friday wrap-up

School this week was a bit -- topsy-turvy? We had a mid-week dr's appointment for Guthrie in Iowa City - her pediatric rheumatologist. I'm headed, slowly towards a post about her HSP and the process it has taken, but the important parts of the visit were that Guthrie is doing alright and the whole family was there, which she was really excited about. 

We also took last week off of school. My mom was in the hospital much of the week, she's ok and doing well at home now. For the first time homeschooling really made things more complicated for me. So, every day I evaluated and every day I decided the world would not end if we didn't have school that day. Learning still happened and the kids got some extra time with John and their Amie - which they loved!

So, yeah, not our "usual" here, but what exactly is our usual these days?

This week we continued our exploration of the circulatory system. Guthrie walks a fine line of being fascinated by the human body and being completely freaked out by it. I get it, but it's hard for me to gauge the line. Guthrie traced her body on craft paper and then decorated herself. (Side note: I need to remember to do this periodically, it completely changed her view of her body - how tall she is, where her hands line up to her legs, etc. it was so interesting to watch her negotiate where here clothes would go and drawing her face on the head of the outline.) Then we were going to glue red and blue yarn on the outline to represent veins and arteries. The yarn part totally freaked her out. (Additional side note: even the tracing of the body freaked Laithe out. He would not lay down to get traced. I attempted to freehand it for him but umm. yeah.) We used our encyclopedia set to read about blood types and everyone still agreed that platelets are awesome. 

We also finished copying a poem about snowflakes. I love her handwriting. My mama-eye always wins out over my teacher-eye! 

Then this morning we mounted the papers on craft paper and used potato stamps carved like snowflakes to decorate the poem's background. Laithe's modified activity was stamping with the potatoes on craft paper. 

Guthrie did a word search and word building. We played a dice game. Sequenced buttons by size and grouped by color. Brownies were made.

I tasked the kids with drawing a picture of something they saw out the window that was a part of nature. Laithe drew a dinosaur. 

Both kids enjoyed the valentine themed sensory box I put together - pink rice, dried tapioca pearls, red sanding sugar and a few spoons and cookie cutters. 

Tuesday morning it was 65 degrees so we enjoyed a super long walk and identified several birds. I should clarify - Guthrie identified several birds, mostly by their calls. Smarty pants. 

And then it snowed and then it was so cold that we didn't really venture out. Lots of dancing in the living room (thank you pandora) and jumping on the trampoline (thank you Patty) and balancing on the curvy board (thank you mom). Yay Iowa winters!

The definite highlight of the week though was the field trip Guthrie and I took to the Putnam Museum, just the two of us. She told my mom later, when asked, that she didn't learn anything, and I just smiled. To her we spent a couple hours playing Little House on the Prairie and hiding from hippos in a submarine, but it could have been her final exam for the year - grouping puppets by herbivore and carnivore in order to feed them an accurate breakfast. Fretting over what kind of bedding she had for them. 

Trading furs at the trading post - figuring out how many muskrat furs it would take to buy 2 buckets and a tin plate. Pointing out the parts of the life cycle of crickets. We had the entire museum to ourselves and it was really, really fun. Both John and I have been, without really discussing it, scheduling in more one on one time with each of the kids. Everyone has benefitted I think.

Stories for the week were varied as I didn't have a central oral story picked out. We enjoyed a mix of library and some of our own books - particularly the following:

 

Gem by Holly Hobbie

Goose Needs a Hug by Tad Hills

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost & Illustrated by Susan Jeffers

Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner

and especially the Field Guide to Mammals - that's been a total hit

Happy Weekending!

friday wrap-up

Busy week for us - lots of afternoon activities for the kids with their grandmas and a 'field trip' to the flea market for some school supplies. Like a bunch of buttons and some trays for their work to go on on their shelves.

