Glad To Be a Gladden: Week 30 - Homeschool Preschool

This week was Holy Week! We have so loved using the "A Gentle Feast" Holy Week curriculum by Julie Ross. I loved the scripture readings, poetry, hymns, picture studies, discussions, and cuddling. We celebrated Palm Sunday with Palm branches from Hunting Island and used the donkey that Ellie wanted to get Eric for Father's Day as the little humble colt Jesus rode on Palm Sunday. "Hosanna!"

Ellie painted these little $1 eggs and really took her time and talked to me about her ideas and process the entire time. Then when they were dry she wanted to do an Easter egg hunt. She hid them herself this time for me...but she couldn't resist and wanted to "find" them too! Haha! Good fun.

We went hiking and exploring with some friends one day this week and we ventured out to a nature park called Lake Toxaway Nature Park and it was just such a happy place full of exploring and adventure and imaginative play! Ellie made me "ice cream" (a rock) and she told me the two flavors available were "red maple and blueberry."

We worked on gardening. The apple blossoms are in bloom, we came up with a teamwork routine for watering our plants in the "plant room" inside that we cannot wait to plant later in a few weeks in the beds outside! The girls smelled the camellias, we identified new plant life, and discussed pollinators.

If you read my most recent post, you will know we re-did the schoolroom! So excited for this and Ellie is ecstatic to be sure! We did a few of her preschool math puzzles and matching games. She worked with her shape puzzles to make geometric figures. Then she free-styled with her cubes and geometric shapes and made a train by which when she showed me, I was blown away! Then she asked to play with her stackable math manipulatives and she made patterns and counted how many were in the stacks.

She also wanted to draw pictures and wanted me to label them as what she named them. So as I labeled them, we sounded out the words together.

She played with her clock puzzle. I LOVE this puzzle. We discussed shapes, colors (in French because she has them down in English of course) and we practiced numerical visual recognition.

I took Ellie hiking at Devil's Fork State Park to see the rare blooming Oconee Bell flower. It only blooms once a year in a very small time frame and this one trail within the state park is one of the only places in the state to see them! Do not trample them or pick them. They are quite picky about where they grow. It was really a special and incredible day and experience. She played in the creek, ran on the trail barefooted, collected sticks, and couldn't wait for me to read to her the tree ID plaques. We took our time and learned playfully and enjoyed our time together. We stopped and listened to a woodpecker and made many other observations.