Such a fun week full of sensational sensory play, friends, art, books, adventure! Here we go!
I threw a party for Ellie and her friends for Valentine's Day and it was completely lovely and fun! Science, crafts, decorating, and playing! I also wrote previously about it, here. Here are some photos, meanwhile.
Ellie made an alphabet book! She has learned about 98% of her capital letters phonetically and I'm so proud of her. She has learned them through playing many games, reading many books, and trying to read letters on our shirts. I printed photos of items that start with the letters. I let her glue them on the page with the letter. There were the hard sounds and the soft sounds. When I placed a letter in front of her for gluing, she started chanting it aloud phonetically. After the gluing was done and dried, I laminated, hole punched, and strung it together with yarn.
Ellie pulled a prank on Eric! (Not really of course, but she thought she tricked him, but he was alerted ahead of time by myself of our rouse.) Ellie and I had made with play-doh some Valentine candies. Then I told her she should trick Daddy and tell him they are real and see if he will eat them! She found this incredible! She loved tricking Daddy! And Eric played along so well he even took a bite out of one and then acted silly about it! (He did not eat the play-doh of course.) Ellie was so pleased with herself.
We made a Valentine sensory bin of water dyed red with food coloring, added glitter, puff balls, and boats. This allowed for a lot of imaginary play, story telling, and sensations. The water was warm, and scented with Eucalyptus oil. The glitter shimmered and moved with the waves and it also sunk and rose again when the water was stirred. Very stimulating in a great way!
Ellie got a whim to paint and this is what she created. I love it!
We had grandparent art day!! Ellie loves Mimi and G-Daddy dates and I do too as I'm so close to my parents. My entire family are my closest companions. Ellie and I went to their house and we did a process art project using watercolors. They chose their colors and went about their work. When the watercolors were dry, using paper towel roll cardboard bent at then ends into the shape of a heart, they dipped the heart stamp into white acrylic paint and patted it all across their painting. Very cute! Then they made chocolate fondue and dipped marshmallows into the chocolate and sprinkles and we also made heart shaped chocolates.
This is Ellie's Valentine for her Mimi and G-Daddy. I am LOVING the opportunity the Valentine making gave for Ellie's name writing practice. She can do it completely on her own, I just watch, and I am SO PROUD of her. Another important lesson that was not taught by force or by sitting at a desk but as her interest approached, patiently, taking our time, and during play and crafts. She truly enjoys writing her name and it is not a task. That is the beauty of homeschool!
For forest school study this week (which we begin on Fridays and carry out throughout the next week until the next coming Friday) we studied earthworms. Y'all. I LOVE earthworms. They are super super super awesome creatures. As a gardener I especially love how they grace our garden. We read many books, worked on our compost, observed worm castings, dug for worms, made a wormery, played with home made worm play dough.
Oh y'all this play dough was awesome! Making your own play dough really is worth the time, not that it takes much time or effort at all. It is soft, it smells better, and it lasts a long time if kept well and is also better on the wallet. We made our own, and we made it textured with coffee grinds which I found really cool considering we were to turn this play dough into worms and worms love to eat our coffee grinds and filters. So, we made the dough, scented with essential oil, dyed brown with food coloring, and textured it with coffee grinds. Then, we rolled it together into different widths and lengths for making our worms. The next step was to play with our play dough worms in a wormy environment that was also stimulating to the senses and the imagination. On a bin lid, I poured and spread cocoa powder for dirt...smelled heavenly....topped the "surface" with grass clippings, and added in our plastic insect toys. Then Ellie got right to making burrows in the "dirt" with the worms, telling stories of the worms and making them speak and play as she played. They ended by all cuddling together as a family down in the dirt. Really really good fun! At the nature park during forest school, I brought worm lures and in nature journals, the girls rolled their worms in mud then rolled and squirmed their worms around on their paper. More textured sensory and artistic play.
We made a dirt pudding of pudding, oreos, and gummy worms.
We made a Valentine's Day cake which was a great geometry lesson! Square, diamond, circle, semi-circle, as well as a lesson in fractions as we dissected the cake. Then of course, all the benefits of being in the kitchen cooking and baking. She is a talented girl with a mixer and cracking eggs. Her hands are made stronger by squeezing and stirring and controlling-well preparing her handwriting skills she is currently developing. School at 3.5 years old looks a lot like these fabulous kitchen adventures - packed full of lessons and benefits for the brain and the body.
Ellie painted a bunny as part of her BFIAR curriculum for her book aforementioned. She loved this project.
We read, "How do you hug a porcupine?" and then made another porcupine (we had made one a few weeks ago of play-doh, but this one we made of a Styrofoam semi-sphere, toothpicks, jewels, and googley eyes. Ellie is great with a hot glue gun! She also then wanted to count the quills once she had finished and we counted 25. I LOVE her interest in counting and when she asks if we can count!
We did a bit more heart art for Valentine's Day:
Pond study art for the BFIAR curriculum of our book this week. This project of art also enticed Ellie to count as she asked to count her grasshopper and turtle stickers before she placed them on her picture:
A bit of pond life study this week which again was part of our activities from our book form the BFIAR curriculum. We studied birds, frogs, turtles, snakes, and even observed a mama duck and daddy duck in the pond as the mama took to her duck house to possibly lay eggs. So when we saw the male duck, we all watched him intently, took note of his characteristics, then looked him up in our books. This made for an exciting breakfast!
Some of the books read this week in addition to all of our Valentine's books in our book basket, again:
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