*an aside, my living room is full of kids dancing to Just Dance and it's hard to concentrate because they're kind of hilarious and uncoordinated*

For our mornings though it really took until Wednesday to get our groove going. Guthrie was um, shall we say a little reluctant to really do much of anything except sit on the couch being surly. She's really fitting the mold of the "6 year change" these days. Loose teeth! Getting lanky, her face is changing to be less little girl. Lots of independence and lots of needing/wanting us to do things for her. And lots, lots of strong emotions. Which you would think we'd be used to, but really we had kind of a break from the seemingly irrational fits. Except now there's a lot of, 'why does everyone hate me?' 'i'm a terrible person' etc. It's hard to hear, even if I know it's as age appropriate as the loose teeth.

Anyways.

We did do some fun non-surly things!

We continued playing with snow dough this week - a mixture of cornstarch and vegetable oil and glitter, inspired by The Imagination Tree. Last week it was a one person activity but under orders to not get too wild they played for over an hour. I'm glad I took her advice to use vegetable oil instead of baby oil because the cat found it quite tasty!


We did some sorting work. I set out two bottles of various objects - noodles, sequins, beads, beans, and a ice cube tray. They can sort it all out and then count how many of each they have. Or whatever. Fine motor skills is what I was aiming for!


The story I told was Little Red Cap and I didn't do any activities to go with it, but no one seemed to notice. We sorted and added and sequenced buttons. Guthrie did a few pages in her new Explode the Code 1 workbook. She's never too excited about sitting down and doing it but once she gets going she will do several pages. Then during snack one day (captive audience) she built the words from the pages for me using her movable alphabet. Which led into a loud round of rhyming as they were all words that ended in -at. And then we talked about syllables. Which my musical kids super enjoyed.

My one complaint about Explode the Code is that I would much rather they teach her to write using a D'Nealian style. You know, with the tails? Instead of the block print they use. It's harder I think and not  as conducive to cursive. I'm trying to impress her with my tales - maybe she'll copy me because she thinks I'm so awesome. heh.

On Thursday we read The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane (a gift from John's dad for Christmas) and   I had her copy part of a snowflake poem that we are going to finish up and illustrate - much like Brother Theophane- next week. She made me do it with her. Do you know how hard it is to write on that handwriting paper? Goodness - it took me almost as long as it took her! You have to write so big!

The biggest hit was making blood. Guthrie is going back to the rheumatologist in a couple weeks and requested to learn some more about blood before then. Melissa at Chasing Cheerios posted this cool activity which she picked up from Pandia Press back in October and I tucked it away. The formula was:
1/2 c corn syrup for the plasma
1/2 c red hots candy for red blood cells
1 T lentils for platelets
5 dried lima beans for white blood cells

We started at circle time finding our veins and taking note of the fluctuations in our heart rate and pulse after jumping up and down for 30 seconds. None of this was new to Guthrie, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. Then we moved to the table and mixed up our blood while I explained the different parts and their jobs.

Later I overheard her telling Laithe and then 3 other people that her white blood cells are busy eating 3 different kinds of germs - HSP, a cold, and uh, ringworm. (whole other boring post largely about the 12 loads of laundry I had to do.) so I think it made sense to her.

She asked Laithe what his favorite part was and he said white blood cells, she said hers was platelets. The best part of the process was how true to life it was that the plasma was clear and that the only reason blood is red is because of red blood cells. It took about 2 hours for the red hots to transfer some of their color to the plasma. They kept coming back to it and it's still on the table. Getting a little funky.

Have a great weekend!

friday wrap-up

We're slowly, slowing easing back into things school-wise. Technically we went back on the 2nd, but three days of getting back into the groove does not make for exciting writing, so no wrap up. This week though we did some cool stuff. 

I approached the kids a bit before school started to ask what they would like to learn about this winter. Both said snow, so the story for the week was one I sort of made up about a raindrop who turns into a snowflake. We used the weather set John and I made for the story. I also hung up these stained glass snowflake sheets my mom got for us a few weeks ago. Laithe has enjoyed coloring them on our sunny mornings. It's that time of year when I so appreciate our plethora of south facing windows! 

We also cut snowflakes out of coffee filters - neither kid was too interested in that, but they liked mine!

Speaking of scissors, I'd set out a montessori based cutting activity for Laithe in November. One inch strips of paper with vertical lines drawn on them every inch and a half or so. Just in a basket with some scissors. He could not have been both more frustrated and/or less interested. Fast forward a month and he's busy cutting every paper in sight, but also has discovered that cutting foam stickers is super fun. So, this week I set out the same activity for him, but included a few strips of cheap craft foam with the paper strips and he loved it. The foam is less likely to bend with the scissors when he grabs it at the wrong angle. 

