Play-dough.

We are starting summer, and we've been neglecting to post anything. We have learned things, I promise, we're just so engrossed in doing so that we haven't remembered to record it! I better get better at it, though, since our son will be six soon, meaning that his schooling will be mandatory, and if we move to a state that has less flexible homeschooling laws, I'll need proof that the kids are actually learning something.

Today, we played with play dough. You might think this isn't really a learning activity, but it is. I had the kids shape their names with the dough before being able to do anything else with it. We made a dough with glitter in it, just for fun. Green, for spring. Here are our two favorite play-dough recipes. One is edible, the other is not. I got the edible recipe from my good friend, Nadine, who does some wonderful things with her children, and is a crafty queen in her own right (though she might not admit it).

Cookie Play-dough (the edible one)

The dough turns out the consistency of playdough. There are no eggs, so the dough is edible. The forms hold (if they aren't too tall), and one of the other perks? the color doesn't change when you bake it!

1 cup margarine or butter
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon mil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
Food coloring

In a large mixing bowl beat margarine or butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed about 30 seconds or till softened. Add sugar and beat till fluffy. Beat in milk and vanilla. Add flour and beat till well combined.

Separate dough into various containers- stir in food coloring until color is desired. Roll, shape, or mash dough into desired shapes/forms. Bake at 325°F for 12-15 minutes- just until bottom of cookie edge on the cookie sheet is lightly brown (color of dough will not change significantly). Cool on wire rack.

Additional decorating as desired.


Earth Friendly Play Dough

• 1 cup flour (not self-rising)
  
• 1/2 cup salt
  
• 1 cup water
  
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  
• 1-1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
  

Mix in saucepan over low heat. (It does not have to heat long.) Dough is ready when it rolls into a ball. Keep dough fresh in an airtight container. If you need to make different colors, add food coloring while mixing over heat.

We have added glitter, or extracts to this one to make it more interesting (some fun combos are mint extract (a TINY bit added to the vegetable oil) and white or blue glitter--for winter "coldness", cinnamon for fall--you get the point).

simple double-digit addition

On Thursday last week, Zachary wanted to know how many years he and I had between us. To motivate him to learn addition, I had him first calculate our combined age by counting my age in cheerios, his age in cheerios, then combining the two sets of cheerios and counting them. That takes a long time. Then I showed him how to do addition with two digits in at least one of the addends. Here is a picture. Also, on Saturday, I introduced both Zachary and Chayce to the positive real integer number line, which they both found quite intuitive to use for single digit addition.

Craftiness and Counting to ONE MILLION!

Yesterday and today consisted of some artsy elements. I posted them on our family blog, as I'm having a hard time deciphering between what is school and what is life when I go to post. Are all activities done with the children school? Or just the math and reading things? Yet, I really could pull math and reading out of any activity. Sigh. Perhaps I should send them to school just for the free time, because they're going to learn a ton while living in our house anyway. Perhaps that is why I never studied as a child...life at my house was study. Hmmm. It's a thought, but for now, we are homeschooling, and so far, so good.
Anyhow, here are the posts about the artsy things done / discovered:
Surrounding Children With Beauty
Step One in Adding Some Beautiful Fun

Then, we read the book Count to a Million by Jerry Pallotta. The kids really enjoyed it.

B is for Boa Constrictor

So, we studied boa constrictors today. Mainly triggered by reading
The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash

Then after reading about how boa constrictors really eat (click on picture of actual boa at top for link), Zac simulated it with a stuffed animal and a slinky. Cool. It was his idea.

Then Payge tried to eat the stuffed animal. She's teething. The other two started to refer to her as "Mommy Constrictor" with the slinky being her offspring, I guess. Hee hee.

We returned to our water color pencils, and made these:
Zach's wiggly snakes.

Chayce's wiggly snakes.

L is for Lizard

I know, we're bouncing around with this one. BUT, it went with the kids' interests, and I find that if I teach them something when they ask for it, they remember it much longer. Here's what we did for Lizard (sorry if you read our other blog, this is a repost):


Home made "fossils" are fun, cheap, and easy.

1. Purchase (at the dollar store) those cheap plastic dinosaurs and lizards.
2. Make up a batch of salt dough.
3. Mix a cup full of dirt (from outside, don't buy dirt.) into the dough.
4. Wrap balls of dough mixture around each lizard/dinosaur.
5. Let dry.
6. Give them to the kids with a dull butter knife and tell them to find the animal inside.
   

