Puffy Paint

My kids love to play with puffy paint. My friend, Allison, over at Learn Play Imagine loves messy play. She introduced me to the homemade version of puffy paint. Check out her latest post for fall themed puffy paint here.

Since Little Man had so much fun with our last batch of puffy paint I made more. If you have never made puffy paint for your little ones, I strongly suggest you give it a try. It is not very messy, it is really cheap, and it is a lot of fun!!

Puffy paint is made with equal parts flour, salt and water.
I used food coloring for the color but you can also purchase liquid water color. I've used both, since they ran though my last batch so fast, I decided to use the food coloring as it is cheaper.

I mixed 1/3 cup of each ingredients in a sandwich size Ziploc baggie. I added about 10 drops of food coloring to get the colors that I wanted. For the brown I did use liquid water color. I massaged the bag to get out all the lumps. You really don't want it to be liquid but you don't want a solid either. Think about paint consistency. I then cut the end off the baggie and squeezed the paint into my squeezie bottles. A funnel would have made pouring it into the bottle easier, but I don't have one that small. I then repeated the process for each color. EASY!!

Let me know if you give it a try and how your kids liked it.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

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GLE W1: Treasure Hunt and Fun with 'x'

Little Man (4) has started Pre-K!!

I went out searching for a curriculum that I could use with Little Man because he has been asking for months for 'school' to do like sister. I just happened to stumble upon God's Little Explorers by Motherhood on a Dime. I'm excited to see where this journey takes us. I am not forcing him to do anything. I have our weeks planned out with things for him to accomplish but if he loses interest and wants to play away from his sister, I'm good with that. If he wants to sit and work with us, then that is great, too. Pre-K, for us, is to be fun and engaging for my little man nothing else. So, here is how our first week went.

Theme: God's Word is a Treasure / "x" marks the spot
Letter: 'x'
Shape: rectangle

The first day went pretty well as planned in the planner. The rest of week one... well, you can read my reality check here. 

Our 'school' day begins with Bible and prayer and then we fill in our calendar notebook. The calendar notebook is mostly for my daughter, Miss E (6), however, Little Man (4) really wants to do everything she is doing. He just follows along. Our calendar is a work in progress, I will post what we do exactly when I get things ironed out. Our first day was a disaster. 

We started our week off with a treasure hunt! I read Going on a Bear Hunt to the kids and then told them that I had hidden some school supplies around the house. The way the could find them was by finding the 'x'; 'x' marks the spot! They had a lot of fun. Miss E even told me she wanted me to hide things again so she could continue looking for things.


While I had Miss E work on her math, I had Little Man work on the cover to his ABC Binder. I got out my letter stamps (I found them at Target) and let him go to town. Once he was finished decorating his cover page, he worked on putting the stamps back into their little box. This kept him busy while I finished up math with his sister. A total win for me!

Both kids had fun making binoculars. They were both excited about using them to 'find' things. Little Man even told me when he was done that he wanted them stored up high on a shelf so they wouldn't get ruined. Pretty much the first time he took pride in one of his projects.

The rest of week one pretty much fell apart as far as the 'lesson plan' goes.

I bought this large magnetic oil pan from Wal-Mart. I pulled out all my capital letter magnets and put them in alphabetical order. I asked Little Man to find the X. He did and then he played with the letters. When he was through with the letters I got out my magnetic sticks and he started 'building' with them. He did make a rectangle among other shapes. I actually left this up for the rest of the week and he played with it several times.

 We also made our treasure map and put on our first piece. He just loved being able to use the marker.

Miss E has a lot of copywork to do with her curriculum and I thought it would be fun to work on her spelling words without pencil and paper. Of course, if you do one thing with one child you have to do it for both. So, out came the shaving cream. Little man worked on making 'x's. NOTE: Next time I will just put the shaving cream on the table. The cookie sheets kept sliding around and both kids got frustrated.

He did a couple of more little activities with the letter 'x'.  Mostly our week was spent trying to balance 1st grade with pre-k and keeping everyone, included this mom, happy.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

You can find God's Little Explorers Week 1 here.

Reality Check

I have many, many friends who homeschool their children. Some are like me and are entering their second year and others are further down the road. I had heard it said that 1st grade was a lot more work than Kindergarten ever would be. I nodded my head, said I can understand that, and continued on in the shelter of my own mind, working to finish Kindergarten. I think in my head I knew 1st grade was going to be more, I just had no idea how much more until we started a week and a half ago.

OH MY WORD!! I have yet to complete our first weeks worth of work. It has been 8 weekdays and we are barely on day 4. To be fair I did take Miss E into her school to take the MAPS test and then I had a workshop that pretty much took up a day and then we had a play date with friends we had not seen all summer; we lost several days with those activities. So, maybe it really isn't as bad as I think it is but for a planner, this is bad!

I talked with a very wise friend and she reminded me again that 1st grade is a lot more demanding and that until you start it you have no idea. I was very encouraged after I talked with her. It is funny how sometimes you hear things, thoughts run through your head, but until you have that one-on-one conversation things don't really 'sink in'. It is like when you tell your kids something over and over and they still do it, but when a third party comes in and tells them the exact same thing they 'understand', my conversation with my friend was exactly that!