As part of the week was pretty chilly (making outside time shorter!) we made use of the small trampoline John's mom got Laithe for Christmas. We practiced counting and skip counting on it. I need to find a song for counting by 2s. Later in the week when the snow had melted off the sidewalk I put the trampoline on the back porch so the kids could bounce and warm up between dirt cookie making and drawing with sidewalk chalk. I found out this week from a neighbor that the elementary school in our neighborhood only has one 20 minute recess a day. I remember two 15 minute recesses and a 30 minute post-lunch recess through 6th grade. Made me sad to realize how little time the kids are getting outside. Poor kids! And poor teachers! It's hard to learn and teach when you don't have time to move around! 

The kids asked if they could wash their seashell collected. Why sure!

Yeah. We've hit that stage where Guthrie only wants to make funny faces in photos.

I think the thing the kids missed most during our break from formal school was circle time. A lot of time was spent on the quilt in the living room. Telling the snowflake story, reading a few books, making shapes out of blocks and working with the sandpaper letters. We also listened to the winter portion of Vivaldi's Four Seasons a few days in a row and on one of the days I found a video so the kids could watch musicians perform it. Guthrie was just enthralled. Guthrie set up a really long story using most of our nature table and some clippings from the Christmas tree. I'm not sure what the story was about - I think it was mostly about setting the stage. Then she took pictures of it. 

I'm discovering that if I want to make sure something gets done during our week we need to do it, or part of it, during circle time. I'm working with Guthrie on the formation of some of her letters so we worked with a few sandpaper letters and while one child was tracing the sandpaper letter the other was drawing it in our tray of cornmeal. It kept them both busy enough so that I felt like she had time to really work at it. Laithe, who has almost always moved in and out of school time has been suddenly pleased to be more included. I think he feels like a big boy! Can you believe that he's going to be three?

The coolest thing we did was make egg tempera paints. I'd always thought it would be really complicated and messy, but it wasn't! And it was the perfect activity for a girl who is definitely in the 2nd half of kindergarten and getting ready for more. 

I'm super allergic to tempera paint so I was happy to use the tutorial in a past issue of Alphabet Glue  - maybe vol 4? - that used crushed chalk pastels instead of solid tempera. Guthrie was in charge of the crushing of the pastels and I separated the eggs. 

We were both pretty excited about the project. I can always gauge Guthrie's level of excitement by how many people she tells. She told quite a few, so it was a winner!

friday wrap-up

Ahh, sweet quietness of kids working hard. Right now it's tickets to their secret clubhouse. 'It's not a fort, it's a secret clubhouse' geez mom!

Thankful for a much smoother week this week. Back to our regular routine with even enough steadiness to have a few field tripish activities - taking some school work to Panera and then a trip to the park afterwards - melted my cabin fever down a bit!

This week we continued the beeswax polishing - nuts, furniture, some crabapples. The house smells good! And I was pleasantly surprised about Laithe's independence with this. 

I pulled out a categorizing activity - 4 pictures, 3 of which are similarly themed to see how that would go. Totally over Laithe's head, but it was interesting listening to Guthrie explain to him why we put the X where we did. We also categorized the National Park cards Nana Loree brought us this summer - pictures of parks with mountains, deserts, caves, etc. 

The story this week was Stone Soup which we used as kind of a benign intro to the Thanksgiving story. I made this little peg doll playset inspired by Rhythm of the Home via Pinterest, hushed my inner-Cultural Studies MA concerns regarding what to teach my children about Thanksgiving and hot glued the shit out that tepee. 

Guthrie worked on word building with her movable alphabet and after I presented the first one she told me she could do it on her own - and she did, just fine. We discovered she has 4 pages left of her workbook and I'm encouraging her to finish it up before we start our break.

