Pajama Monsters

I saw this pattern and couldn't resist.  Each kiddo now has a Pajama Monster to sit on their bed and eat their day-old pajamas.  They're nice enough to give them back at bedtime for a 2nd night of wear.  Cute, eh? 

Halloween decor

I opened facebook on Thursday morning to find this fun crafty blog post linked by my friend Courtney.   I couldn't resist a little impromptu crafting.  I put school on hold for an hour, dug in my fabric stash until I found some plain white, grabbed my whole box of acrylic and fabric paints, and set to work hand printing the children.

I added googley eyes and drew on the rest of their features,

and turned it into a seasonal throw pillow for the entry way bench!

The kids also got into the spirit and painted some pumpkins this week.  I tried to convince them to use black and orange paints, but no.  This was more fun. ;)

Weekly Wrap Up: October 8-12

Last summer, when I was previewing the Five in a Row curriculum for use in our homeschool this year, I checked out every book that was available in the New Orleans and/or Jefferson Parish libraries that had a unit in FIAR.  I brought them home, read through them, selected the units I wanted to do this year, made notes, etc. I told the kids that the big pile of picture books was "Mommy's research" and I did my best not to read them to them (yet).  There was one story that stands out in my mind from those weeks.  The Salamander Room.  Charlie pulled The Salamander Room out of my research basket and begged me to read it.  I gave in, and the minute I read the last word, he shouted, "Again!" This was a first for us.  We are re-readers.  Like typical preschoolers, my kids enjoy hearing their favorite stories over and over again.  This book was the first in my memory that anyone had wanted to hear read again immediately, though.  It was destined to become a favorite.  Because of that, I had really been looking forward to this unit, and as I expected, it has not disappointed.  

The Salamander Room is about a boy who finds a salamander in the woods and brings him home. He imagines what his new pet would need to be happy in his room.  As he imagines providing an appropriate environment, his room (in the illustrations) is transformed into the forest.  It's a sweet, magical type of story. 

The first thing we did with this book was talk about salamanders, and amphibians in general.  We did a little craft on the life cycle of an amphibian (frog, since no one makes cute printables for the life cycle of a salamander).  My kids can tell you all about how a mama frog lays her eggs in water, the eggs hatch tadpoles, who breathe with gills and swim, how those tadpoles eventually grow legs and lungs, lose their tails, and then live on land as adult frogs.  

We went outside and pretended we were frogs.  The kids hopped from lily pad to lily pad, to show which vowel sound they had heard in the words I called out.  If I called "cat" they jumped to "a" and so on.  Very fun, and an excellent wiggle break.  

I made a sensory bin for the life cycle of a frog.  I put water beads and some frog life cycle toys into it  with a couple of craft foam lily pads.  The kids had a blast playing with them all week long!  

We went to the zoo in search of a salamander.  We found one on the door handle to the snake house!

That ended up being the best one we saw, too, since the only one on display was well hidden.  We saw a portion of his bright yellow and black tail.  We think there's a decent chance of seeing a salamander at the aquarium, where they have tons of frogs, but we haven't made a trek there recently to find out.  

The next day, we had a fun surprise in the mail--caterpillars! We are going to raise and observe the life cycle of some painted lady butterflies.  These caterpillars have more than doubled in length since we got them 3 days ago.  We expect them to begin to pupate next week sometime.  Once they each form their chrysalis, we'll move them into the large mesh butterfly enclosure that came with their kit and wait for them to emerge.  After we've watched them as butterflies for a few days, we'll release them.  So fun!

So that we could learn a little more about our new caterpillars, we read a story about the life cycle of a butterfly, and then made a little craft using pasta and rice.  Our pasta caterpillars formed giant chrysalises because I wasn't specific about what size pasta shells I needed for the project, and my sweet husband did the shopping. ;) This was my first time to dye pasta, which was very easy, and very satisfying.  I want to do more pasta-dying crafts now!

We continue The Salamander Room next week, studying the body parts of an insect, making a diorama of Brian's room, and taking a field trip to the insectarium.  Should be fun! 

Arguably more exciting than any of the above, this week we finished our pre-K reading readiness curriculum!  I can't believe we are actually finished!  I feel so accomplished, and SO proud of the kids.  They are all in a really good place for learning to read now (and some are well on their way, already reading short 3 letter words).  If you have 3-4 year old children, I cannot recommend "Ziggy School" highly enough.  We have loved it.  Don't they look proud?

As always, thanks for reading!

Halloween 2012

Hazel requested an owl costume to go with her owl hat that I crocheted last fall.  I gathered some ideas form here and here.  Then we got to work.