Education on the fly

So, it seems that we haven't been doing anything structured lately, but don't let that make you think we haven't learned anything!
This weekend, we went to our library's Science Alive! activity day, and it was a blast! The children handled skulls, owl wings, talons, earthworms, cacao pods / beans, dogs, honey bees, robots, magnets, marbles, etc. There were experiments to participate in, nanoparticle counters to watch, and telescopes to win.

Soon, there will be a wonderful new telescope on the market, named the Galileoscope, which I plan on purchasing. The Michiana Astronomical Society is having a night where you can purchase one for $15, and have an astronomer show you how to use it and what you are seeing. I can't wait!!

That was all on Saturday. Then Sunday was our day of rest, with a little church thrown in (which I do not see as rest with three children, but whatever), and on Monday we ventured out to the HealthWorks Museum to learn more about the human body. I didn't bring my camera, but my friend promised to email me photos she took of Chayce dressed up as a tooth. The museum was doing a "How to Brush Your Teeth" skit, and Chayce volunteered to be in it. She made a cute little molar.

U is for Uakari and Unicorn

A Uakari
The common name is believed to come from the indigenous term for "Dutchmen"; their red faces apparently reminded the locals of sun-burned Europeans^{[citation needed]}. Too funny.

A unicorn.

So, we learned about both animals. The monkey mainly for Zach, and the unicorn for Chayce's sake. I mean, really, we're going over the alphabet for her sake, so I have to cater to her a little.

The Artsy Animals assignment didn't go so well. They wanted ME to do the drawing, and I'm not going to showcase my artwork online. Sorry.

On another note, if you head over to my Regression blog, you'll see that we also had some great hands' on experiences!

V is for Vulture

A vulture.

Again, with Artsy Animals. I'd call it AA, but that just doesn't sound right, given that I'm working with kids. In math today, we're still working in the Saxton math K curriculum, slowly going through it. My goal is to give them a little bit of math all year, rather than to jam it down their throats for nine months and give them three months off. Instead of doing the assignment exactly, because I'm scizzor phobic lately (too many little pieces of paper to take away from crawling baby!!), I had them use our teddy bear manipulatives to do the adding and subtracting story (they were supposed to color and cut out a few teddy bear pictures, but...)


Zach drew his own pictures & titled them (although I had to write "vampire" over bat for it to fit, he still writes a little big.)

Chayce asked me to draw hers, but then colored it.

W is for Warthog

Warthog

Today, we used Artsy Animals Learn to Read, and then I decided that since"watercolor" also starts with 'W', we would do some watercolors. I bought a book at the discount store named Painting with Pencils which details fun projects using watercolor pencils. I (luckily) was in the right place at the right time last year at Sams Club after Christmas, and got a set of watercolor pencils on the clearance rack for dirt cheap. Hence, I didn't cry if a pencil or two got misused. Plus...can you really MISUSE art supplies, if you are just trying to be creative with them?

Below are the art projects the kids finished, as well as their attempts at drawing a warthog.


In math, we are still studying the number 2, trying to form it well on paper. It's not an easy number to write.

Zach's warthog. Chayce didn't want to. She was busy finding the purple crayons. ;)






















Zach's sledder & mitten. The sledder is supposed to look like he's going downhill, hence the smear.













Below is Chayce's sledder and mitten. I think they both did a great job, considering that it was their first time with water color pencils. We'll have to do projects like this again.

Y is for Yak

I again am using Artsy Animals Learn to Read. Chayce didn't want to draw her own yak, so I photocopied & let her color the yak from the book. I don't think she cared much today, given that if this were a picture of a princess or ballerina, she'd have stayed in the lines.

Zach took the challenge to draw his own yak. In fact, this is Zac's Yak, see? I used the moment to introduce ownership punctuation. Small lessons add up!

A real Yak.

I used the wikipedia entry on Yaks to provide some information.



Onto math! The neat thing about today (and that I'm learning about home school in general) is that sometimes, what you THINK is going to be a math lesson, turns out to be a reading lesson. For example, today, Zach learned about charts & graphs & following through. For Chayce, she helped match the color word on the outside of the crayon with the color words on the page.

X is for xenopus

We studied frogs today, using the xenopus frog as our X word. We also looked at X-rays in our World Book encyclopedia. It was fun. While talking about frogs, we talked about tongues. Then we drifted off to talk about our tongues. While talking about how our tongues work, I remembered an experiment that I found in Kid's National Geographic (thanks for the subscription, Effie!). We took some yummy Jelly Belly Jelly Beans, because their flavors are so accurate. Then, you plug the child's nose, and put the jelly bean into their mouth. When they can't breathe, all they can taste is sour, sweet, or bitter. (and spicy as Zach pointed out). Then, with that same bean in their mouth, let go of their nose...then they will taste the flavor of the bean. The look of amazement that crosses their faces is awesome. They learn the importance of the senses working together. Fun, fun.

