Dd Dinosaur

Our tree is coming down this week.  At least we can save some of the Christmas balls for our January "mantle" display.

I had plans to do several neat dinosaur activities this week: Archeological Dinosaur Painting, Dino Eggs and Dinosaur Fossils.  We didn't end up doing any of them.  Before the new year began,  I dubbed 2014 "the year of use what you have".  It has served me very well so far.  There has been a lot of money and effort saved by choosing not to buy things and to be creative with what we already have.  I didn't have the necessary materials to do any of the activities above and it turned out just as well.  I've found over the last 4 months of homeschooling that any of these grand thematic ideas I have seem really neat and the girls might be excited about it but the actual learning and retaining that happens is close to nothing.

I'm working toward changing my approach to home learning.  In the new way of doing things, we have a dedicated "school" time from around 9-11am 4 days a week.  During this time I give them some ideas to work with and then I kind of sit back and study them while they work with those ideas.  I am totally present with them during that time, answering their questions, exploring along with them and suggesting ways to deepen their thinking.  (It'sort of like watching an episode of Mister Rogers - I've learned so much from that man in my adult years! It's my goal to be in a constant state of "Rogerdom".  More on that another day.)  Anyway, it seems to be working really well.  I try to lead them toward some sort of reading, writing and math work each day.

Here are some pictures from our week:

We began the week by talking about our words to remember: "Big and small, God made them all" with a brief introduction to dinosaurs.  We read the book "What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs" which gives information from a Creationist perspective.  They enjoyed that book tremendously.

I sat at the table with them and started drawing some dinosaurs.  The girls didn't want to do that.  Fine. Nora wanted to work on making a crown to wear.  Claire covered her paper with pretty blue and purple scribbles.  Then she wanted me to draw a dinosaur for her.  I had an idea to show her how Eric Carle makes his famous artwork.  So I cut out dinosaur pieces and she glued them onto her paper to construct a Plesiosaurus.  It turned out so well!  Then I got out Eric Carle's book "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear" and we compared artwork.  It was a neat impromptu session.  Claire immediately wanted a crown like Nora's with a lion this time, so we did another piece.

Almost everyday we were able to have our "poet-tea" time.  We all look forward to this after naptime.  I read from a book I found at our library.  They were discarding it so I picked it up for 25 cents.  What a gem!  We made coconut-lemon balls for our tea time treats this week to go along with our wheat-free diet.  They were really very good.

Here is one of our favorite poems from the book:

Ostracoderms were ancient fish

Who had no jaws to chew. 

With open mouths their food was slurped

As water filtered through.

Perhaps that's why ostracoderms

Kept such a pleasant mood - 

They never had to hear their moms 

Say, "Henry, chew your food!"

And here is the recipe for those yummy coconut-lemon balls.

Reading

They played with these foam letters and we made up a game to construct the alphabet.  26 is a lot of letters!  C & L lost interest around "M" but Nora kept going until she finished.  Then I helped her to spell out a few words.  She is really starting to understand the whole phonics blending thing. 

Writing

Math

We talked about big and small things and measuring.  We did some measurements with legos.

Nora is 16 legos long.  Claire is 14 legos long.  Lucy is 12 legos long. 

We got to see Poppi twice in one week.  He stopped by for a visit and then we went over there for a family dinner on Saturday.  He graciously participated in a yoga session with Nora as his teacher:

Twists

Plank

Child's Pose

Swinging Tree

Lion's Breath

Cat and Cow

Have a Great Week!