I sewed felt oval feathers onto felt wings and the front of a yellow t-shirt.  The wings attach with a ribbon around the neck and with hair rubberbands tacked onto the end of the wings to slip over her wrists.  I got a partial picture of her trying on the wings and hat, but didn't have the feathers on the shirt yet.

Here's the full get-up, but not on the girl.


I guess you'll have to wait for Halloween to see the whole thing!

Weekly Wrap Up: Oct 24-28

a week late!

We finished our Madeline unit, and then promptly left for a week in Houston and I forgot to catch up the blog.  Better late than never?

You may recall that we spent our first few days with Madeline focusing on Paris.  We spent our days this week focusing on the other parts of the book--surgery, human organs, and Madeline's appendectomy.

Madeline has an emergency appendectomy in the story, so we spent some time learning about our major organs (including finding that appendix--which I learned is just a small part of the large intestine).    We made wearable bodies, which was the coolest project EVER!  Everyone had so much fun inflating their lungs.

 
We also dropped a little piece of candy down our esophagus to see it land in our stomach.

Still inflating those lungs!

When I asked the kids what their favorite part of our Madeline unit was, the unanimous answer was when we pretended surgery.  We got out the doctor kit toys and the play doh tools and pretended to operate on one another.  We had appendectomies and tonsillectomies most often.  Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of this.  I was too involved in the play acting. ;)

For math with Madeline, we used counting bears to be the "Twelve little girls in two straight lines" and experimented with questions like, "What if Miss Clavel asked the girls to line up in four straight lines instead?"  Nice little lesson on the factors of 12.  

A little girl stole Madeline's hat!

Our Madeline art lesson was on symmetry.  We did that art project where you fold a piece of paper in half, squirt a blob of paint on one side, close it up, squish it, and then open it up to see a symmetrical image.  They loved it!  Jono said his looked like seahorses.  I agree (when you turn it upside down)!

We ended our Madeline unit with a trip to the zoo, specifically to say "Pooh, pooh!" to the tigers.  Zoo construction made it hard to get to the tigers, so we said it to the lion instead.  Good enough.  Another fun week at Casa de Wallace! Thank you for reading!

thank you for keeping us cool

now, I'll help keep your heads warm!

Quick pic snapped at my MOPs table before I handed them off.  I forgot to take a  good one. 

I did these two hats for my friend Lacey's kids, as a thank you gift for lending us her window unit a/c during those long power-less days following Hurricane Isaac.  We sure were grateful!!

Weekly Wrap Up: September 17-21

We had a great week of PK and Kinder!  

In math, we've been working on identifying items that are the same/different and that have common characteristics.  On the whole, this is incredibly easy for all of the kiddos, and we're moving through it pretty quickly.  

We worked with how to make the lower case form and the correct sound for letters Q, R, S, and T in our pre-reading program. 

And as usual, we had the most fun (and took the most pictures) during Five in a Row.  This week we spent two final days on Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car, and then began our new book, Madeline.  Here's how it looked, in pictures:

Monday we did the art lesson from Mr. Gumpy.  The author/illustrator used cross-hatching to shade his illustrations, so we looked at his technique in the book and then tried to do it using scratch paper. The kids LOVED the scratch paper.  They thought it was super fun to scratch off the black layer with the little wooden pencil and see the colors underneath.  Hazel was the only one who attempted much actual cross-hatching, though. The boys just drew.  Good enough. 

a boat!

On Tuesday, we did a second science lesson with Mr. Gumpy.  The manual was full of fun science ideas for this book!  They all followed along and drew their own water cycle while I drew one on the big white board.

Then we went to the kitchen and did a water cycle simulation.  The kids were so excited to see it rain, right in our kitchen!  I don't have the best pictures because my hands were full and my helpers are not great photographers. ;)

Below you can see our "lake" (the saucepan filled with water), being heated by the "sun" (the burner).

                             

Waiting (somewhat) patiently to see if the warm lake water would evaporate and then condense and form a cloud when it met the "cold air" (plate of ice).  

                            

It did! Our "cloud" (the underside of the plate) "rained" when we held it up!  

The little experiment worked well!  If you want to try it, here are the instructions we followed.  We followed up our discussion of the water cycle by watching Magic School Bus Catches a Wave.  The first episode on that DVD is on the water cycle, and became an instant favorite.  We've watched it several times since then. I foresee more Magic School Bus DVDs from the library in our science future! 

On Wednesday, Ziggy brought a friend to school! Madeline! On our first day with Madeline, we found Paris on the map and talked about how we might get there from our house, if we were so inclined. Charlie was convinced that a submarine would be the best choice. :D 

We talked about the Seine River, and tried to figure out why many cities are built on rivers.  I thought we'd have a picnic near our river and watch some boats, to maybe help us think through that question.  We had a lovely picnic at a riverside park, but not a single boat passed by.  I hear the Mississippi is really low upriver. Maybe that's why? Go figure. 