So, I'm going to have to squash the box that I hold homeschool in, in my head. The plan that worked for Kindergarten is not going to work for 1st grade. How I planned last year is not going to work this year. Our curriculum is broken up into weeks which amount to 5 days, however for us it might take just a little bit longer. Not because Miss E is slow or anything, we just have other commitments that will take up time. One of the beauties of homechooling is the flexibility one has to teach their own children.

Our first day went great! I'm praying that we find the rhythm that makes most of our days successful both for Miss E and for Little Man. Letting go of the 'calendar' is going to be tough, but I think it is something God wants me to work on. I know that HE called me to this adventure and He will help me get through it as long as I trust in Him.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

The Start of Year Number Two

Today, August 28, 2013 is the official start of our second year of home schooling.

My 1st grader - EpiKardia 1

My Pre-Ker - God's Little Explorer

**To see more about our curriculum choices, see my post here
.

We started our day with Bible and prayer.

We did our calendar notebook. This is going to be a work in progress for the next few days if not weeks. Once I get our routine nailed down, I'll post more details. Right now we are just filing out a calendar with the correct date. We are also counting the number of days we are in school and are making that number with coin money.

Miss E and I did math while Little Man decorated the cover page to his ABC binder.

I had Miss E take a break from her stuff and we read Going on a Bear Hunt, which comes from Little Man's Pre-K. This morning before the kids woke up, I took our Children's Story Bible and wrapped it in paper. I hid it along with a few school supplies around the house. After we read the Bear Hunt book, I told the kids that I had hidden school supplies around the house and that they were going on a treasure hunt. The 'treasures' were hidden in draws and cabinets with an 'x'; 'x' marks the spot!! They had fun looking around the house for the 'x' and brought what they found to the table. Together they opened the special treasure and we talked about how the Bible IS a treasure book and how important it is going to be to our school day. 

While the kids had a little snack, I read a couple of stories from the Children's Bible. We then defined 'science' and talked about some science vocabulary words. 

The kids were ready for another break, so I had them make their very own binoculars. They had a lot of fun with stickers!

Miss E and I wrapped up her day with our memory verse, spelling words, and copy work.

We took roughly 3 hours this morning. Not too bad for putting more into our day that we are used to. Little Man did well with his stuff which made me happy and Miss E is a pro!! We made it through without tears which is always good in my book!!

I can't wait to see how everything meshes together and to watch them learn.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

2013-2014 School Year!

Welcome to the 2013-2014 school year!!

Little Man (4) is in Pre-K and Miss E (6) is in first grade!

Last year Little Man just followed around with Miss E and I. By the spring he was asking to do school like his sister. So, we are going to do a formal program with him. I hope to keep the blog updated and it is my hope that you enjoy following this journey with us. To be completely honest though, I have a full plate. I want so much to keep up with what we do so that the kids have something to look back on but the blog is not a priority in my life. As of right now, I am not an affiliate with any company, so the links are just for your reference. My blog is my journal.

We will continue our journey in reading through the Bible. This will be year 2!! This year we are going to use The One Year Chronological Bible.

This year we are continuing with Epi Kardia and Singapore Math for Miss E.
I am also supplementing with Wordly Wise 3000, Zaner-Bloser, and Explode the Code. Miss E will be doing Bible Study Fellowship with her daddy which will be our Bible curriculum. We will all be studying the book of Matthew.

Little Man will be doing God's Little Explorers with a bunch of other things thrown in as he asks for activities to do. He will also be following Miss E and I as we go though her stuff.

Together the kids will do Family Time Fitness and a calendar notebook. I'm being eclectic with our calendar notebook. I'm using pages from MamaJenn, Mama's Learning Corner, and Mrs. Meacham.

I'm looking forward to this next chapter. Here is to another successful year!

I have a page on facebook, come and follow me, Domicile Lessons.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Science at the Beach

Okay maybe it really isn't science but when you read a book about the seashore you might as well plan a trip to the beach. Miss E has been asking to go to the beach for months! I'm not really a beach person, it is a lot of work! However, to the beach we will go, or rather we went.

We read The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zolotow for science. The book is about a mom telling her son about the seashore. They live in the mountains and he had never been to the beach.

So, we went to the beach. Twice actually in one week. Here are some highlights!!

 Trip #2, Daddy got to come with us!

 Looking for sand crabs.

Part of our summer fun!

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Summer Break?? Nope, not here!!

As everyone else is wrapping up their 'school year' we are still going strong. There are several reasons for this. One would be that our kindergarten curriculum is 45 weeks, I'm not 'behind' I just didn't realize that we had about 9 more weeks than most schools. Not a problem!! We are just going to continue with our schedule though the summer. Two, I ordered our first grade curriculum and there is going to be a huge jump in time commitment. I don't want to go into shock come September because of the work load. So, doing a little bit of school everyday through the summer will keep us in good practice. Three, it is not like we sit at our table for 8 hours a day doing school. An hour to an hour and a half isn't hurting our summer play time at all.

In fact we have BIG plans. We are going to the beach several times this summer, we are going to enjoy the summer nights at Sea World, we are taking a tram ride, and will probably fit in a ferry ride to Coronado. The plan is to do one big thing each week this summer. I'll try to update the blog with our adventures!!

Blessings,
Elizabeth

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