Tot school: Easter Eggs, the letter J and preschool plans

I pulled out our sensory table from the garage to actually use it.  It's been in there for a long time because I just haven't had the room for it.  It still had beans in it from months ago.  I decided to let him have one last play with the beans before we took them out.  I threw in some Easter eggs, and our egg coloring cups.

He had fun making shakers with the eggs and beans.  He also had fun making a "garden."  I had these little foam flowers on tongue depressors from a lesson at church, and gave them to him.  Ignore the what?, where?, etc. that was for the church lesson.  He was just playing with them.  Although he would ask me a lot, what does this one say?  He knew there were words on it.  So I told him what it said, and then made a question for him because I'm not sure it made much sense to him why they said who what where why, lol.

Here he is "planting" his garden.  I had to show him how to do it first, then he re-created it for me to take pictures.

Oh, look at this nice garden all nice and peaceful!...

...time to destroy the garden with some beans!  Here they come!

Bam!  That garden is gone.  All this happened within a few seconds!  Boys.

Later I took the beans out when I'd had enough of the beans, and made an egg sorting game with tongs.

All done!

This is his tot school printables for the letter J.  I didn't take any pictures of him doing any of these.  We just did them.  As you can see we also made jellyfish on the left side of the picture.

Since he is not really a "tot schooler" anymore, I've been trying to decide what I want to do for him now.  He is doing one more round of letter X tot school printables, but after that I think we'll be done with those.  We'll still continue with a letter of the week, but we'll do it along with The Itty-Bitty Bookworm preschool plans.  I'm going to try and focus on that alone, with more learning trays (Montessori style), and see if we can get some more preschool action going on around here!

Desiree

My homeschool weekly journal: Easter week

Life this week...

I am trying to wrap my brain around planning for next year.  It keeps coming to the forefront of my brain no matter how much I push it back.  So, I gave in this week, and I'm starting to think about it.  I have been so worn out this Spring I really didn't want to start thinking about next year yet.  But, as I am thinking more about it I am getting more excited, and feeling like we need to give the rest of this year our best.  I'm also ready to purge a lot of old school books, and workbooks.


Other happenings this week...

We dyed Easter eggs for the first time in a few years.  It was fun, but for some reason they couldn't keep them from getting cracked.  They (re)learned that eggs are fragile!

Egg shell candles are so pretty!

Everything all set up.  Each child had 5 eggs.  I tried to set it up so it would be easier.  I think it helped.

Love the colors!

They ended up with less than they started because they kept breaking them.  Maybe they'll be more careful next year!

In our homeschool this week...

April has had 2-3 rehearsals each week for her upcoming play.  The play is As you like it by Shakespeare with a Harry Potter theme.  Here is the poster for the play.

I am also teaching Aaron's class at co-op, and this is the book (The Pigeon finds a hot dog) and craft we made this week.  The craft is just a pigeon made out of construction paper.  The kids made some pretty cute pigeons.  I can't wait to read the newest pigeon book "The Pigeon needs a bath!"

Here is Aaron's pigeon.  I love how he made tail feathers on his.  More like a realistic bird.

Since we have been going a lot that means picnic lunches at the park for us.  We were lucky with a few nice days this week also.  That makes for a very nice picnic!

April's smoked gouda cheese.  She loves that stuff, and wanted me to take a picture of it as she was savoring it :-)

This picnic happened to be on Monday.  It was so peaceful, and the sunshine felt so good.

I loved that I captured all the kids playing in one picture from where I was sitting.

This was from our Friday picnic.  We also did a little Easter nature walk during this one.  I'll post about that later.

What I'm reading...

The first book is a book based on the Thomas Jefferson education philosphy called "For the Love of Learning" by Amy Edwards.  I bought it through our co-op because this is the method that they use at our LIFE academy classes.  The other book I am loving is "Once upon a flock" by Lauren Scheuer.  It's a fun story about this lady and her chickens, and one that I can relate to in so many ways as we have gone on our chicken journey. 

 

What the kids are reading...

April finished Catching fire by Suzanne Collins this week.  She'll be getting Divergent tomorrow for Easter, and I'm sure will have that read in no time.  I can't keep up with all her reading.  I asked her what she was reading this week because I couldn't remember all the books off the top of my head, and she rattled of quite a list!

 

Aaron is reading this with me Believe and you're there: When the White Dove Descended.  It has been a great book to read as we are getting ready for his baptism.  I had bought it a while ago (like years) but the kids didn't really get into them at the time.  But now, when I told them this book was like the Magic Treehouse books where they travel to a time in history they were all over it.  Aaron has been enjoying it.





















Aric has been enjoying Elephant and Piggie in this book Should I share my Ice Cream? by Mo Willems.  He loves these books.



Alex has been enjoying The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle on audiotape this week.  We are going to do a unit with this book next week.

 

 I guess that's it for this week.

One last photo to share...

The kids painted little stained glass Easter pictures.  They turned out pretty cute.  Makes me smile everytime I look at them






Desiree

Wordless Wednesday: Spring!

Homeschool favorite: baseball and homemade watercolors

I am still here!  I decided to take a little blog spring break.  Turned out to be a month long, but it was so good for me especially as the busy spring season picks up. I enjoyed the time off, but I'm happy to get back to sharing some of our homeschool life lately!

We started baseball season last week with a local homeschool league.  It is my homeschool favorite this week because I just love that we have this opportunity to play ball with other homeschoolers. 

Alex isn't old enough to be on one of the teams, but he has a great time playing for 2 hours at the park while his brothers and sister are practicing.  He had fun practicing with our t-ball stand for a while.

It's going to be a great season!

Another favorite was actually from a few weeks ago.  We made homemade watercolors!  This was so much fun, and my boys loved mixing up their own colors.  Painting with them was even more fun!

We used this homemade watercolor recipe:  Allparenting homemade watercolors.

What is a favorite from your homeschool this week?

 Desiree