In the absence of boats to watch, we shot off stomp rockets and generally ran around. 

Heading to the hill that Jono and I rolled down. Ouch. 

We had MOPs on Thursday, so we took a break from Madeline.  Friday, we looked in a large picture book of Paris and found all of the landmarks that are in the illustrations of Madeline.  The kids had a fun trying to match up the real photos to the illustrations.  Then I got out Paper City Paris and let them play.   

Charlie with the Paper City Notre Dame and Eiffel Tower

Jono, using the Eiffel Tower as a parking garage 

Paper City play, with Madeline and our Paris picture book in the foreground.  Yes, Madeline even has her scar!

A couple of other pictures, just for fun:

We borrowed this book from a friend to see if it's something we might like. Hazel thought it was super fun, and drew quite the nice chicken!

Jonathan and our beloved pal, Ziggy

Thanks for reading!

 

Knitter for Hire

I have had many people ask over the past few years if I sold my hats (or other knit/crocheted items) anywhere, or if I would be willing to make a custom item for them.  I have always said no, that I didn't have the time to take on knitter-for-hire projects, and that I had no interest in maintaining an Etsy store or the like.  Well, the no interest in an Etsy store is still true.  BUT recently I have found myself wondering what yarn work I should work on, and not having any good ideas.  Seems I just might have some time for other people's yarn crafting after all!  So, consider me a knitter for hire.  Need a birthday gift?  A baby shower gift?  Having a baby and need a photo prop for those squishy little newborn photos?  I might be able to help you out! Feel free to contact me to see if I have availability. We can discuss what you're looking for, and I can give you a time frame for completion and a price quote.  

new mommy gifts for MOPs this year, commissioned by a friend in charge of such things

Weekly Wrap Up: Sept 10-14

We had three really good and one iffy day of school this week.  Not bad, right?  

In Five in a Row, we started "rowing" Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car by John Burningham.  We had fun reading this little story about a man who takes a dozen passengers with him on a ride in his car.  It rains, the car get stuck, and they have to all get out and push.  

Some of the lessons we learned from Mr. Gumpy included the definition and some examples of onomatopoeia, which the kids are all BIG fans of.  We used the book If You Were Onomatopoeia to help us understand it, and then we went back and found the onomatopoeic words in Mr. Gumpy.  

We found England on the map, where Mr. Gumpy's story takes place.  We talked about some differences between Mr. Gumpy's car and our own (the steering wheel is on the other side!).  We talked about being a helper and cooperating, since all of Mr. Gumpy's passengers tried to make excuses as to why they could not get out to push.  We compared Mr. Gumpy's unhelpful friends to the pig, cat, and goose in The Little Red Hen, an old favorite of ours, which we also re-read. 

 We also learned about rain clouds like the ones that dumped on Mr. Gumpy and his driving party. We re-read a book that Grandma gave us for Christmas, Cloudette, about a little rain cloud that learns she can make a big difference even if she can only make a little rain.  We did a science activity that simulated rain falling from a puffy cumulus cloud.  We made our "clouds" with shaving cream and dropped food colored water on them until they rained into our glass full of water.  Playing in shaving cream was certainly the highlight of the week, and I've been asked if we can "make clouds again" several times already.  Once you see the picture of the aftermath, you'll understand why I've been putting them off for a repeat. 

Charlie, watching his cloud rain 

three kids, focused on rain clouds 

forget the clouds! this is way more fun! 

aftermath. ay yi yi!

One of my favorite parts of FIAR so far has been pulling library books, or books that are already in our book stash, to read during our read-aloud time before rest time in the afternoon. These go-along books both deepen our understanding of the topics we've studied, and give us some good variety in our reading material.  In addition to Cloudette and The Little Red Hen, some of the other go-along books we enjoyed this week with Mr. Gumpy were Mr. Gumpy's Outing, a book by the same author with the same characters, Slop Goes the Soup (another onomatopoeia story) and Duck in a Truck, whose plot is very similar to Mr. Gumpy, right down to the red convertible that gets stuck in the mud.  Duck in the Truck has a super fun rhyme pattern, too.  

Last, just some pictures of hard working kids! I have to make sure and take these pictures to remind myself that moments like this DO occur in our homeschool. LOL

Charlie, working on his required coloring for the day. He's not a super big fan of hand muscle exercise. 

Hazel, the coloring queen

Jono's coloring skills are coming a long way, too!

Charlie's sequencing sheet, done with number cards so as not to frustrate the fine motor skills unnecessarily. 

Next week, we will spend two more days wrapping up Mr. Gumpy (art and another science activity--there was too much fun science in that book to stop with one!), and then we'll start our "row" of Madeline mid-week.

Thanks for reading!