There was relatively little reading done by her this week. I think it's probably my fault. She discovered a page of stickers that go along with the books and I said that she could have them after we read the 10th book - she's on book 7 - and bam! no more reading. She's never been much of a reward girl - I would do well to remember that in the future! Except she likes rewards for completing her chore jar tasks, but they're usually chocolate chips, so I don't blame her. From now on reading will just be its own reward! 

There was more graphing of nuts, using our number tiles to work on 10-20s (Guthrie can count to 100 but 12-15 are a struggle), measuring as we baked and cooked. 

I forget where I heard about using scissors with playdough to practice cutting, but I'm always looking for additional tools to stick in the playdough. And they both really enjoyed it. 

We sponge painted turkeys and made suncatcher collages with clear contact paper and tissue paper on the windows. Guthrie was disappointed they didn't turn into prisms and make rainbows.

On a recent trip to the library I picked up Waiting for Winter and we're all pretty enamoured with it. The vast majority of the illustrations are in pencil and there aren't words on every page - I love those books so much these days. They allow you to narrate the story in your head rather than being told what is happening. I love watching the kids figure out what has happened and do my best to not narrate where the story doesn't! I should put together a list of our favorites.  We are also enjoying Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep and Barn Cat. Guthrie is in love with Dust Devil and I'm so tired of reading it. I know it's won all kinds of awards, but I cannot find the rhythm of it - making it not my favorite read aloud. 

I'm looking forward to getting our winter books out in the next couple weeks - not even just the Christmas ones. I think the kids will enjoy it too. I've noticed they're not picking books out of the fall basket as often. 

Next Wednesday starts our Winter Break and so unless something amazing happens between now and then the next time I'll write a Wrap-Up will be in January. This has been a much more stressful fall than I anticipated and I'm looking forward to a break. Some serious crafting and end of the year purging and reorganization as well as getting inspiration for our Winter quarter. I've begun to look at our days and weeks in terms of in-breath and out-breath activities and plans- making sure we have balance - and this mama needs some in-breath time. 

Happy Break!!

friday wrap-up

Oh. What a week. If last week was full to the brim of excitement and joyfulness this week was the antithesis.

It was a week full of soul fever. Part-ay.
Or not.

This summer I took an online course with Kathy from Bliss Beyond Naptime called Simplicity Parenting which utilizes a book by the same name written by Kim John Payne. If you can't take one of her courses - which are amazing then run, do not walk to the library and pick up this book. It's been hands down the best parenting book I've EVER read. And I've read a few.

So, soul fever was rampant this week and once I recognized it my self said, "Self, dig deep and help these kids get back to balance." And then by Thursday there was no deeper to dig and I caught a bit of it myself.

It happens.

So to help the kids get restored back to balance I pared down our schooling to what I felt to be the most supportive activities. Tons of watercolor painting, tons of story time, tons of unstructured outside time and tons of handwork. And extended rest time. Laithe took a nap every day this week and Guthrie took 3!
Everything was done within eyesight of each other - another way I know things aren't quite right. And there was a lot, a lot of cuddle time. Many of them tearful cuddles.

Guthrie tried her hand at knitting with needles and we spent time polishing nuts with beeswax polish - hazelnuts look beautiful by the way!


I set out wet on wet watercolor painting for awhile on Tuesday and then wet on dry painting all dang day on Wednesday and Thursday. The kids would just move back to it every time I set out a fresh stack of paper. I have big plans for the huge stack of pretty paintings we have now! 

The one effort I made towards a truly structured activity was with our basket of nuts. 
We observed them with our 5 senses, we graphed them and then the kids moved over to their art table to draw them. Guthrie ended up throwing hers across the room in frustration - the paper and pencil, not the nut thank goodness. And then she burst into sobbing for a full 15 minutes. And that was the end of the structure! Back to the polishing work smooshed between your brother and mom.

Poor kids. It's so difficult to feel so out of control! This behavior is such a rarity these days that this week has really been a jolt back to how things were for us a year ago on a regular basis. I'm so thankful for how things have changed in our home.

Not to miss the current event opportunity we voted on Monday for what we would have for lunch and what we would do after lunch. The choices were macaroni and cheese or sandwiches and then outside time, story time, or chore jar time. I only voted for sandwiches so we could talk about majority/minority- who in their right mind wouldn't vote for mac and cheese?? and going outside was a unanimous decision.

