Turning 2 Years Old

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March 28, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

So, Alex turns 2 Sunday. He’s a big boy now!

All of a sudden, he’s not a baby anymore. He’s a little boy. He’s so big and talking and so independent!

After three little girls, this guy sure is a needed change! I’m learning so much from him. He is so different from his sisters. He has no interest in doing the Tot School activities I did with the girls. He likes some of the Montessori works that I have on his shelves. And of course, I never get any pics of him doing those because I’m right there with him. He loves being outdoors. Just when I thought I had homeschooling figured out, he throws me a curve!

Here’s a little bit about our blonde, blue-eyed Bubba.

Alex likes cheese. I mean, really likes cheese.

He was so excited for his Cars birthday celebration.

He blew out two swirly candles on his cupcake.

Then we put lots of frosting on it and he licked it all off. He left the cake.

Alex likes orange, so I made him orange buttercream frosting. (The pink and blue and green frosting were more for his sisters to decorate their cupcakes.)

Alex loves his iPad. He loves his cat, Rubeus. They’re buddies.

Alex loves the kitchen and begs to cook! He knows where everything goes and what everything is used for and we have rather more than enough when it comes to tools and appliances…

He’s my handsome little man who looks just like Daddy, all the way down to that smirk.

He’s my big boy!

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Creating Books and Math Journals

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March 25, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

These girls are growing by leaps and bounds!

Weekly Homeschool Update

The girls got a wild hair and starting creating these little books from my leftover paper stash.

They wrote fun facts and illustrated them in the cutest little them books!

They got their Draw Write Now, Book 1: On the Farm-Kids and Critters-Storybook Characters and copied the facts and drawings on cows and turkeys.

They made little St. Patrick’s Day books all on their own with info about leprechauns and rainbows.

I just love how they planned this project all on their own. It wasn’t an assignment. They really applied their learning! I love times like these!

We have lots of paper and craft scraps lying around for the girls to use in free play. They got so creative making them into these little books about what they learned.

Food fun! The girls graphed marshmallows from Lucky Charms cereal.

I finally printed math journals.

Katie wasn’t interested this week and I won’t push it. yet. I had these all ready and just set them aside and forgot about them! Tori just loved it. I will do one page each month with a theme.
Here are January’s shapes snowflake and February’s Valentine cookies. We also did gold coins for March’s leprechaun. The ideas are from Jazzy Journals.

The girls are slowly working through Artistic Pursuits Grades K-3 Book 1 An Introduction to Visual Arts.

This week, we drew a picture from a photograph.

I pulled out some old photos and we looked at them and Tori chose one of me at age 4.

Katie chose an adorable pic of her sister, Elizabeth, as a baby in an Easter bonnet. My main focus for Tori is confidence in her drawing. She is such a perfectionist that she gets paralyzed.

I have really enjoyed seeing the girls learn this month.

They have grown leaps and bounds and can read and write so well – all of a sudden!

We read about Alexander the Great and the beginnings of Rome in history.
We’re almost finished with our astronomy study in science. We read about the outer planets. We’ll do the Earth and Moon this week.

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The Living Planet Aquarium Field Trip

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March 19, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We finished off our science study of Swimming Creatures with a field trip to The Living Planet Aquarium!

Alex was just a baby last year when we went and he didn’t care much about it. This time, he was ecstatic!

We spend a LOOOONG time watching the jellyfish get fed. They literally swooped and scooped up the food from this turkey baster!

This is a BIG lobster. Any one have any butter?

Alex got really tickled at this tank with needle fish and lion fish.

The lion fish spread his fins out a couple times and was quite magnificent.

A really colorful tropical tank

There’s a little goby hiding in the bottom of this tank.

We got to pet rays! Alex liked to watch everyone else pet rays. He really didn’t like it when I put his hand in the water. The keepers said they clip the tail barbs like we clip our fingernails.

Alex had a needed break in this fun little area with little bitty aquariums among the climbing areas.

They also had a quiet room with fun puzzles and books!

