriously and enjoyed the challenge of getting as close to the taped heart as she could without painting it and when she did by chance paint the heart she would reassure herself saying, "its ok! no problem!" I LOVE hearing her self esteem and self confidence.
Ellie began making her Valentine's cards this week for her family. I know her attention span for painting, glittering, and paying attention to detail as she does will only last for about 45 minutes until she is ready to get out of her chair and move. So we did two Valentine's a day so that she could then get up and move and play as she also needs to do. Art is awesome and fun and important but the artist also needs to get up and move around after a while! Her family alone is full of 11 people (not including myself - because I'm not making her make me a card! Haha!) so that is a lot of card making to do and this does not include the friends she named off wanting to decorate cards for as well. So, two at a time, maybe four a day total sometimes. We knocked out all the family cards this week and will finish up the friend cards in the coming week. Know this - if you ever receive a card from Ellie, you are receiving her greatest attention and detail and desire to make so many things so beautiful! She puts her heart and soul into her art!
For forest school this week, we discussed Candlemas, celebrating when Simeon took baby Jesus to the temple and presented Him declaring, "Light to the world." We celebrated the hope that Jesus' life gives us and that He is light in a dark dark evil world. He is our guiding light and safe haven. He is good and bright and perfect amongst sin. He shines light on sin. John 1:5 - "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." & Luke 12:2-3, "Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms, shall be proclaimed on the housetops." Makes you think, doesn't it? To celebrate Candlemas, we discussed this and made our own candle the same as we did for making gifts for family at Christmas. This time, the candle we made was scented with Eucalyptus oil. Ellie enjoyed smelling the beeswax and stirring the pot. After its curing period of two days, we lit the candle at dinner time along with other votives and had a candlelit dinner in which again we discussed the light to the world that Jesus is. At forest school, we looked for signs of spring: buds on trees, bulbs sending shoots up through the earth (we saw some at home), looking for any signs of birds returning back home besides our winter bird friends, lizards, etc. No such life yet beyond the buds on the trees and green shooting through the ground; however, we did discover a woodpecker in a tree just beside us and we gathered near and listened and watched as he pecked back and forth foraging. The kids were taken with this and I was happy each child could see this feathered friend. We read a book about a baby bear who was supposed to be hibernating for winter but kept pining for spring and leaving the cave in hopes of a sign of spring. The kids played in the creek, ate lunch, then played on the nature playground before heading home for the day. We read poetry and observed art referencing Candlemas.
We created love potions for a science play time! I got these cute heart shaped cookie cutters at Wal-Mart (which we will use later to make some yummy treats) and I put them on a piece of paper in a sensory bucket. Then, we filled the open cookie cutters with baking soda very full. Then, I poured white vinegar in three cups and added liquid watercolors in the colors of red, violet, and magenta to the vinegar cups giving each a pipette to withdraw the colorful vinegar. Ellie used the pipette and squeezed the vinegar out onto the baking soda, slowly at first, taking it in, then she went wild! We added glitter to make the fizzing bubbles sparkle like a love potion! She kept squeezing, dispensing, and observing. Later, she got so wild she tossed the pipettes and began just pouring the vinegar on and it turned into a sensory buckeet where she was scooping the liquid and the baking soda and squeezing it in her hands, and pouring it into cups and stirring it. So, it started out slow, gentle, and timid, and got CRAY! So much fun!
We went on a nature walk at home down to the creek. Ellie collected a lot of "treasures" and thanks to Wild Explorers club, we got the idea to make cute natural Valentine's cards for my sister and her family (because they are nature loving homeschoolers, too). Ellie got to use the hot glue gun for the first time with this project and she LOVED that!
These are the results of the traditional Valentine's cards Ellie made for just a few of her family members. She practiced writing her name on each of them. She writes her name all by herself, phonetically, and she is really getting it! She knows without prompt how to write her name, what the letters are, and where they go, now just to practice at times like this when it's not forced but it feels important and exciting and shape it up!
Here are the books we read this week:
No comments:
Post a Comment