School Daze...Oo is for Ocean...and other things...

Ryleigh is 3 1/2 and Braeden is 17 Months

This week we did Letter of the Week "Oo" is for Ocean....

Ryleigh and Braeden practicing their letters ....

I had Ryleigh paint snow with food coloring and water... She LOVED it....I saw this fun activity on A Mommy's Adventures...

This is what we woke up to this morning.... EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!

Ryleigh and Daddy out in the snow building a snowman....

Braeden...sharing his stacking toy with Ryleigh...

Ryleigh practicing her patterns with these fun 3-D insects.... she sat down and pretty much did the entire booklet all at once...and LOVES playing with them....

We had a playdate in the beginning of the week and the girls made some pumpkin muffins....

While they waited for the muffins to finish baking they seemed to all congregate around the table...so I gave them file folder games to play with.... apparently it is always school time at our house.... :-)

Braeden with his girls while their sisters were baking....

Braeden and Juliette playing with blocks...waiting for the muffins to be ready...

Ryleigh practicing putting her numbers in order 1-20...... I also use these number cards to help her practice her spanish numbers... (and they are also our numbers for my Calendar Board)....

Braeden practicing his coloring...his most favorite past-time....

Ryleigh working on her alpha book....

For our stART project this week we did Reverse Snowflakes....

We are loving these find the letter stories from Confessions of a Homeschooler....

This week we did the sight word "do"... I had the girls put stickers under the word "do" in books from Hubbards Cupboard....

Some do-a-dot fun... from making learning fun...

We did a fun science experiment...the illusion of color change...

Braeden woke up from his nap in time to play tunnel with the girls...

To see what others did this week check out Tot School at 1+1+1=1; Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations; and the Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

stART - The reverse snowflake....

A Story + Art = A great stART!!!!For our story this week, we read Chaucer's first Winter....so cute...about a bear cub who is supposed to be sleeping all winter but was so excited to see the snow that he stays up to play with his friends....

For our project this week...we did what I am now calling the reverse snowflake....sometimes I come up with projects on the spur of the moment...with the best intentions...that don't always work out as planned... anyway...the reverse snowflake... I had the girls fold and rip designs in a piece of paper...(FYI...this did not go well...)...then we used the "template" to cover a second sheet of paper..then used different shaped sponges to put paint on.... All in all...I think they had fun...and they came out cute... but the project definitely took a turn somewhere... :-)

Ready to get started...
The girls tearing their papers ....

We then used the "template" to make our reversed snowflakes...

Ryleigh carefully sponging on some paint...

The finished projects....

For more great stART posts check out A Mommy's Adventures!
For more fun projects check out My Delicious Ambiguity , ABC and 123... Red Ted Art and JDaniel4's Mom

Underwater Color Changing Volcano

This week we had more color changing fun in science.... and the kids really enjoyed our "underwater" volcano.... as the volcano changed from basic to acidic the color changed....it made a very pretty volcano....much like a lava lamp with lots of ever-changing floating bubbles... (due to the oil)

How we made it:

Fill the Test Tube (smaller glass/bottle) about 1/3 full....add 1/2 tsp baking soda and gently stir/shake to dissolve.... the water at this point will still be clear(ish)

Add 1/4 tsp of Red Cabbage juice powder and gently shake the test tube until it is uniformly blueSlowly pour Vegetable Oil into the test tube almost up to the lip
Measure 1/2 tsp of citric acid...then drop the citric acid into the test tube
After the reaction dies down, add another 1/2 tsp of citric acid and set the eruption off again. If you still want it to erupt and change to another color you can add in 1/2 baking soda....The End.....
For more fun science projects go check out Adventures in Mommydom.....

School Daze .... Now we are doing Nn....

Ryleigh is 44 Months and Braeden is 17 Months
Ryleigh and her friends went to see Princesses on Ice and had so much fun!!! (Thank you Michelle for the picture)...Braeden has a lot of fun sweeping, mopping and swiffering our floors... We have mainly wood floors so I have been looking at modern rugs to fit our school space... perhaps then he can have fun vacuuming them...

Ryleigh putting pictures of items starting with the letter "n" in her alpha book...

For our stART project this week we read Katy and the Big Snow.... and I had the girls use toy cars to paint....

Ryleigh practicing her sight words by underlining in a book from Hubbards Cupboard...

I printed out this fun story to find letter n.... from Confessions of a Homeschooler...

The girls used these training chopsticks to transfer pom poms....

The girls painted with watercolor and then we put some salt on them to create fun crystals...

The girls did a number match found in my printables

The girls had fun cutting out face features from a magazine and recreating a face of their own...

Usually Braeden is asleep when the girls are at preschool.... however, he woke up earlier and was able to be at the table like the big kids while we did our science experiments...

Here he is coloring.... next to climbing it is his new favorite activity....

Ryleigh finishing up some pattern work...we used some rubber frogs for a more hands on approach...

When the girls were done with them, Braeden got to play with them....

I think he likes school time... and although he liked the frogs- he really liked the experiments...

For Science time...we made an underwater color changing volcano... learning a little bit about acids and bases...but mainly watched the volcano bubble up like a lava lap (due to the vegetable oil) and change colors with lots of fizzing.... we did this one a couple of times to get different colors...

Ryleigh working on putting the numbers on her Letter of the Week Craft

Our finished n is for numbers!!

To see what others did this week check out Tot School at 1+1+1=1; Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations; and the Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

stART - Katy and the Big Snow

A story + art= a great stART!!!

For this week's book, we read Katy and the Big Snow- a favorite from my Husbands childhood.... in it a great tractor named Katy helps plow out her city when there is a huge snowfall....she goes in what looks like a maze like formation....or at least that is what I took from the illustrations... A very cute story that Ryleigh now loves....

For our project, I had the girls drive around cars through paint to create mazes in the snow..... they seemed to really enjoy it...especially as they made up story-lines to go with their cars...

Getting ready for the project to begin...I had them use 3 different colors of paint...

Starting to paint...

This is around the time where story line starting popping up while the cars were being driven...

The finished project....

For more great stART posts check out A Mommy's Adventures!
For more fun projects check out My Delicious Ambiguity , ABC and 123... Red Ted Art and JDaniel4's Mom