Zach's rendering of a xenopus frog.

A real xenopus frog.

I've also found out that you can purchase frogs with transparent skin, so that you can watch their organs work (no dissection!) and have a pet to take care of. They are about $30, but I think it's a pet I may be willing to bring into the house. Just make sure your state doesn't outlaw exotic pets, as the species is African, and some states, like Montana, won't let you buy one legally.

Z is for zorilla.

I've been trying to figure out when to fit school into the day, and not have my house fall apart. I came to the conclusion that house work will always be there, so I could move it to right after lunch, and do school in the morning when the kids are fresh. So far, so good.

I decided that we'd begin studying the alphabet again, but in a more fun way. First of all, we're going backwards. Second, we're learning about an animal that begins with that letter. Today we began with 'Z'. Learning how to draw both zebras & zorillas. What IS a zorilla you ask? Well, most people call them striped weasels. Here's an entry from Encyclopedia.com:

From: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright information

zorilla small, carnivorous, nocturnal mammal, Ictonyx striatus, of the weasel family, found in dry regions of Africa. It is also called striped weasel and striped polecat. Although it strongly resembles the North American skunk , a member of the same family, it is more closely related to the true polecat of Eurasia. The zorilla has thick fur with black and white markings, and a long, bushy tail. Its anal glands secrete a pungent fluid that can be ejected as a defense against predators. It is avoided by other animals. It lives in rocky crevices and hunts by night, feeding on small reptiles and rodents. Other African members of the weasel family, also called striped weasels, are more weasellike in appearance, with long, slender bodies. Zorillas are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Carnivora, family Mustelidae.

"zorilla." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-zorilla.html

A real Zorilla. They are related to skunks and weasels. Kind of a mix. Stinky, too!

Zach's Zorilla outside a house.

Chayce's Zebra

Zach's Zebra

We used a book called Artsy Animals Learn to Read to draw the zebra and zorilla as well.
I must say that I got my copy from http://www.homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com

We also studied triangles in Saxon Math level K. It fit in well with drawing the Zebra. We looked at trapezoids as well, commenting that a trapezoid looks like a triangle with its head in a 'trap'.

Words--Everywhere!

Today was fruitful. We're working on teaching our 3 year old how to read. Now, I know that some experts say that you shouldn't push the children, but I don't see how introducing a child to the literary world is pushing anything. My oldest was reading by the age of three, with simple lessons given at a young age.
For example, just as I would teach my toddlers that cows say MOO, and birds CHEEP, or TWEET or whatever you want to call it, I tell them the sound of each letter. We accomplished this with alphabet books, where we'd say, "Look! An 'A'! 'A' says aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Can you say aaaaaaaaaaaa?"

Once the oldest child was proficient at the basic sound of each letter, we'd show him short words, and explain them: "Look, this says B-A-T. Remember each letter's sound? Can you say them slow?"
"bbbbbbbb-aaaaaaaaaa-ttttttttt"
"Good! Let's say it faster."
"baaaattt"
"You just read 'bat'! Wonderful job!"

Once we did that, he ran off and started sounding everything out he could. The other day, he was reading the installation instructions for a new bed out loud to my father as my father worked. Did I mention he's just now five?

So, we are starting with our second oldest. It doesn't have to be hard, really, or planned. The kids were pretending they were birds, using pillows for nests (so sweet!), keeping their eggs warm. Imaginary baby birds kept hatching and running all over my house. Because I couldn't see them, I had to be very careful where I sat. Crushing one's baby bird could lead to tears. Imaginations can be very vivid at this age! It just so happened (really, purely coincidence) that there was a chalkboard right by where they were playing. So, I walked over with a piece of chalk and said, "You are birds. What letter does bird start with?" Of course, the oldest will answer, but I promise that it rubs off on the second. "A 'B'!" he says. And what does the three year old say? "Let me go find the B!" (We have the alphabet printed across the top of our chalk board). She found it, I wrote it down and said, "What would come next if we wanted to spell bird?"
The oldest pipes up, "R!" Which tells me that although decoding is a strong suit for him, spelling is not, so we'll work on that.
I then write all of BIRD on the chalk board, and we talk about birds laying eggs, hatching, we tweet and use magic bird powder to turn me and the baby into birds as well. I also throw in there why we need an "I" before the "R".
Just simple, short lessons. But they work, and they stick much longer than lesson-a-thons do.