Week 4

Some units just lend themselves to a ton of crafts while others, do not. This week IS a big craft week. We've had a ton of fun, too.

Monday

Bible Genesis 41:14-43, Memory verse Romans 12:21
Classical Conversations (CC) memory work. We are reviewing weeks 1-2 this week.

For English I worked with Miss E on the words that we know. I made little cards that I laminated and put on a ring. We will start taking them everywhere and will work on memorizing our words. She did her Lexia, but we've hit a 'harder' level so she is easily frustrated.

For math we talked about recording data on picture graphs. She has started telling me what we need to do to make things equal and she loves to count everything to give me a 'total'. We LOVE math in our house.


Tuesday
Bible memory verse Romans 12:21 with review of all the previous verses.
CC memory work

Miss E was not feeling 100% and feel asleep after Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). After her nap we worked on our 'rainbow writing' again, she did her Lexia, and then math. That was about it.

Wednesday
Bible Genesis 44-46, memory verse Romans 12:21 with review of previous verses.
CC memory work

We finished reading the story of Joseph from the bible this week. I pulled out our Joseph book from a couple of weeks ago and we re-read the story. We were able to talk about what was going on a little more in depth this time around.

For math I pulled out the M&Ms again. It is funny how a little manipulative can make both kids very attentive. Probably doesn't hurt when the manipulative is edible. We were talking about rearranging objects in different patterns, but keeping the same amount of objects. She struggled a little bit with her assignment but I know she understands the concept. We also used the M&Ms to represent quantity. I have five cards with the numbers 1-5 on them, I had her put the correct number of M&Ms on each card. The last thing we did was make a poster that represents the number 1.

We did a lot of reading. We read The Empty Pot, Wildflower ABC, and Planting a Rainbow. Miss E also gave reading a try on her own. I was so proud!! Today she read Mat (A Bob Book). She was excited, too. 

We are participating unofficially with a virtual book club which started this month. I picked Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert, see my official post, here. It turns out that this little book goes perfectly with our unit this week. I love it when things like this happen!! So, for our activity for the book club we painted a garden. I gave the kids some green paper to make stems for our flowers and then they painted the flowers. I've said this before, I do not give too much instruction when we are doing creative activities. I'm firm on what I want when we do our math and reading/writing, but when it comes to crafts, I give the kids free liberty. I don't make a 'sample' for them to follow either. I love seeing what they come up with after I explain what we are doing.







One of the activities with Epi Kardia this unit is to paint a terra cotta pot. I rolled that into our rainbow flower painting. Who wants to set up paint, twice?

Thursday
Bible Genesis 47-49, memory verse Romans 12:21
CC memory work

Since I had a captive audience this morning, we did all of our reading in one sitting. After our bible we read two poems from Poems & Prayers for the Very Young, The Seven Chinese Brothers, Sunflower, Miss E read Mat to Little Man, and we looked at two pictures from A Child's Book of Art.

Our math objective is to represent the number 2. I pulled out the play dough (suggested from our Earlybird Math book) and we each made two balls. We then rolled the dough out to make the number 1 and then the number 2. Miss E proudly told me that when a 1 is next to a 2 you have the number twelve! We then had fun making other things with our play dough, shapes, letters, etc. When they were done with playing we went back to our lesson. After the lesson, I had the kids make another poster that represented the number 2. (I got the idea from a friend of mine who posted pictures similar to what we did on her facebook.) After our fun with our poster, the kids got out more paper and more stickers and just created fun pictures on their own.
 

 Our next project, since we are dealing with flowers in science this week, is to paint with fruit. We read Wildflower ABC which is a book of potato prints. The kitchen table smelled so good! Both kids were amazed at the patterns that the different fruit left on the paper.

 

English is the last thing on our agenda today. We are working with the letter 'C c'. I got out the Do.A.Dots for Little Man while Miss E did her copy work, then Miss E worked on her Lexia. The Do.A.Dot paper came from Confessions of a Home Schooler's Letter of the Week Program.

Friday
Bible Genesis 50 - Exodus 2, memory verse Romans 12:21
CC memory work

We started our day off with History. We read The Great Wall of China, along with a poem from Poems & Prayers for the Very Young. I wanted Miss E to work on some geography. I printed off a map of the Middle East and then one of Asia. We talked about Israel and Iran last week and China this week. I had Miss E write Iran and China in their respected countries and then had her color just those countries. I helped her find the country on the globe and then she found it on her map.

 For math we worked on representing the number 3. We got out the play dough again and worked on creating our numbers 1-3.
 
 Our new letter is 'D d'. Again Little Man worked with Letter of the Week (LOTW) 'D', Do.A.Dot while Miss E worked on her copywork also from LOTW. Later in the evening she read Mat to her dad.

We wrapped up our week on flowers with a flower life cycle project. We read From Seed to Sunflower first and then from there we made our life cycle. From google images I found pictures of the flower life cycle. I don't remember the exact website. I had both kids order the pictures and then glue them onto a poster.

We took our terra cotta pots that we painted earlier in the week and planted some viola seeds. The kids are really excited to see watch them grow. 

One thing about painting with Tempra paint is that when the pots got wet, the paint ran. We'll see how long they have any color.

Thanks for continuing the journey with us,
Elizabeth

Literature for the week:
Joseph by Brian Wildsmith
The Empty Pot by Demi
Wildflower ABC by Diana Pomeroy
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Mat
Poems & Prayers for the Very Young selected by Martha Alexander
The Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy
Sunflower by Miela Ford
A Child's Book of Art selected by Lucy Micklethwait
The Great Wall of China by Leonard Everett Fisher
From Seed to Sunflower by Dr Gerald Legg

Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

My friend, Allison, from Train Up A Child Learn As We Go, posted about a virtual Book Club that she was participating in. I was curious, checked it out, and have decided that we are going to join in the fun. We'll see how I do with the Blog Hop part of the process, but doing activities centered around a book/author sounds like a lot of fun to me.

This month the featured author is Lois Ehlert. We chose Planting A Rainbow as our book. I brought the book home from the library not even thinking about what our week was going to look like. I thought I would just 'add it on' to our unit, turned out that this little book fit PERFECTLY with our science unit. I love it when things come together this way.

We read our book and talked about the flowers and colors as we read.

Our first project was to paint our rainbow garden. I gave the kids a couple pieces of green paper that they could cut and paste as stems for their flowers. 

Then I had the kids paint the flowers.

They had full creative freedom.

 

One of the projects from our core curriculum, Epi Kardia, was to paint terra cotta pots. I enjoyed watching how each kids paints differently. One 'dabbed' the paint and the other 'stroked' the paint onto the pot.

 I already had the idea that we would paint with fruit this week. The kids LOVED using the fruit. At first they were very skeptical, but when they picked up the fruit and saw the different patterns they were fascinated. I used an apple, lemon, lime, orange, and grape as our fruit stamps.

 

We used our newly painted terra cotta pots to plant a few seeds. We talked through each step of planting and growing flowers as we planted our seeds. The kids are excited to watch the flowers grow.

We planted Violas.

I googled the life-cycle of plants and found a picture that I liked. I made the template for for the order, but I had the kids paste the pictures as they thought they should go. Miss E did a great job with putting her flowers in order, starting from #1. Little man got the correct order, he just started in a different spot.

There you have it, the fun we had with Planting A Rainbow.
Elizabeth