 And Tuesday morning we all went to vote together. I do love that! On the walk home Laithe straggled behind and Guthrie and I got to talk about what a privilege it is to vote and how it should be a right, but hasn't always been. We were both thankful that we don't have to depend wholly on dad and Laithe to make our voices heard.


It was interesting that by the time Thursday afternoon rolled around, when I was at my worst, the kids were at their best and spent an hour(!) in their room cleaning and playing. With no redirection from me.
Responding to their needs is always worth it in my book - even if it means changing plans and not having any time to do what I want to do. Even when it is really freaking hard.

And today, no school today! John is home from work and everyone except me is still in their pjs. This afternoon I have big plans to have some time away from home. Podcasts and knitting and a cup of tea are calling my name. My introverted self has never asserted herself as strongly as since I stopped working, it's good for all of us when I respond!

Lovely weekend to all of you!

friday wrap-up

I gave in to the absolute chaos that is the last three days of October and the first few days of November for our family and skipped my Friday wrap up last week.

And as I sit here writing this I realize I have no idea what we did last week I just know that it was really, really busy. Fueled by the sugar and excitement that can only come from a holiday and birthday in the same week.

For sure there was costume finishing and learning about different cultures' celebrations of Halloween, Samhain, Dia de los Muertos, and All Saints Day. There was a birthday celebration and a visit from PopPop. Some Mexican food which went quickly from the plan to have a homemade dia de los muertos celebration to barely making it through the day and ending up at the Mexican restaurant down the street  - but the kids got to try tamales, so, you know, totally worth it.

The big excitement for the week for Guthrie was getting to read book 6 of the BOB books on her 6th birthday. She is gaining confidence and doing wonderfully with her reading.

I'm looking forward to refreshing our shelves this week, enjoying some quiet home time and revamping some of my plan for the next 3 weeks until we start our winter break.

friday wrap-up

I'm starting a new hopefully weekly series detailing some of the activities we've done during the week during our lesson time.

Stories this week were from our fall basket. Our favorites were Spiky the Hedgehog, Zen Ghosts, Day of the Dead, Otis and I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Bat (thanks Amie!). And the oral story was Mother Holle, which I still don't know how to pronounce, but no one seemed to mind. 

Outside we played in leaves, pounded golf tees into a pumpkin and played with water beads.

Inside, Guthrie moved on to her 5th BOB book and I requested she not move on to the 6th until she is 6 years old (thursday). There are still a few words she could use some practice on in the first five. I was uncertain how these books would fit with us using phonics as the basis for reading, but they've worked just fine and I've found it's easy to utilize the consonant blendings that are in the books to build on. I've been pleasantly surprised how easy this process of learning to read has been with her; for her. It's possible we'll have a voracious reader on our hands in a few months. 

She did some work with the cornmeal tray - literally just a layer of cornmeal in a tray. I put a few words from her books/phonics lists and also line patterns on some index cards. She copies them and reads the word. Correct letter writing - the process of it, not the final product- will be more important later on but I want to set a good foundation for cursive now. When school ended for the summer her teacher sent home her Explode the Code workbook - an intro to phonics - and she's almost done with it. I think it's likely she'll finish next week. 

I had the opportunity for some alone time with each of the kids this week and that's always nice. Guthrie and I finished up early on Thursday and we went out for lunch. She loves miso soup - two bowls worth and I got some sushi. She's a cheap date! I need to remember to do this periodically through the winter. 

Activities on the shelves were polishing silver, pumpkin pie spice playdoh, legos, and our newly made geoboard (pinterest project!). I'm a fan of the geoboard, Laithe is too, but he has kind of a hard time still. We also worked with the large abacus we have- usually they pretend the beads are types of fruit and I am the customer putting in my order. I'm kind of a cantankerous one though- always changing my mind and causing them to add and subtract! They get kind of irritated! 

Art included a lot of pumpkin coloring and coloring on graph paper as well as several Scratch Magic sheets. We also dipped the leaves we collected and pressed last week. Guthrie continually surprises me with her ability to work in the kitchen without hurting herself! 

Happy Friday & Weekend!!