After his break, he wanted to join his sisters again to see the rays.

We got to watch them getting fed too! They went rather crazy. The rays, not the kids.

Ribbit, ribbit!

And the star attraction, just arrived in January!

OTTERS!!!

They have a little bubble you can climb into and see them from the inside, up close.

Alex really loved this. We also entered the contest to name these cute little boogers.

We glanced through the gift shop, and Alex loved this turtle hat!

On our way out, the girls had a fun photo booth session!

I made scavenger hunt pages for the girls.

I had fun clipboards and gave them each a pen and we checked off the animals we had learned about in science this year.

Visit The Living Planet Aquarium:

Open daily from 10am to 6pm, Closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas

Adults $17.95

Military $14.95

Teens 13-17 $14.95

Child 3-12 $12.95

Under 2 FREE

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St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Works

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March 17, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We read lots of books and watched some fun DVDs from the library this week about planets and our solar system.

Space matching game

-an word family work and FLL proper nouns (aunts and uncles)

-an word family word wall

How can you write the number 10?

Then we searched for shamrocks around the room and wrote the number 4 different ways on our papers! This was great fun!

Patterns with shamrocks

I love how creative the girls were! I gave them freedom to make up patterns. They turned the shamrocks backwards, sideways, and upside down to make different patterns! Then they told me the patterns: AB, ABC, ABBA, ABCD, AAB, etc.

We have a fun Irish dinner at church tonight. We’re making Irish lamb stew and corned beef and cabbage and soda bread!

We graphed with Lucky Charms cereal!

We read some amazing books and poetry about St. Patrick’s Day. Oh, how we love poetry!

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Astronomy Unit Study

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March 12, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We added some Montessori materials for our science studies

Morning message pages introducing our astronomy unit:

The UMOCA had a FREE kids’ craft making astronomy mobiles.

Well, don’t ya know we hightailed it over there! Fun, fun fun! Free, free, FREE!

5 Little Astronauts. He named each little astronaut after our family members. So sweet!

The girls enjoyed learning about and labeling the moon phases.

Kate loved our Montessori moon cards:

Fun astronomy matching game

Comet kabobs snack

There are stars in my apples!

Mnemonic the girls wrote to remember the names of the planets. Yes, I know Pluto is not a planet anymore, but it was fun and we needed to include the word “pigs” somewhere!

So cute how they laid all out on the foyer floor to do their word searches!

Working on alphabetizing the planets in these adorable workbooks from Target’s dollar spot (a long time ago)

Found a fun popup book at a discount bin.

Elizabeth did astronomy in 1st-2nd grade with Apologia Exploring Creation With Astronomy, so this will be review for her. Tori and Katie are so excited! I even have some fun little things to include Alex.

Astronomy Unit Study

Poetry

Here are some poems that we plan to work on this month. We love poetry! I will have the moon poem on our calendar board and the gravity poem in a Montessori poetry basket. I also have some other poems in the works.

Calendar

Week 1: Intro, Sun and stars
Week 2-3: planets
Week 4: comets, asteroids, and other heavenly bodies
Week 5-6: Earth and moon

We start off our morning each day with these: Calendar Connections.

Texts

Stargazer’s Guide to the Night Sky and Apologia Astronomy

Arts and Crafts

make a solar system mobile
moon sand sensory bin
moon painting
stencils and stamps
watercolor planets

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Time lapse phases of the #moon with @Oreo! #homeschool #science @apologiaworld #oreo
A post shared by Jennifer Lambert (@jenalambert) on Sep 29, 2015 at 9:58am PDT

Games

Astronauts to Earth
Space Dominoes
Space Memory
Pretend play with Space Module Astronaut Dome Tent

Notebooking

copywork
word searches
mazes
fun space printables

I have some biography studies, mostly for Elizabeth. She also wants to do some mythology comparisons with constellations.

Montessori

3 part cards
Nomenclature cards
poetry

Books

Field Trips

We went to UMOCA (fun crafts!) and the Planetarium. We went star-gazing while camping on Antelope Island.

Watching a lot of Doctor Who counts too, right?

Check out my astronomy board:
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Read Across America Unit Study

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March 11, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

Most educators celebrate Read Across America week.

Launched in 1998 by the National Education Association (NEA) and guided by a committee of educators, NEA’s Read Across America is the nation’s largest celebration of reading. This year-round program focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources that are about everyone, for everyone.

Many individuals and organizations have stepped away from focusing on Dr. Seuss’s birthday for Read Across America week.

We celebrate diverse authors and subjects. Many teachers and parents eschew Seuss for other, better, more diverse choices.

While my kids were little, I never knew or considered Dr. Seuss books as anything but cute rhymes.

I have an entire bookshelf full of Dr. Seuss books and I’m so upset about it.

Instead of overusing and misusing the word “cancel” why can’t we just say “criticize” and “critical”? Don’t we want to model and teach critical thinking and literary analysis?

Now that I know better, I do better.

Do you know the Truth about Seuss?

Racism and Dr. Seuss:

It is NOT “cancel culture.” It is facing consequences.

A popular homeschool blogger comments about censorship.

So many Dr. Seuss stories are iconic – memorable traditions we read and watch every year.

I think as white people, we tend to overlook subtle, covert, and even overt racism and make excuses for the writer or artist. We wave it away as “a sign of the times” or “how it was back then.”

This is laziness.

It’s important we reevaluate what we expose our kids to and if we continue to read and watch these stories, we do so critically and with more awareness and discuss these issues with our kids. We owe it to them.

Read Across America Unit Study

We went to story time at the library and got neat coloring pages!

Rhyming words sheets

Left foot, right foot sheets

Putting stickers on all the F’s

Literacy Resources

How do you celebrate Read Across America?

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March Tot School

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March 4, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

Alex had a fun week and we did lots of activities together and with his sisters.

He turns 2 next month!

“painting” with shaving cream at co-op

Our March sensory bin with lentils, shamrocks, pom poms, black cauldrons, and a wooden rainbow. Alex loves filling the cauldrons with the lentils.

Moon balancing game

Playing with Geoboards and rubber bands. Alex’s favorite color is orange!

Excited about new light box tools!

Matching colors: plastic stir sticks (from Walmart) to clear bins (from Dollar Tree)

Making his name with plastic stir sticks (I did this). He LOVED this! Alex tried to make his own letters and got the X down!

Making circles (Alex calls them “O’s”) with half circle transparent blocks. And playing Peek a Boo.

It snowed Thursday and Friday, so there was snow play!

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Montessori Language Works

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March 2, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Where has the time gone? It’s flying by!

We’re loving First Language Lessons.

The girls wrote the full names of everyone in our family. This took a little effort and explaining. The girls each have two middle names, to honor my family name that will not be carried on since I’m an only child. Bubba has three middle names since he’s the only boy. We had to honor grandpas!

Here are the sentence cubes I mentioned last week. We made silly sentences with them. “The happy frog shut his mouth.” “The green frog slides on the lily pad.” We reviewed nouns and learned about verbs and adjectives. I used the Montessori grammar symbol 3 part cards to help.

silent E sheets with a letter from our movable alphabet box I made with Lauri Toys Mini Alphabet Avalancheand an adjustable craft box from Walmart (I think this is the one). Tori is almost a fluent reader!

Book about tails they colored and read. They loved the kites and girls’ ponytails pages. Unexpected!

Some fun activities from our homeschool co-op…

Snow paint (glue and shaving cream)

Tori lost her THIRD tooth yesterday!

We practiced reading, sight words, handwriting, sensory and practical life stuff too.

Tori is quite the helper: she swept and mopped the kitchen and bathrooms all by herself! She and Katie cleaned up the playroom (and now I know they can do it quickly and well!).

Tori also helps out by playing with her brother when Elizabeth or I need to do something. I love her servant’s heart!

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